Book Review: The Grim Grotto

Review:  #430
Title:  The Grim Grotto
Series:  A Series of Unfortunate Events - 10th book
Author:  Lemony Snicket
Read Before:  yes
My Comments:  It’s not as if these books are getting worse, it’s just that the style of writing is becoming stale and the author does nothing to make it more refreshing.  Once again, the Baudelaires get onto some crazy journey and many mysteries are presented to you.  We get some slightly answers, not nearly enough to satisfy your hunger for revelations.  It is frustrating to see how the Baudelaires are once again betrayed and how Olaf somehow gets his way.  There is a lot of nonsense and filler paragraphs here, which pads out the book way too much to be interesting (they’re a waste of ink, space and time).  It has a cliffhanger ending and once again indirectly promises revelations in the next book.  Not a horrible book but it is one that will start to test your patience.

Rating:  6/10

Olympus Has Fallen

A somewhat American-centric movie, yes, but also very intense.  It doesn't bog you down with a boring beginning, instead after a fifteen minutes introduction it jumps straight into it.  While during the events where the White House was being taken over can be a bit exaggerated (you would expect the US Army not to be as easily outsmarted by 40 mercenaries, even though they were taken by surprise) and somehow the main character being the only one left alive out of all the agents protecting the White House may raise a few eyebrows.  Once the hostage situation takes place, if you like a lot of killing and gunfire, you're in for a fun ride.  It was violent but thankfully not gory.  There were a few moments where the deaths would surprise you, especially if you're not used to movies killing innocents.  They managed to portray the injustice of the situation and you can't wait until the antagonists gets what they deserve.  With that in mind, the climax sucked.  It felt so anti-climatic.  You expect some justice to be served and some wicked bang but the ending felt lacking compared to everything that came before it.  It's like it fizzled out.  Overall, a fun film to watch and time goes by really quickly, which is always a good sign.

Toy Review: Transformers Age of Extinction Generations Grimlock (Voyager)

Review:  #173
Name:  Grimlock
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Age of Extinction Generations
Year of Release:  2014
Size Class:  Voyager (Wave 1)
Variations:  released with chrome as a Platinum Edition

DINOSAUR MODE:

Grimlock transforms into a robotic Tyrannosaurus, that's what it is supposed to be and that's what I will assume it to be.  I am sure that there are inaccuracies in terms of proportions or elements of the design that contradicts what a Tyranosaurus should be but we won't dive into that here.

As mentioned, this is a robotic dinosaur so there is barely any organic elements here.  The black and bronze colour scheme also does not match the onscreen version, which was predominantly gunmetal grey, something I guess that would make for a very monotone toy.  You can also make out the partially covered head (where the back spike is), a little bit disappointing that it's visible in this mode.

There is some silver paint interspersed throughout the figure.  There is also a lot of kibble, no matter how you position the panel with the dino arms (underneath or to the side), it will look weird.  That said, at least the proportion problems aren't as bad as the Leader classed version.

You might have noticed from promo shots that Grimlock had a huge weapon, where does it store in dinosaur mode?  Unfortunately, the designer couldn't find a good place and so you place is at the end of the tail.

It extends the tail to a ridiculous length and looks pretty horrible and out of place there.  Yet there is no other place for it to go...

While he seems a bit fat from the top, especially around the tail area, it's not too bad.  You can also make out some robot kibble but they blend in fairly well.

The head sculpt is great and there is an effective use of silver.  The horns are adjustable but they look weird if they aren't pointing straight up (the remind me of ears actually).  He had metallic green eyes.  The front teeth design can't help but make me think of buck teeth...

There is a gimmick here, pressing a button on the left side of the head causes his jaw to close.  It's spring loaded so it'll open back up once you release the button.  I would have preferred the other way around with the jaw normally closed and the button to open.  Better yet, no gimmick and give us an open/close hinge joint instead.

Here he is with a fellow Dinobot member, Scorn.

Grimlock's size is decent.  As he has a beast mode, it's easier to make him seem bigger due to the larger surface area.  However, there are more than a few hollow parts so his weight might throw you off.

A passable dinosaur mode, considering that it isn't striving for realism like Beast Wars toys.  There are a few minor nitpicks such as the amount of kibble and the gimmick but otherwise, Grimlock looks great.

