Toy Review: Transformers Generations Combiner Wars Breakdown

Review:  #266
Name:  Breakdown
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Decepticon
Line:  Generations - Combiner Wars
Year of Release:  2015
Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 2)
Mold Status:  new mold

COMIC:

Breakdown's comic is Robots in Disguise #13 (or Combiner Wars #5).  This plot in this issue is the rioting and confusion amongst the citizens of Cybertron.  Taking advantage of this, the Decepticons lead and return to Megatron's lead.  This unfortunately means Starscream's hope of leading the planet through winning the election all but crushed.  The artwork is good and the dialogue wasn’t too boring.  The plot was easy to follow, especially if you're reading this as a one-shot.  While of course it'll benefit you have an idea of what went on before in the lead up, it was a intriguing issue.  What's also awesome about these comics is that they began putting up a bigger and more detailed bio on the back page, as well as photos of the gray model phase and coloring of the toy in the last page, to show off some stuff in the design process.

VEHICLE MODE:

Breakdown naturally transforms into a Lamborghini, with the classic white with a red hood and some blue.

While he does have molded details in the rear of the vehicle, none of it is painted which is a massive shame as it makes it look very bland and lazy.

Breakdown is a Deluxe classed figure and he is a pretty decent size, he fills up your hand when you hold it.

You can plug all the weapons in this mode, the combiner piece can peg on top of the roof as a gun and the sword can either plug at the back or in one of the slots on the side.

There are also tabs on top of the vehicle and behind the spoiler to mount the combiner piece as a type of exposed engine, which looks fairly cool.

The only gimmick here are the rolling wheels, so it's a good thing that Breakdown looks so good.  A great vehicle mode that's instantly recognizable for what it is.

TRANSFORMATION:

Breakdown's transformation while still generic, breaks the copy and paste transformation of some of the other Combiner Wars figures.  The legs fold out from the sides, the arms unfold from the sides and the hood flips back to reveal his head and chest piece.  That said, the hips are one of the more annoying aspects in that it does not lock into place.

ROBOT MODE:

Breakdown's robot mode is nice looking and very evocative of his G1 self.  Sadly, there are some slight issues which prevent it from being a good mold, first off is that his torso is elongated while his legs are short.

He wears the hood on his back but since it is situated so close and is hollow, it is not a problem at all.

His headsculpt is square and blocky just the way you would expect and like.  The red face is nice as well.  It is situated on a balljoint and can look up, down, left and right.

He remains at a respective size in robot mode although there are some hollow areas such as his shins and his forearms.  The forearms in particular are annoying in that it is a pure cost-saving exercise but makes his arms feel very insubstantial.

Breakdown has a lot of articulation, but this brings us to his major flaw.  The hips don't lock into place and likes to swing above, causing unevenness of the legs.  It is really annoying and something that should have been picked up.

The cool thing with Breakdown is that he has a chest piece to hide most of the combiner joint away, this adds so much character to him and was a very good design choice.

His first weapon is a sword blaster, which means he can hold it as you would a sword or use the other handle like a gun.

Breakdown can hold the sword in either hand.  His legs remain his weakest point as they don't like to stay pegged in when posing him.  What's more, the plastic used for him seems to be weaker than normal as they warp easily, especially the spoiler which acts as his heelspurs.

There is surprisingly a lot of paint, his shins are doused in blue, while the silver highlights on his torso are very nice.

He other weapon is the combiner piece which acts as a double barreled projectile weapon.

He can either hold it in his hand or it can attach to his backpack.  Either way, it manages to pass off as a weapon and isn't too awkward looking.

Breakdown has an average robot mode, he looks good but his play value is dampened through the instability of his legs.

OVERALL:

Breakdown is the weakest mold from the Wave 2 Deluxes.  That said, he is still a solid figure.  The robot mode is weakened through the unstable legs.  This is one of the first proper updates to the character with a mold that is specifically created for him, and just for that, he deserves a purchase.

