Toy Review: Transformers Generations Combiner Wars Firefly

Review:  #234
Name:  Firefly
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Generations - Combiner Wars
Year of Release:  2015
Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 1)
Variations:  remolded into Quickslinger

JET MODE:

Firefly, or otherwise known as Fireflight back in the G1 days, transforms into a jet, naturally, since he is a part of the Aerialbots.

This is a good jet mode, the red and white works well together, unfortunately, the robot forearms are clearly visible.

Then you realize that there is a lot of undercarriage kibble, which is effectively the whole robot.  He only has flip down front landing gear, instead, he relies on the robot feet to sit flat on the table.

Being a jet certainly helps make Firefly look a bit bigger, but all in all, he is not too big.

You can plug in the weapons on the underside of each wing, which is about the only way to store them in this mode.  It makes him asymmetrical as a result.

Instead of a comic (however, a rerelease in a later wave does include a comic), Firefly has a collector's card, featuring art from the Legends mobile game.

He nose is made for a softer plastic.  You might also notice that there is no translucent plastic used here for the cockpit.

A decent jet mode but with a bit of undercarriage as its main drawback.

TRANSFORMATION:

Firefly shares a similar transformation with the rest of the Aerialbots, the arms sit on the side of the jet so you don't do much there.  No, the surprise is the legs, which split apart into halves, unfold and then pegs together again.  It's quite elegant.

ROBOT MODE:

Firefly becomes predominantly white in robot mode, gaining some silver  and black in the process.

He wears the nosecone on his back and the wings fold back.  It's not that bad as far as backpacks goes, and it doesn't affect his balance.

The head sculpt is great, the silver paint coupled with the blue eyes really make his face pop.

Truth be honest, he is a little bit short in robot mode.

He's got fantastic poseability, with a waist swivel to boot.

Firefly has the combiner port as his torso, which is accurate to the G1 toy.  The molding of it is unique for all Aerialbots but Firefly has a very bland sculpting, which is a shame.

In terms of weapons, he has a rifle and a dual-barreled gun made from the combiner piece.

The rifle fits perfectly and Firefly looks great wielding it.

He doesn't have any wrist articulation so you need to be a bit more creative in your posing.

The dual-barreled gun is just an excuse to use the extra combiner bit for something, it is way too big and clunky to look good.

Firefly has giant feet which makes him very stable.

A fantastic robot mode who looks great thanks to some great sculpting and clever paint applications.

OVERALL:

Firefly is a very fun Transformer.  His simplistic transformation works really well, giving us two great modes with no compromises.  Furthermore, he is part of a five-member combiner which is just icing on the cake.  The colors are great and the figure good, so get out there and buy Firefly!

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Firefly can form either a leg or foot to create the massive Superion, who will get his own review soon.  In the meantime, let's have a look at Firefly's limb modes.

First up are the additional pieces which can form either a hand or a foot.  The foot is pretty normal and doesn't require much manipulation of the parts.

The way the hand is formed is quite ingenious and very effective.  Note that all the Aerialbots have unique molding for this piece, which is impressive.

Leg mode is very solid and stable, the nosecone provides some kneecaps.

The arm mode is not that bad either, using the robot waist and knee joints as elbows.  Unfortunately, it seems like his robot arms doesn't have anywhere better to go and makes the upper arm seem a bit busy.

I find that the heelspurs need to be bigger in order to properly support the combined form in poses.

The designer succeeded in creating plausible limb modes.  That's it for now, thanks for reading!

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 (Vita)

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is a remake of the first Hyperdimension Neptunia game that was released for the PS3 in 2010.  This remake was released for the Vita in 2014 and later ported to PC.  The original game was heavily criticized for being boring, repetitive and just downright not a great game.  Re;Birth1 attempts to address all those flaws by basing the battle system around Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, revamping the story which included including new characters and removing some, new dungeons and new music.  The result of all this is a vastly enjoyable JRPG but still containing a few significant flaws which causes a barrier for potential players.  Let's start off with the most important aspect of a JRPG:  the battle system.  Re;Birth1's battle system is a lot of fun.  It is turn based combined with some action elements.