TRANSFORMATION:

Grimlock's transformation is easy while still providing enough manipulation of parts to make it interesting.  The best thing is that easy movable part is big so it isn't fiddly.  The dino legs become the robot arms, the tail the legs and everything else forms the torso and shoulder pads.

ROBOT MODE:

You are going to either love or hate the robot mode, it can take a while to fall in love with it.  Grimlock (and the rest of the Dinobots) take cues from a knight.  I think this is an excellent design approach and makes Grimlock look heroic and ready for action.

There are some kibble hanging off the back, the lower jaw of the dinosaur mode sits there thanks to the gimmick, it doesn't fold up.

The head sculpt is good.  Grimlock doesn't have a lightpipe.

He looks a bit flat side on due to the way the shoulder pads form (the dino head splitting in half). However, he feels solid in this mode.

Grimlock extends a bit in robot mode, towering over a few other figures.  He looks bulky, not just tall and lanky like some other Voyager figures.

Unfortunately, Grimlock has a case of "gorilla arms".  His fists are in such a way that the elbows bend inwards, making for some awkward posing.  His wrists are on swivels which is a temporary fix since the dino feet doesn't peg in anywhere if you do this.

Grimlock's poseability is good, containing all the key joints.  Some of the joints are tight, requiring a decent amount of force to use.  No kibble gets in the way of poseability.

Grimlock's weapon is a spiked mace.  It's huge but the mace head is hollow... making it feel much lighter than it should.

Grimlock can hold the mace in either hand via a handle.  He can't actually hold onto the shaft itself, this means that two-handed poses are out.

While the poseability is good, balance can sometimes be an issue.  This is mainly due to the design of the feet where it does not completely lie flat on the surface.  He can potentially fall forward thanks to the curved feet.

More bronze comes out in this mode.  The colour scheme is busy and can be seen as somewhat garish.  The shoulder pads are adjustable (up or down).

This is an athletic looking robot.  Grimlock has great proportions and great design elements such as the waist skirt and metal looking boots.

An impressive robot mode and the better mode of this figure.  The designer managed to create a robot with barely any alternate kibble.

OVERALL:

This is a fun toy.  Who doesn't like dinosaurs?  The simpler transformation means it isn't a frustrating exercise to convert between the two modes.  The robot mode is excellent and is the highlight, he looks great, taking design cues from knights.  While the colour scheme leaves some to be desired, this is one of the better AOE figures.

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Sword Art Online

Sword Art Online is the anime adaptation of the popular series of light novels of the same name.  This first season covers the first two story arcs.  I'll leave it at that to avoid spoilers.  It follows Kirito and later on, Asuna, through their journey and experiences within a virtual reality game called Sword Art Online (what a coincidence...).  The twist in the plot here is that the MMORPG Sword Art Online launches and 10,000 players log into the game.  This is set in the future, 2022.  As players find themselves at the end of the first day, they are unable to log out and the big bombshell announcement happens.

The players are trapped in the game until someone can clear it, which means completing all 100 dungeons, complete with bosses.  Plus, to add gravity to the situation, any death that happens in the game means actual death in real life.  This is a true life or death scenario.  Kirito, being a beta tester of the game and after experiencing the brutality of the game firsthand, ends up deciding to solo the game.  Needless to say, soloing an online game is extremely hard.  Sword Art Online explores the psychological and social aspect of the MMORPG and virtual reality gaming.  We see the choices Kirito makes and the foes that he encounters.  Deaths happen that significantly impacts Kirito, and the viewer, emotionally scarring and influencing choices later on in the anime.

While the solo aspect was heavily focused upon in the early beginnings, once Asuna comes into play, it is dropped pretty quickly, to the point where it feels somewhat unusual.  Obviously, Kirito and Asuna fall in love (quite suddenly in fact, there wasn't a real warming up period in which they fell for one another) and we get a bunch of episodes where we see the gentleness and intimateness of their relationship.  We also see the peaceful nature of some other players who have given up trying to clear the game.  It causes into question the reality of the game.  Does what happen in virtual reality really happened?  Are your actions meaningful?  Are you ready to live out your life here?  It implicitly presents these doubts and questions to the viewer.