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Breakdown naturally combines with the other Stunticons to form Menasor.  While Menasor will be covered in his own review, here's a quick look at Breakdown's other two modes.

First off, Breakdown forms the right leg for Menasor, and his leg mode is basically the vehicle propped up and the hood folded down.

His arm mode is a little bit more involved with the rear half transformed into his robot legs.

As Menasor, the downside of Breakdown's leg mode is that it leaves the knee exposed in full view, showing off the ugly combiner port.  It would have been better if the designer could have incorporated a proper knee spike (you can still makeshift one, but it doesn't like to sit in place properly).

The combiner piece is too small to look good in combined mode unfortunately, and this is a big negative for the rest of the figures too.

In arm mode, he is quite good although the forearm is a bit thick just due to it being formed by the vehicle.  That's it for now, thanks for looking!

Book Review: The Whispering Skull

Review:  #514
Title:  The Whispering Skull
Series:  Lockwood & Co. - 2nd book
Author:  Jonathan Stroud
Read Before:  no
Comments:  The Whispering Skull is a sequel to the stunning The Screaming Staircase.  Unfortunately, it has to live up to the superb first book and in a way, it doesn’t quite reach that peak.  Don’t misunderstand; The Whispering Skull contains a fantastic story in its own right, filled with mysteries, a complex plot and an intriguing storyline.  It reduces the amount of action and instead focuses upon the abilities of the missing relic:  a mirror that supposedly acts as a looking glass and allows you to view into the Other World.  It is a fascinating idea, which, while isn’t original, contains a lot of potential, especially from this author.  The book ends up being a bit flat (but still a good read) in the first four-fifths of the story, it is only once you start approaching the end where the setting up of the story is finally completed, that the excitement begins.  Once again, the climax is addictive, forcing you to turn page after page in a bid to find out what is going to happen.  While the revelation isn’t as gratifying or riveting as The Screaming Staircase, it was still satisfactory.  The characters were great, especially now that you have more time to learn about their personality traits and habits.  The author perfectly blends his iconic sarcastic humor with a great storyline which makes The Whispering Skull a fabulous read.

Rating:  7.5/10

Happy Feet

Happy Feet starts off normal and in a way that you'd expect.  Penguins in the Antarctica go on with their lives and a newborn penguin called Mumble is introduced.  Within this penguin society, singing is everything, if you can't sing, you're a nobody and you cannot find a mate.  Due to reasons before he was born, Mumble is a horrid singer, on the contrary, he has a gift with his feet.  Throughout the movie, he travels around Antarctica and is shunned by his fellow penguins.  Happy Feet also touches upon human impact upon the penguin's natural habitat, including melting ice caps from global warming and overfishing leading to a shortage of fish for the penguins.  Mumble ends up being the savior by communicating to the humans, leading them to reduce their fishing.  The way that this was done was highly exaggerated and this made the ending hard to believe.  It stained the rest of the movie and did not feel in line with what came before it.  The rest of the movie can be boring at times but there are some fantastic underwater sequences and the scenes where Mumble slides through the ice were breathtaking.  In the end, Happy Feet communicates more than what you would expect, but the message can be muddled up at times.

Toy Review: Transformers Generations Combiner Wars Rook

Review:  #265
Name:  Rook
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Generations - Combiner Wars
Year of Release:  2015
Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 3)
Mold Status:  new mold

COMIC:

Rook comes with Robots in Disguise #34 (or Combiner Wars #10), the second issue in the "First Strike" arc.  The plot is a little bit more confusing this time around because it skips to Optimus speaking with Alpha Trion about the past, near the very beginning of Cybertron's history when the Thirteen Primes were having their first civil war.  It explains the origins of combiners and how it is linking to present day events.  Unfortunately, it is hard to tell who is who especially if you have not been following the series closely.  The ending is supposed to be a big shock but it lacks impact since most likely, it'll go over the head of a casual reader.  Unlike some of the other pack-ins, this issue doesn't stack up as a standalone.