Approaching an enemy in the dungeon area will cause a transition to the battle area where your party of three will dish out the pain.  Turn order is shown in the top right corner which allows you to strategize and plan ahead.  Once your party member's turn arrives, you can freely move your character, the distance they can travel depends upon your stats.  Therefore, each character can only move within a certain radius.  While you're moving, there will be a highlighted area right in front of them which indicates their attach range.  Enemies that fall within the range will be highlighted in red and if you position your character just right, they can attack two to three enemies at the same time.  Different weapons also have different ranges, this adds a nice tactical element to the game as you try and position your character just right.

There are three main attacks, one focuses on raw attack power, one on raising your EXE gauge (more on this later) and one which causes more guard damage.  You see, each enemy has a guard bar in addition to their health bar.  Once this guard bar reaches zero, their defenses are lowered and you can do more damage.  Battles against bosses will eventually resolve in using the strategy of reducing their guard bar to zero before unleashing your most powerful attacks.  You get four attacks per turn too, so you can alternate between different attacks, which is a nice touch.  You then have your EXE attacks, which are like the character's ultimate attack that causes huge amounts of damage.  When you get your first EXE attack, it feels like it is overpowered and breaks the game but once you get one or two chapters further in, you realize that this is not the case.

EXE attacks gives out some flashy animations which are skippable by pressing the left shoulder button.  Lastly, you have your typical magical attacks, which include buffs and debuffs as well as some strong moves, all of which uses up SP.  Now, to keep overloading you with information, playable characters include CPUs, or Console Patron Units, who are the personification of a game console (such as the main character Neptune being a personification of the Sega Saturn).  They have the additional ability of transforming into a more powerful persona, which are crucial for some fights.  Now that all the battle mechanics are out of the way, the flow of the game basically boils down to the story being told in a visual novel fashion.  That is, there is a lot of text with 2D art being shown and character portraits.  After which you can traverse into a dungeon which is rendered in 3D before fighting a few bosses and repeat.

This works quite well because of the additional things you can do in-between.  You travel via a world map which basically allows you to select the place you want to go and it'll bring up a text menu of what you can do there.  Cities, which are also based upon consoles (e.g. Lastation from PlayStation; Leanbox from Xbox), each contain a shop, guild (for quests), Re;Birth1's version of smithing and extra text entries which expand the lore.  It's really too bad that everything is menu based and not a free roam city, but this also means it allows for more efficient and faster selection and performance.  You get in there to do what you had to do and then can keep going on with the game.  The game features a "Remake" system which basically allows you to "change" certain parameters of the game.

To unlock these options for changes, you need to obtain the correct items first which means grinding and farming.  After getting the items, you can unlock things such as new weapons, new dungeons, weaken enemies and awaken new abilities.  It's an addicting side addition that adds a lot to the game without breaking it.  However, the one downside of this feature is the fact that a lot of the additional content is missable.  You see, you collect "Plans" which is the blueprints for unlocking something new, and they are only given at certain points in the chapters, disappearing if you either haven't fulfill the requirements or you've passed the chapter.  It's annoying because you will need to play New Game Plus in order to try again.  Dungeons are rendered in 3D and fully explorable.  That said, they are somewhat uninspiring, small and very linear.

Enemies roam around on the field and they respawn very quickly.  What might be the worst thing is that not only do dungeons often share the same locale, they can be carbon copies of an earlier one.  This is sheer laziness and frankly, quite disappointing.  Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 retains the infamous difficulty spikes.  You will be doing well against normal enemies on the field until you hit a boss in which they can kill you within one to two hits.  You are then forced to grind to level up.  What makes this worse is that the game uses a save point system so you could potentially lose a significant amount of progress.  The game also loves to give you two to three bosses one after another with no chance to save or rest, each stronger than the last.

