Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Foundation

I didn't have high hopes for this one, mainly due to being a direct-to-video movie with a meager budget.  Not saying all direct-to-video movies are going to be bad, but Starship Troopers felt like one where they would benefit at least a bigger budget for the special effects.  Anyway, fears were confirmed when half an hour into the movie (a third of the length), the plot still failed to capture your interest.  It further solidified as you realize that the whole movie is going to take place in that same setting, the dark and gloomy (yet uninspiring) fortress.  While the ending of the first movie was open enough to make you crave for a sequel, this is not the one that you're looking for.  It's storyline bears little resemblance in tone and material and doesn't expand on the universe, the only thing that's similar is the one type of bug, and even then, they don't have much screen time.  So, for some reason, Starship Troopers 2 turned into some sort of zombie movie, pulling that genre's typical events and showcasing it to it's maximum cheesy effect.  The bugs coming out of people's mouths and entering into another's as a way to infect them reminded me that a movie had done that before, although I can't remember the exact one.  The plot was predictable and downright terrible.  There were a few events where you don't know what is going on because they haven't explained it properly.  The ending was also weird as the main character stayed on the fortress when there is no proper reason for doing so (and thus he died).  Overall, you can feel and see the clumsiness in the movie.  Take out the little scenes of bugs and you get a generic movie that doesn't even tie to the original Starship Troopers.

Book Review: The Casual Vacancy

Review:  #387
Title:  The Casual Vacancy
Series:  N/A
Author:  J.K. Rowling
Read Before:  no
My Comments:  No matter what, you can’t be such a successful author as J.K. Rowling and not have any of your further work compared to your greatest success, Harry Potter.  The Casual Vacancy does not compare to Harry Potter in any way, first of all, the genre and style of writing is very different, and second, it’s not as gripping or amazing.  One of the early problems with this book is that the author introduces too many characters too frequently.  You end up getting confused at all these names just flying at you, trying to make sense who is who and what each person’s relationship with the other characters are.  This makes the first half of the book harder to follow and not as engrossing.  The premise of the story is that the death of one person caused a chain of events that just snowballed.  You don’t get to see the full force of this snowballed effect until the very end of the book.  The majority of the story is average; it’s only until the final thirty pages or so where the events that happen just shatter everything before it.  It’s quite sad and emotional.  The ending isn’t handled well as too many things that were major issues for the characters are left open.  There is no resolution for Andrew’s aggressive father and no outcome for Andrew’s and Gaia’s relationship amongst other things.  It’s disappointing that there wasn’t enough closure for all the subplots.  Then there’s all the swearing, literally every second page or so will have more than one occasion of swearing.  Sure, it’s an adult fiction book, but that doesn’t mean it needs to have all that swearing (which does not add much), and so many sexual actions.  If not for the relatively better ending, the rating wouldn’t have been as high.

Rating:  6/10

Final Fantasy: All the Bravest (Android)

First thing you must do if you're planning to play this game, set your expectations low and you will have fun.  The best part of this game has to be the throwbacks to the past of Final Fantasy.  This game is like a celebration of the history of the franchise, from the familiar music to the monsters and bosses.  Some of the more iconic bosses make appearances and it's pretty sweet when you recognise them (same goes with the music.  The graphics (pixel sprites) also brings back nostalgia.  The game has a world map of sorts but it's really more of a level select screen rather than a free roaming map, this means that the game is super linear.

Onto the battle system, which is the meat of this game (and of most Final Fantasy games).  This is one of the more negatively received aspects of the game (the other are the in-app purchases).  The battle system is super basic, tap on a character and it attacks.  It's easy but it also gets boring fast, the only thing that is positive is the large number of characters in your party that you use to fight.  It's cool (at least in the beginning) to slide our finger across the characters and you see ten to thirty of them attack at once dealing 100's to 1000's of damage at each hit.  Sadly, it doesn't get any deeper and you get through all battles by sliding your finger up and down.  At least it's visually spectacular, but it gets really busy towards the end of the game where you have a party of 30+ characters.  Especially due to the huge amount of effects happening, with accompanying sound effects, you can't enjoy the amazing battle music, which is a huge shame. The game has all these animations, designs and actions that feel like a classic Final Fantasy game but the simplistic battle system does a horrendous job of making this game fun and captivating.  There was a lot of potential for this kind of throwback game but the execution is seriously lacking.