VEHICLE MODE:

Rook transforms into a bright white and navy blue armored SWAT vehicle, with six rolling wheels and a lot of sculpted detailing.

The back falls apart a bit in terms of the disguise since you can clearly see robot joints and some small gaps.

Rook feels small and stumpy but he is actually a normal Deluxe size.

All the weapons attached in this mode, including the combiner piece.

A neat thing is that the combiner piece joint can also serve to point the missiles upwards, like an anti-aircraft missile launcher.  Other than this, Rook has no other play value.

This a solid vehicle mode, a bit bland and an odd choice for  Protectobot.

TRANSFORMATION:

One of the more unique molds of the Combiner Wars line but the whole front section is a shell that ends up folding away.  The legs extend and the arms just flip out.  Fairly standard and generic but it works.

ROBOT MODE:

Rook's robot mode is nice and stocky, looking very powerful with the broad shoulders and bulky profile.

He does wear most of the vehicle shell on his back though, which feels cheaty since it lacks cleverness in the manipulation of parts.

The head sculpt is another highlight, looking like a helmet with a face guard.  It is painted in a nice shiny silver.  The head is on a swivel so Rook can only look left and right.

Size-wise, he is fairly decent, comes off as a little bit hollow due to the transformation though.

His poseability is your standard affair, nothing that really stands out here except for the ankle tilts.  Rook is one of the only Combiner Wars figures that has ankle tilts.

His chest has some nice detailing.  Note that Rook has proper molded fists, even though the port in the front of his hands look weird.

His first weapon is this probing thingie.

You plug it into one of the ports on top of his hands like a tool extension, I tend to think of it as an electric probe.

His next weapon is of course the combiner piece, which has some sculpted missiles in front of it.

He can hold wield it in such a way that looks like he is aiming the missiles in front (in actuality, it is plugged in his front port and the combiner hand joint used to fold it forward).

The other option is to attach to on the outside of his shoulders like a shield.

However, the most popular way seem to be transforming the piece into a combiner hand and attach it, such that it looks like Rook has Hulk hands, and you have to admit, it looks pretty cool.

Of course, you can take it one step further and give him two Hulk hands, it gives Rook a more powerful look.

The color scheme of rook works very well, with a nice balance of blue, white and black.  All in all, this is a nice robot.

OVERALL:

Sure, some people might be put off by the fact that this is a new character, shoehorned into the Protectobots team, and downgrading Groove to just being a chest piece.  If you can overlook that, then you will see Rook as another nice solid addition into the Combiner Wars line and quite fun to play with.

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For other Combiner Wars reviews, check out this page.

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Defensor will star in his own review but in the meantime, here's a few shots of Rook in his combined form.

First off, Rook takes the place of Groove as the right leg, and his leg mode is effectively the vehicle mode with the front folded up.  Unfortunately, the foot does look a tad bit small here.

His arm mode is quite decent, it is the foot mode but with the robot legs transformed.  The robot knees and hips act as the elbows.

Once you put Defensor together, you can see how absolutely awesome the figure it.  It works really well and looks fantastic.

As a leg, Rook is stable and he provides a knee cap too.

Arm mode is really nice too, giving the combined mode some bulk.  That's it for now, thanks for reading!