This difficulty makes the game feel unfair and that the developers are artificially extending the game time.  Be wary once you enter Chapter 2 because this is where the difficulty spikes start to happen.  It really sucks that when you gain 5 levels in a dungeon, that it is still not enough.  The game also loves to throw impossible to win fights against you, while it defies your expectations every once in a while, since an invincible boss appears in every chapter in which you are supposed to lose, the shock factor wears off and becomes repetitive.  With that said, once you've gained a few levels, the difficulty isn't too horrible in the later chapters until the final boss where you'll probably need to grind (maybe a fair bit depending if you have been skipping enemies beforehand) in order to complete the game.

Now, finally, onto the story.  This is another important element of JRPGs.  Unfortunately, Re;Birth1 contains a lackluster story which fails to grip your attention.  It's not boring to the point of wanting to skip dialogue but it's not very interesting either.  It had huge potential since it is supposed to be a fictional rendition of the Console Wars, making fun of them.  Instead, you basically follow an amnesiac Neptune, one of the four goddesses, as she travels around the world trying to reclaim her lost memories.  Along the way, she battles some tough bosses, find out a devious plan and collects a huge crowd who joins and helps her.  It's your typical JRPG story without the really good bits.  That said, the humor can be good at times, but is an acquired taste.  This is because the game gives your fan service in heavy doses and it can get too much at times.

The dialogue often breaks the fourth wall, the characters know that they're in a game, which is pretty amusing.  The story never takes itself too seriously which is a good thing.  The ending is supposed to be a feel good ending but it lacks the required build up for it to have a big emotional impact.  There's not enough drive in the characters' motivations to compel you to empathize with them.  This is partly due to the huge cast, excluding the extra characters that you unlock, there are 12 playable characters where 7 of them are just superficial and are side characters that does not do much, yet they are shoehorned halfway through the game.  The graphics are decent but environments can be empty of interesting items and interactive objects.

Frame rate drops do happen.  For some reason, they actually happen during bosses even though there were barely any special effects happening.  The music was good although I don't know why it was criticized for being too repetitive as I didn't find this to be the case.  There is a New Game Plus option where you retain everything except story related matters.  In order to unlock everything, including all the characters (there are 16 playable characters in total), you will have to play through the game twice.  Other than that, there isn't anything new things in New Game Plus.  Overall, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is a fun game and a solid JRPG.  The battle system is surprisingly fun and addictive.  It really is too bad about the (oftentimes insane) difficulty spikes and the overdose of fan service which holds the game back and will inevitably put off many potential players.

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Prometheus

A science-fiction film in which it depicts a crew heading to a planet in search for humankind's creator.  The first half of the film was good, presenting a lot of mysteries in the makers, their biology, their objectives etc.  However, once people started dying off it somewhat went back to being a typical film in which nearly everyone dies in their effort to stop whatever they found from going to Earth.  It feels like the random alien monsters that show up don't have any connection to the story at all.  The alien designs felt uninspired.  Unfortunately, the movie doesn't resolves many of the questions it raised itself, which was disappointing.  It was neat though in how it sets up the first Aliens movie such as the giant spaceship.  The special effects were good.  I felt that Idris Elba did not suit the role he cast in.  Not quite as thought-provoking as you would be led to believe but Prometheus was still an enjoyable film.

Book Review: Pandora Hearts Volume 3

Review:  #484
Title:  Pandora Hearts Volume 3
Series:  Pandora Hearts - 3rd volume
Author:  Jun Mochizuki
Read Before:  no
Comments:  Pandora Hearts has potential but it hasn’t reached that point yet.  Most manga, by the time you’re into the third volume, would have hooked you in, this one doesn’t.  By the time you’re at the end of the last chapter, you feel indifferent whether you find out what happens next or not.  While the messiness of the plot has been fixed, it can still get confusing and you don’t learn enough of the world to care about it.  Oz, Gilbert and Rabbit’s backstories aren’t interesting enough and they feel so plain and cliché.  In terms of action sequences, certain frames look cool but chain them together and it feels like a jittering sequence of events that doesn’t quite seem to flow together properly.