So while normal battles are fine, the boss battles are not as there are difficulty spikes (basically, all enemies in this game are damage sponges, with bosses being extremely so), decimating your party and if your whole party goes (each party member dies in one hit, hence the large amount of characters at any one time) you either have to use an item to revive them all (you get nine of them for free but then after you use them all, you have to start purchasing them with real money, you actually earn the in-game money 'gil' but it's for show and can't use it to buy anything...) or you wait three minutes for each character to revive which is pretty disappointing as it feels like a major money grabber (on a full 40 character party, it'll take 2 hours for your whole team to revive).  Okay, so the ability to wait it out (e.g. turn off your phone and do other stuff for a few hours) and then come back right where you left off (i.e. you don't have to beat enemies in one go) makes the game much easier than you'd want but at the cost of artificially extending the game time.  There is no real penalty for getting your party wiped out other than the inconvenience of time (this breaks the flow of the game though because if you wanted to play a long session, you either wait it out and keep attacking once your party revives or return to the map and grind up a few levels).

The last dungeon is designed to wipe out your party and force you to wait or use in-app purchases.  Good thing is that you can circumvent this by rigging the time on your phone.  Fast forward it to a few hours ahead and voila, your party is revived.  One thing to note is that the game seems to remember the dates and times when it got refreshed, so if you set your time back to the correct one, you might not get the three-hourly bonus as the game thinks the 'last' time you got it was in the 'future'.  A lot of the game's mechanics are also randomized.  This randomness in the statistics and battle mechanics dull you after a while.  You can't choose which enemy to attack, you can't choose the makeup of your party and you can't buy specific weapons (instead, in classic RPG style, all weapons are randomized drops... which provide cumulative stat increases, you don't get to equip them at all).  All you have in control of is shifting your finger up and down and watching the characters attack (while it is pretty with all the battle effects flying about, it can only do so much before you get bored).

If you're going into this hoping for some sort of story, you will be disappointed.  There is literally no story here, only a prologue which is one small screen of text when you launch the game and when it ends.  It is one battle strung after another and the only explanation is that all the heroes from different eras joined forces to defeat these monsters.  I'm not going to cover the in-app purchases that much, the less said about them, the better.  On Android, the game is free so it's easier to stomach.  So, you can buy hourglasses to revive your party (but you never will have to buy this due to the workaround mentioned earlier), buy extra characters (chosen at random) and buy additional dungeons (which are just more battles).  They're not exactly value for money considering that they don't add anything new to the base game.  One of the more addictive areas of the game is trying to complete it 100%, collecting all weapons and encountering all monsters (and an achievement system of sorts in which you earn up to three stars for things such as maximum damage done in 'fever' mode, party size and gil earned).  Overall, the game is quite short, clocking in at around two hours if you use the time rigging trick.  If you can get over the fact that it's a simple battle system designed to pass the time and not invoke any serious thoughts, this can be some mindless fun (even if just for the visual spectacle itself).  That said, the final boss was a real drag...

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Starship Troopers

I don't know why I remembered this movie as cheesy and corny when it's nowhere near that, instead, having a lot of surprising violence.  The way that people die in unexpected moments does their job of shocking you. The constant death whether it be a random extra or what you thought to be a major supporting character makes you think that no character is safe and could die at any moment (which is a good thing as you'll be wondering who will survive in each situation).  The movie starts off fairly slow and it takes around an hour before it begins to pick up.  That first hour is spent setting up the characters' backstories, which, while you can see where it's coming from, doesn't feel that much necessary and it wasn't used much in the film.  The insect enemies were interesting, although too bad that only one of the five varieties that were shown had any major screen time.  Considering when the film was made, the special effects were very impressive, the insects still look quite realistic and detailed (it only lets down during one of the earlier scenes in which the characters are firing lasers which look terrible and very fake).  The ending was a bit disappointing, after all that had happened (and the climax wasn't too exciting, being overshadowed by the other battles), you thought that the writers could have put a twist in, maybe that they thought it was over but wasn't, or maybe the brain bug was controlling Carl instead.  Anyway, it's a blast and will keep you absorbed.

Toy Review: Transformers Animated Activator Bumblebee

Review:  #158
Name:  Bumblebee
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Animated
Year of Release:  2008
Size Class:  Activators (Wave 1)
Variations:  repainted into Patrol Bumblebee and Battlefield Bumblebee, it was remolded into Activators Cliffjumper and the Japanese version sports a traditional red and white Autobot symbol instead of the silver.