Book Review: Accel World 2: The Red Storm Princess

Review:  #513
Title:  Accel World 2:  The Red Storm Princess
Series:  Accel World - 2nd volume
Author:  Reki Kawahara
Read Before:  no
Comments:  Every bit as good as the first volume, The Red Storm Princess introduces many more concepts and features of Brain Burst which keeps you turning the pages.  The stakes are higher as the Unlimited Neutral Field is introduced.  Kuroyukihime, Haru and Taku also meet an unexpected adversary and perhaps not so surprisingly befriend them.  The plot in this volume revolves around the Armor of Catastrophe, where any person who wears this Enhanced Armor becomes the Chrome Disaster.  It infects their mind and fills it with nothing but violence and the most primitive of instincts.  While there were many places where the dialogue was cheesy and corny, it didn’t get too bad and it usually picked up straight after.  Haru’s self-depreciating thoughts isn’t as bad as the first volume.  The numerous fight scenes are great and learning more about the backstories of each character allows us to understand their behaviors more, which is a good thing.  The Red Storm Princess is an addictive novel although it relies on the reader having at least a basic understanding of the common terms and features of computer games.

Rating:  7/10

Freedom Wars (Vita)

Freedom Wars is Studio Japan's take on the Hunter genre, similar to games like Monster Hunter, Soul Sacrifice, Ragnarok Odyssey and Toukiden.  Released exclusively for the PlayStation Vita, it is one of Sony's last big first-party game for the system.  Freedom Wars is set in the future where there are two classes of people:  Sinners and Citizens.  Resources are scarce, therefore as Sinners, who provide no contribution and are a waste of resources, they are forced to be put into a 1,000,000 sentence and need to work it off.  Whereas citizens are of a much higher status/rank and contribute through their ideas and research.  You play as a Sinner, going on operations to reduce your sentence.  The story starts off with you losing your memory and reverting back down to the lowest of the low, a Code 1 Sinner.

Through your contributions, you will eventually work you way back up to a Code 8 Sinner.  There are a lot of customization options for the appearance of your Sinner, you can keep with the default or model it however the way you want to.  In the story, Sinners have a lot of restrictions and the game plays into this.  In the beginning, there are some ridiculous restrictions which adds years to your already long sentence.  Breaches such as taking more than five steps, being silent for too long or running will cause the screen to go red and a notice popping up informing you of your offence and penalty.  It sets the mood of the game well, and as you progress, you will be able to earn points to lift these restrictions and gain more freedom.

You are put into a Panopticon, which is a city that you get to pick at the beginning.  The list takes cities from all over the world, from New York to Athens to Amsterdam and Bangkok.  The story is mysterious from the beginning but starts to drag before too long since it doesn't reveal much and is padded out with too much filler.  The ending is not satisfying and after you've finished watching it, you reflect back on what happened in the game and you feel as if the sequence of events are meaningless.  The story doesn't have substance despite it being intriguing and having so much potential, hinting at mysteries and bigger things at play.  You will spend the bulk of the game fighting.  The key draw here are the giant known as Abductors.

As resources are scarce and Panopticons fight against each other for it, they created Abductors to abduct citizens and it is up to the Sinners to destroy the Abductors and save them.  Each Abductor has various body parts which you can lock on, there are three main types of parts:  ones that you use to drag the Abductor down to the ground so your forces can attack relentlessly; parts that you can sever off such as guns and arms which prevents them from using those attacks again; and pods which you destroy to get the citizens out.  Naturally, Abductors have a huge amount of health and require a whole team to defeat.  Each Sinner is paired with a robot called an Accessory who are there to not only keep an eye out for you to dish out the punishments when you break a law, but also to fight alongside you.

Most missions allow a team of four, which means a total of eight in your team when you count the Accessories.  In terms of battle mechanics, you are allowed any two weapons, these can be light swords, automatic guns, rocket launchers, spears, whatever.  Each weapon has a different type of playing style and it's up to you to find what you like.  Everyone is also equipped with something called a Thorn, these are the vines that's attached to each character's arms.  They are used to travel (think Spiderman) or used to latch onto enemies.  It's quite unique and gives the game a good flair.  Unfortunately, the controls take some getting used to and it is a byproduct of the Vita's hardware.  You feel as if the Vita doesn't have enough buttons for the control scheme to work properly, while you can change to a different set of controls, each set compromises something.