Rating:  5.5/10

Toy Review: Transformers Generations Combiner Wars Alpha Bravo

Review:  #233
Name:  Alpha Bravo
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Generations - Combiner Wars
Year of Release:  2015
Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 1)
Variations:  retooled with a new head into Blades in Wave 3

HELICOPTER MODE:

Alpha Bravo is the substitute in Slingshot's place in the Aerialbots team.  He transforms into a helicopter for variety's sake, even though the remaining four members transform into jets.

This is a great helicopter mode, there are just enough paint applications to break up all the white.

Alpha Bravo is long and thin in this mode, by not having wings, he appears to be smaller than the other Aerialbots in alternate mode.

He has missiles on the side of the helicopter, which are also used to help partially hide his robot fists.

Instead of a comic (which he actually does come with in a later rerelease), Alpha Bravo comes with a collector's card featuring art from the mobile game Legends.

There's some good detail on the figure.  The main rotor also freely spin, which is about the only gimmick in this mode.

You can attach the combiner part as a sort of flight stand, and the gun onto one of the numerous ports.

A really nice helicopter mode that works well.

TRANSFORMATION:

Despite being a completely different alternate mode, Alpha Bravo shares many similarities with the other Deluxe Aerialbots.  His legs in particular are engineered in completely the same way, two halves come apart to extend and then combine back together to form the legs.  Nothing spectacular but there is something elegant about the simplicity of it all.

ROBOT MODE:

Alpha Bravo's robot mode is decent, albeit a bit on the slender side.

He wears both rotors on his back, the main one can somewhat be locked into place by wedging it in the gap between the tailfins.

The head sculpt bears an uncanny resemblance to Vortex, which gives rise the speculation that a Combiner Wars Bruticus might be coming.

Poseability is excellent on this figure, he even has a waist joint, although his wrists are fixed.

While most of the Combiner Wars Deluxes wear the combiner ports as their chest, which is also accurate to the G1 figures, the designers have differentiated them by giving a slightly different sculpting on them.  It's a nice touch.

Alpha Bravo isn't as tall or bulky as the Deluxes of yore but he doesn't feel cheap or hollow like some others...

In addition to the missiles on his forearms, he has two additional weapons.  A traditional gun, and the combiner piece that doubles up as a dual-barrel Gatling cannon.

Alpha Bravo can hold the weapon in either hand.

While he lacks heel spurs, he feet are naturally big enough so that he doesn't keel over easily.

The weapon that his combiner part form is one of the better ones.  It's also surprising that they bothered to give each member a different sculpt for the piece.

There are a few ports on his backpack that you can use to store the weapons when not in use.

A fantastic robot mode that looks good, plays well and is a great action figure.

OVERALL:

Alpha Bravo is probably my favorite out of the Wave 1 Combiner Wars Deluxes, this is mainly due to the good helicopter mode and great looking robot mode.  He is like your classic Transformer, not compromised by gimmicks, a solid transformation and fun to play with.  Even if you are not planning to make Superion or you are going to grab Quickslinger instead, still give Alpha Bravo a chance!

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Alpha Bravo is part of the Aerialbots who can combine to form Superion.  While Superion will be covered in his own review in the near future, we'll take a quick peek at Alpha Bravo's two additional modes.

His combiner piece can form a foot, which is pretty self-explanation in terms of how to get there, you just fold the heel piece out...

It can also form a fist, and it was interesting to see how it was designed.  Pretty clever if you ask me.

His arm mode is good but the robot arms get in the way of the elbow articulation.

His leg mode is fantastic too since you don't get this weird cut-off where the figure joins with the combiner piece, instead, it feels as if the foot piece was naturally integrated into Alpha Bravo.

You can get some good poses out of the combined mode.  The combiner ports used are easy and does not detach easily.

That's about it for now, thanks for reading!