VEHICLE MODE:

Bumblebee transforms into a stylized yellow sports car/hatchback.  Despite being accurate to the cartoon, Bumblebee could pass off as a realistic vehicle.  The proportions isn't too off for it to be real.  There's a stripe running down the left side and a red flasher.

While a great vehicle mode in general, it is let down by the gimmick (which will be covered off later) which required the black hinges at the back.  Not only does it physically stick out, the black makes it even more obvious.

Bumblebee is surprisingly well painted, he sports silver headlights, blue windows (ALL of them are painted, including the back) and red rear lights.  I just love the design of his hood and grill.

Bumblebee rolls as you'd expect and that is the only play value available in car mode.  Bumblebee holds together well and isn't prone to auto-transforming by itself like one of the other Activators.

Bumblebee is fairly small which suits the character just fine.  The look and feel of him is just right, one of the best Activators vehicle modes.

TRANSFORMATION:

As an Activator, the core gimmick is the auto-transformation, in other words, part of Bumblebee's transformation is spring-loaded.  You press the red flasher on top (making this the transformation activation button is a clever idea) and Bumblebee springs part-way into robot mode (as seen above).  You still need to manually separate and fold out his feet, and position his arms.  However, Bumblebee is one of the Activators that requires the least amount of manual fiddling and the engineering is impressive and fun.

ROBOT MODE:

Being such a small size and with the gimmick, Bumblebee loses some cartoon accuracy here.  He features a bigger chest (but looks much more natural) and his arms are basically sculpted panels, making them look really thin (easily the worst aspect).

He features next to nil kibble which is surprising and is a testament to how well he is designed.  Most of the car mode forms his chest and back.  The car rear actually forms the bulk of his torso (instead of just sitting on his back), so it feels like all the vehicle elements are integrated into the robot here.

Bumblebee's got a huge head and he's got a grimace, not his trademark smirk.  A note here is that this is the Japanese version but aside from the different Autobot insignia, they are basically the same figure.

Bumblebee is fairly short, shorter than your average Scout/Commander sized figure but it works for the character.

The shoulders are situated lower than normal so it can look weird.  The arm panels can also look unusual with the way it is double jointed.

In terms of poseability, Bumblebee has it pretty good.  While the head is on a balljoint, due to it's size and sculpt, it is limited, turning it to the side means you have to tilt the head upwards as well.  He's got balljoints shoulders and hips.

One of the things that this toy trumps over the Deluxe is how his feet is formed, they look great and is much more solid.  Bumblebee balances well in a lot of poses too.

A great robot mode that captures the essence of Bumblebee.  Sure, he may not be as thin and slim looking as the cartoon version but this it is amazing enough.

OVERALL:

As the saying goes, "you've always got enough room in your collection for one more Bumblebee".  Well, this is extremely true here.  Bumblebee is a cleverly designed figure.  The auto-transforming aspect is as it's best here, not being intrusive yet being really fun at the same time (it's a figure that you'll find yourself fiddling with from time to time).  Neither the robot or vehicle mode is compromised by what is asked of it.  Well worth the money.

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Other Transformers reviews can be found on this page here.

Shrek the Third

In my memory, this was a terrible and boring movie, yet when I watched Shrek the Third again, it wasn't as bad as I had remembered, and I laughed in a fair few places too.  The story is still not the best, there's nothing epic about it, and to be honest, it feels fairly trivial and petty at times.  Prince Charming comes to get his revenge and Shrek tries to find a new heir (that turns out to be some weedy and whiny kid).  Not really the classic fairy tale you were looking for.  The fact that Shrek also had to deal with the fact that he's becoming a father kinda kills it.  One good thing is that they didn't dwell for too long on Arthur's uselessness and complaints (it would be better if they had completely skipped it).  The climax of the film was disappointing, and the build up isn't worth it.  There's no excitement and rush like the first film or even the second one.  The film also loses it's charm that made the first one so good, it's like it isn't a kid's animation anymore.  The lack of songs and singing sucked too.  There's still heaps of fairy tale references but they aren't as funny or original.  While it's not the unfunny messy from my memory, it's no masterpiece either.