If you think they are only going to spend a week or a few months in the game, with the premise as a one big joke, then think again, they literally spend years here.  Each character is likeable but of course, you are going to root for Kirito and Asuna.  The antagonists does their job well and sometimes, you feel as if they did not suffer enough before dying or their fate isn't as satisfying as it should be, especially after the horrible things that they had done.  Sword Art Online does a great job at making you hate the antagonists.  The anime often tugs at your heartstrings, whether it was the relationship between Kirito and Asuna or between Kirito and Leafa.

It can be an emotional ride as the characters face the bosses, knowing that with each floor, the power of enemies grows exponentially to the point where you don't know if they have overreached themselves.  The plot slows down after the first few episodes where it focuses more on "normal day-to-day" events before it pushes itself towards the finale of the first arc.  The epicness of the battle against one of the last bosses (Episode 13 or so), coupled with the incredible music, made the final scene simply amazing.  It pumped you up with the teamwork, morale and of course, the visual spectacle.  Do yourself a favour and listen to Swordland, it is a fantastic piece of music.

The finale of the first arc was surprising in that you didn't really expect something like that to happen, especially with 12 more episodes coming but it made sense.  The characters were speeding through the game, often clearing 10+ levels from episode to episode.  The second arc has a fairy element to it and there are slightly more fight scenes in which you can cheer Kirito on.  I know that the second arc is widely regarded as one of the weaker story arcs of the series but I thought it was okay.  The concept is not as interesting but still carries on the momentum until the end.  The events that happen may feel brief but they made sense and kept the story at a brisk pace.

On the other hand though, the game had potential for some stellar fight scenes against floor bosses or even against regular enemies.  In the first arc, there aren't many fights which was a little bit of a disappointment.  It tended to focus on the romantic side of things, which is relatively more boring.  At least with the brief fight scenes we had, they were great.  The Extra Edition episode is 1 hour 40 minutes long (released about a year after the season ended) and a common description is that it is a clipshow, basically providing a summary of the whole first season in preparation for the second.  A lot more effort was put into it than you would expect, as there is a fair amount of original content, probably around thirty minutes' worth of new animation.

These new scenes make watching the Extra Edition episode much more worthwhile, even if it might not have added anything new into the mix.  Overall, Sword Art Online was entertaining and does present deeper issues.  The first story arc is the better one as the second arc tended to have too much fan service and the incest-ish relationship made it seem like a completely different anime.  While the final episodes were good at getting the anime at a good stopping point, the antagonist became too much of a pervert and caused the creepiness factor to skyrocket.  Other than that, it is definitely worth watching and has already gotten me intrigued at the Sword Art Online universe and seek out the light novels.  Bring on the second season!

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Assassin's Creed: Revelations (PS3)

Revelations has brilliant beginning to Ezio's journey in which we are treated with a beautiful and amazing pre-rendered opening.  In terms of in-game graphics, they are a noticeable improvement over Brotherhood which was surprising.  Character models look smoother and more detailed while environments look less flat.  All the standard additions from previous games are here and most of them are available right from the start.  While there are plenty more features added in to make the Assassin's Creed experience even better.  The hook blade makes climbing/free-running easier as you can now jump higher and there are also zip lines which looks cool when you're on them.  Additional combat options include dragging down scaffolding to crush enemies and counter stealing but they don't make a huge impact to the game (you only find these out as they're required for trophies/achievements...).  Playing through the game, it feels as though the system doesn't have the same leniency in determining where Ezio should jump so.  All too often, you don't get those moments where Ezio just blasts through the path.  Instead, Ezio pauses a lot now and you have to readjust his position to get to the next spot.  In general, the game doesn't feel as polished as it could have been, some things feel clunky and it's hard to pinpoint what exactly is dragging the game down.

I am playing the digital version from PSN and the load times feel longer.  You often end up just waiting for the next section to load.  Occasionally the whole game will freeze for a moment as the game needs to load the environment (and this is not straight after booting up the game either).  It also froze my PS3 more than once, I am not sure if this is just buggy or I'm just unlucky.  Unsurprisingly, it's incredibly easy to get sidetracked from the main story path.  Even if you think to yourself, "okay, I'm going to get the story out of the way first", you end up diverging from the path to maybe sync a viewpoint (unblur a portion of the map), upgrade some shops or do some treasure hunting.  All of this is available very early on and can get overwhelming with the amount of stuff to do and what you want to do first.  Time goes by really quickly as you're getting from place to place and it's a lot of fun chipping away at the options.  Even after the main storyline has ended, there are lots of collectibles and side missions that are to be left and unlocked.  Being the fourth game in there series, even with the multiple additions, it still feels very similar.  Sure, it's a different city but the way you traverse is mostly the same, the way the mission structure works and the mission styles aren't dramatically different.