In the default control scheme, you cannot dash and move the camera at the same time, change to something else and aiming to use your Thorn is a pain.  There is not really a sweet spot and will definitely take some time to get used to the controls.  The same buttons are also used for several different things so you might want to grab an item drop off the battlefield but find you're chucking a grenade or using a health pack instead.  The control scheme also does not lend well to fighting against the smaller enemies as aiming is a pain.  An aim-assist system would help a lot here and you can't button mash your way through as the attacks are not fluid enough.  So when you are forced to fight human soldiers, especially a crowd of them at once, it is annoying and you may get overwhelmed.  The combat is too clunky to be useful against these soldiers as aiming sucks and your health goes down too fast.

 Despite the hunting missions being the most fun, the game's pacing is horrendous.  The story forces upon you some mundane fetch quests in which you have to go to several maps to receive pointless dialogue.  The forced stealth missions feel very out of place and slow the game right down.  You are left wondering why you are playing something like this when it is clearly so boring, broken and not what the game should have been.  What's worse if that if you end up dying on a story mission, you might not be able to skip the preceding dialogue and are forced to sit through it again.  It can become tedious and painful, it's a poor design choice.  On the other hand, the graphics are excellent and the music suitable.

There are some weird design choices in the game, weapon upgrading uses real time, which is a pain and belongs in a freemium game.  You use items dropped from defeated enemies to upgrade, modify and create new weapons but the stats and effects are randomized so it is annoying to get the perfect traits for a weapon.  There are three main menus which ends up being clunky.  Changing you appearance, getting out of your cell and selecting missions are all on different menus which you access differently (talking to the AI, pressing the Start button and examining your Cell wall).  Towards the end, there are some difficulty spikes but it is still manageable.  What is not is the final boss who is a #*$&#& %*(&# with unfair disadvantages put against you.

The final boss spawns multiple enemies which constantly attacks you, not even letting you get up before you're hit again.  The enemies gang up on you and overall, it feels extremely unfair and artificially difficult.  You know you have a problem when 90% of your players complain the final boss is too hard.  Sure, you can go online and get help from players (which ends up finishing the mission in less than 10 mins) but when it is so hard to beat solo, it sours the whole game experience.  While the game had difficulty spikes before it, none are as bad as this and it has got to be one of the worse decisions a game has ever made.  It is this final battle where you regret playing the game and want to refund the whole accursed package.

So after you get destroyed by the final boss for the sixth time, you wonder if it would have killed the developers to implement a selectable difficulty mode?  Some would just have wanted to enjoy the gameplay and story but now there is an artificial in-game barrier.  On this basis, I cannot recommend Freedom Wars because it is atrocious in this aspect.  They should have either weakened the boss, toned up the AI or have it as an optional super hard boss.  Other than that though, the game is really fun as they nailed down the scale, theme and atmosphere of the game.  The rush that you get as you are working together to defeat a huge enemy is fantastic, you will get lost in the moment since you're so intent of getting that Abductor down.  Freedom Wars nearly succeeded, but there are way too many minor issues and the disadvantaged offline experience holding the game back, a lot.  It is undeniably fun but prepare to shake you head at some of the poor design choices.

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Mean Girls

Mean Girls was surprisingly good, with it's take on school and the politics that goes with it.  Cady was homeschooled all her life in Africa so it's safe to say that her first time attending a public school  is anything but well.  She ends up joining the "Plastics", a group of elite girls who has the highest status within the school and naturally, some of the meanest and bitchiest student there.  Cady ends up being a double agent and throughout the film, she starts to plot the downfall of the leader, Regina.  Mean Girls was an engrossing watch and was funny by exaggerating some of the stereotypical happenings of high schoolers.  It was also interesting to see how Cady, through her plotting, slowly changed into one of the people she hate.  The best thing was that it wasn't a sudden change, she just slowly started backstabbing with a perfectly legit reason and two-thirds into the room, it dawns on you that she has become the monster in the process.  A good movie that's deeper than expected.