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

There was a lot of hype surrounding this game, one of the most anticipated JRPG games of the year due to the artistic direction, the draw of the game is that Studio Ghibli is behind the animation.  It turned out to be one of the best critically received JRPG's for years, so it was surprising when I played it and thought that it was pretty average as a package and nowhere near as good as I was expecting.  Without further ado, onto the aspects of the game.  Ni no Kuni is a beautiful game right from the start, it's a treat especially if you're a fan of Studio Ghibli and their work, coz it does feel (at least in the beginning) that you're in one of their films.  The touted anime cutscenes are great and I love how they're not rare treats, but are quite regular.  Oh, sorry, I actually spoke too soon, they're not rare treats in the beginning, but by the time you're ten hours in (which is still pretty much the game's introduction, since not everything is unlocked until around 14 hours in) they're quite rare (and short).  The in-game animations and graphics does the job of replacing the slick anime cutscenes but of course, they would feel slightly lacking (probably because it's cel-shaded?).  The environments in general are good (some of the area designs like castles are amazing) but the best parts would be the character and monster designs.  What is more jarring is the voice acting, as you progress through the game, you come to realise that a lot of scenes are blocks of text and not voice acted at all.

This isn't a problem in itself but when you're scrolling through this text, suddenly for like five seconds, there's some voice acting and then it's back to silence.  The least they could do is some consistency here (either let the scenes be fully voice acted or fully in text, otherwise you come to think after that five seconds of sound, what the of that was).  The familiar (the monsters that you catch in the game, Pokemon style) designs are neat but the evolution (or metamorphosis as it is called in the game) designs leaves more to be desired.  They just aren't different enough and more than often, it feels like they're just mere palette swaps with minor tweaks (nowhere near the level of changes in Pokemon and Digimon).  The con of having so many familiars to choose from is that the equipment can be limited in some categories, which sucks if you like to upgrade your weapons and armours each time you go to a new town.  This is because it doesn't mean that every equipment category is going to have new items at this new shop.  The loading times are surprisingly short, and considering that you have to warp to places very often, this is a blessing.  I have the digital version but I've read that the disc version also has shorting loading times. It was a great choice to have Joe Hisaishi to compose the music because it just goes hand in hand with Studio Ghibli's works.  You get a stunning (yet familiar) tune at the title screen and there are many tracks you'd fall in love with during the course of the game.

On the flip side, there are also a lot of uninspiring tracks that just blend into the background which you don't notice or fall in love with.  So, onto the game mechanics and how it plays out, the beginning of the story is boring and slow, especially when the battle system is painstakingly revealed to you, tiny piece by tiny piece.  That said, the actual 'tutorial mode' isn't that long and the eye-candy keeps you busy.  No matter what, the game is a grind in the beginning since there was on part early on where it was just go here, then here, then here and you were backtracking and just running around in the same city.  It took nearly two hours before you finally got what was mentioned in the beginning.  You can also start to predict what is going to happen in each city as it just repeats itself.  While the story had great potential, it never lived up to it.  Basically, Oliver travels to this other world to save his mum, you would expect grander things to happen and be revealed but not really.  The story loses focus by the middle of the game, since Oliver's travels were being sidetracked too much.  Granted, that's usually what happens in a JRPG (how else are they going to stretch a story to be 40+ hours?) but it's worse here since the story doesn't add anything worthwhile to the mix.  There is one great scene when Oliver faces off against Shadar (this is not a spoiler coz you'd know right from the beginning that they will have an all-out final battle).  It gives off two major revelations which was fairly groundbreaking, enough to surprise you and make the journey there somewhat worthwhile.

It was somewhat emotional too after the boss battles.  The scenes before the ending where even more stuff was revealed was probably the best parts of the story.  This is not saying much though.  Why?  One of the most important aspects of a JRPG is the story (the others are the battle system and the music), Ni no Kuni's story is bland and uneventful.  Nothing much happens and it isn't fantastical.  The retelling of the rise of the White Witch was great (with the still artwork) but when it got to the point where the White Witch was actually formed, it fell apart and felt forced.  One moment all was well, the next, "oooooh no, I'm full of despair so I shall turn evil now!"  This was probably one of the weaker moments.  I guess what I'm trying to say is, the story doesn't suck you in and doesn't have enough charm to keep itself going.  The ending of the story was satisfying as in, "finally, the game is finished", it ties the loose ends but there weren't any plot points to begin with.  Also, why was it so short!  In addition to the story, there are plenty of sidequests, which sucks up a lot of time.  I was doing as many sidequests as I could and this meant that I was staying in each section for many hours at a time (the time just flies by).  Most of the sidequests are fairly stock standard (and will get repetitive) but the reward system for fulfilling them compels you and gives you an objective (as well as some nice perks).