This works against the game as it doesn't feel that it brings any new innovative features.  The battle system continues to feel that it could be streamlined more.  Controls are slightly tweaked so it will take a short time to readjust (especially when you want to activate eagle vision and instead end up activating your secondary weapon...).  The missions doesn't feel as fun as those in II and Brotherhood.  There were a few where you end up wrestling with the controls and failing it.  In general though, the game is easy and you usually only die because you were rushing it or the controls failed you.  While there are the stellar missions where the platform rushing is so much fun.  Then again, I found the Desmond sequences to be extremely annoying and did not constructively add to the game.  Best to ignore it as from a story and gameplay point of view, it fails on both counts.  The game stars an older Ezio and it feels that since we have journeyed so much with him, literally his whole life.  It also gives the character a more refreshing change, instead of the younger cocky Ezio we were familiar with, he is much more experienced and calculating.  You'll be swapping to Altair from time to time, his missions aren't bad but he is not as charismatic as Ezio.  His missions are also not as fun since the majority of them you will be playing as an old Altair, too old to be nimble enough for scaling buildings.

Like in previous games, by the time you're halfway through, the story kinda goes off the top of your head.  You start to just follow the mission objectives without really caring or following the story.  It goes off the top at times.  The last few chapters felt short and rushed, especially when they dragged the beginning on for longer than necessary.  The ending was disappointing, at least with II and Brotherhood, they were both interesting and revealing.  Whereas Revelations doesn't live up to it's name.  It felt anti-climatic and it was yet another cliffhanger which didn't have the same hook to get your anticipated for the next game.  However, when you end up seeing Ezio and Altair, knowing that this game is the final piece in their saga, you feel sad.  The city of Constantinople does not have the same distinctive designs that make it memorable like in previous games.  It also feels somewhat smaller than Rome in Brotherhood.  I don't know whether this is the case or not but whereas in Brotherhood, you would still find new places or landmarks, in Revelations, it feels like you've seen the whole game map by the third memory sequence.  The music is excellent, pumping adrenaline through you.  It feels bolder and more noticeable.  Overall, while still a decent game, it can be buggy and is suffering from franchise fatigue.

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Ted

The premise actually feels like that it could work, a boy wishes for his teddy bear to become alive and it does.  They then spend the next 27 years together, growing up to be the best of friends, but the main character comes to a point in his life where he has to choose either his girlfriend or his best buddy.  What the film actually delivers is... something that isn't as great.  One of the things that stood out to me was that they acknowledged a talking and moving bear as unusual and so thought up of a plausible excuse to have people treat this as normal.  Some of the reviews said this movie was one of the funniest ever and in general, it got some really positive reviews.  What I got from this was that the humour was crude and there were a lot of swearing for no reason (doesn't add much to what the characters were trying to portray).  Sure, there were a few scenes where it would give you a smile but on the whole, it felt very mediocre.  The material didn't feel strong, a lot of the gags were cliches and overdone.  They glorified drug use to the point where it's has a positive effect on you.  The plot was predictable and you could see where it was leading on from the start of the film (you would start to hope that there would not be a kidnapping but alas, that was not to be).  One thing to be said though is that the film didn't really feel boring at any point in the film and time went by at a decent rate while watching.

Book Review: The Slippery Slope

Review:  #429
Title:  The Slippery Slope
Series:  A Series of Unfortunate Events - 10th book
Author:  Lemony Snicket
Read Before:  yes
My Comments:  More questions are popping up, with limited answers.  Some minor spoilers ahead but we now know that the sugar bowl is important, but why?  The Baudelaires also meet up with a surprising person.  The plot was okay and it seems like such a long way now when you compare Count Olaf as he is now, to what he was before.  He is still a villain but now his sole focus is not on the Baudelaires’ fortune like in the early books but on a grander scheme of things.  The ending is once again, quite unfortunate.  You expect this but is still surprises you when nothing really ever goes the Baudelaires’ way.  The style of writing is still the same but a lot more padding happens.  The author tends to repeat and repeat the same phrases over and over again, wasting many pages causing you to only glance over the paragraphs to get to something that makes sense.

Rating:  6/10