Wow, four paragraphs and I'm still not near the end?  This is a huge game after all.  Now, onto the next big section, the battle system.  It is boring at the start and takes some getting used to.  It's not fast paced, even though it is real time.  The way it works is that you need quick response time, but the menu system makes it clunky to do it in real time.  That, and it's still quite turn-based.  You select an action and your character performs it, you cannot instantly change you tactics (like defend and instantly counter-attack, you have to cancel the defend, then select attack, by which time the opportunity would have disappeared).  Maybe I'm just used to Tales of Graces f's awesome battle system.  Once your party expands, it gets slightly better coz you don't have to worry as much about running around the battlefield dodging attacks and then attacking (i.e. hit and run) to conserve HP since you can set your other party members to heal you automatically.  Sadly, the AI is horrible, your companions frequently burn through their MP in the blink of an eye, even when there is no reason to.  They also die quite easily if you're not careful.  The battle system gets slightly more fun after all battle elements are unlocked but it could be a lot better.  It gets worse in the game as monsters and bosses will frequently use special attacks that do a considerable amount of damage if you don't defend.  It's times like these that makes you wish the "Attack" and "Defend" commands are mapped to a dedicated button, as occasionally I would not have enough time or would accidentally miss the command when I was desperately scrolling through the menu to try and defend when a boss initiated a special move.

Outcome?  This blend of turn base, real time and menu driven battle system needs a lot more refining because there are conflicting elements here (real time requires quick response time but the menus suggest otherwise).  Boss battles are hit and miss, I feel that there are too many (major) boss battles so they don't feel as special.  Most are okay but some of them can be a bit of a difficulty spike (especially if you don't do the sidequests).  A few of the bosses spam attacks like there is no tomorrow, they'll use their special animation attack (which cancels out any special attacks you're currently trying to activate, wtf?!) and then ten seconds later, they'll use it again before you can recover from the first.  It's more annoying than fatal though.  One thing I liked is that even if one of your party gets KO'd they still get experience at the end of the battle (and revive with 1 HP, great as KO-recovering items are expensive in the game).  For some reason, the boss designs feels very... familiar and nostalgic.  They've absolutely nailed it, there were a few creepy bosses that sends chills up your spine because they're like your nightmares come to life!  As you're travelling through the world map and in particular the dungeons, you'd notice that monster respawns too frequently.  You fight and defeat them, you only need to look away, walk a little bit further and the monsters are back.  That's quite annoying, especially in the earlier parts of the game where you cannot outrun monsters.  You're also expected to backtrack which means fighting every single monster along the way again.  This game forces you to grind your way through.

Grinding isn't a choice, it doesn't force you to grind by placing a super powerful boss in front of you (to an extent, it still does that but it's manageable if you're a little bit underleveled), it forces you because there is no way to avoid all these encounters (until much later on you get a spell to hide from monsters, but even then, the way to get that spell is via a long optional sidequest...).  At least the developers had the foresight to make monster run away from you automatically if you're a much higher level than them (makes backtracking easier to stomach) but this has the con of making it annoying when you're trying to fight them to capture them.  Speaking of capturing familiars, the game has a horrible mechanic for it.  It's based purely on chance.  Oh joy.  At least Pokemon lets you manipulate it to a certain degree by weakening and using better Pokeballs.  Here?  You just have to pray and hope to get lucky on this monster with a 2% capturing rate.  The luck based capturing system means you could fight hundreds of the same monster and still not capture one, this is a terrible design choice, only serving to artificially extend the game time.  Overall, the game is solid but it's bogged down a lot of minor flaws, which, when consolidated together, affects the experience too much.  Ni no Kuni needs a MUCH better story and a some improvement on the battle system to streamline it before it can be classified as one of the best JRPG's of all time.  I'm honestly surprised at how well received this game was, and how many people are saying that it's the best game of all time, when I've liked other JRPG's more than this one, and Ni no Kuni just feels so average.

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