Toy Review: Transformers Generations Studio Series 86 Grimlock (Leader)

Review:  #670

Name:  Grimlock

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Autobot

Line:  Generations - Studio Series

Year of Release:  2021

Size Class:  Leader (Wave 6)

Mold Status:  new

ALTERNATE MODE:

Studio Series Grimlock, based upon his appearance in the G1 movie (hence the SS-86 moniker), transforms into his classic gold and grey robotic dinosaur.

We've seen many G1 inspired Grimlock in the past, so the dino mode, which while awesome, is not something that will blow you away.

Grimlock is fairly sizeable, above is a comparison against POTP Leader Optimus Primal and you can see in beast mode, Grimlock is almost the same height as the robot mode of a Leader figure.

The robot gun can peg onto his back for storage.

Articulation is fairly good, since he has balljointed shoulders for his arms, and joints for his hips and knees, since they are the robot arms.  Grimlock is also well balanced so he can stand either upright with his tail on the ground, or forward with his tail off the ground.

Furthermore, his jaws can open, and the head and rotate from side to side.

Grimlock comes with a mini Wheelie figure and Wheelie can ride his back, although he doesn't peg on.  Nevertheless, this is a fantastic robotic dino mode.

WHEELIE:

If we focus on Wheelie first, Grimlock comes with a non-transforming version of the character, which can seem disappointing at first but Wheelie is actually not too bad.

While he is designed to sit on Grimlock (either in robot or dino mode), Wheelie is actually capable of standing up by himself.

Wheelie is roughly Legion sized, but you can see that Wheelie has hollow limbs, and the degree at which the figure is hollow is quite distracting.

He has balljoints for both shoulders and both hips, while his head can turn from side to side.  Still quite restrictive but actually more poseable than you would first expect.

This is a nice bonus, considering that it doesn't appear to have caused too many compromises to Grimlock (particularly since Wheelie is so well painted himself).  Would a sword be better instead of Wheelie?  That depends on your preferences.

TRANSFORMATION (GRIMLOCK):

If you've ever transformed the G1 figure and the Masterpiece figure, then the transformation here is extremely similar.  There's really only so many ways you can design the transformation.  The back, including the tail, splits and unfolds to form the robot legs.  The torso then splits in half and the two shells, along with the dino head, act as a backpack with wings.  The dino legs form the robot arms, and that's about it.

ROBOT MODE:

Grimlock's robot mode is pretty great and this is also where the figure shines the most as it is a wonderful robot mode.

He's got a bit of a backpack but this is fairly accurate to the original, and is always something that G1 Grimlock has, so he kind of gets a pass here.

The head sculpt while simple, nails the character.

Perhaps the most surprising here is simply how big Grimlock is.  Considering Leaders are now just chunkier Voyagers, Grimlock breaks that trend by being near the size Leaders used to be.  Yes, he has hollow parts (the feet being the major culprit) but he still feels hefty in your hands.

As part of the Studio Series line, Grimlock comes with a cardboard stand formed from the inner packaging.

The stand depicts the scene from the movie in which Grimlock was about to burst in to save Hot Rod.

For articulation, Grimlock has all the standard joints you'll come to expect:  head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, knees and ankles.

While it is accurate to the character, the fact that the dino claws stick out like that from the hands does look lazy.

Wheelie here can sit on either of his shoulders, but Grimlock's left one is the best as it is easier to angle Wheelie's slingshot.  What's nice is that Grimlock's shoulders have a port for Wheelie to securely peg onto.

Grimlock comes with his double barreled gun.

The gun can be held in either hand.  One thing to note is that there is an Autobot insignia behind the dark smoky transparent plastic on his chest, it's just hard to make out.

The knees are also prone to unclipping when you're trying to bend them.  It's not a huge issue but for a figure that feels so solid, that is the one weak point.

A fantastic robot mode and one that'll surpass your expectations.

OVERALL:

Grimlock feels like a return to the glory days of Leader classed figures.  He's big and he's fun.  Granted, the transformation is simple, but this works in his favor as we get a bigger figure and better paint apps.  The inclusion of Wheelie without compromising on the core figure too much is impressive.  Grimlock is definitely a worthwhile figure to purchase.

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Angel Has Fallen (2019)

Angel Has Fallen is the third in the Fallen series of movies and while the previous two were big, loud and over-the-top, this one feels surprisingly subdued.  Instead of having the President in a life or death situation where he will rely on Mike Banning to save him from terrorists, it focuses on Banning himself.  Banning ends up in a situation where he is on the run and must find a way to prove that he is innocent.  The film has a very slow opening as it focuses on Banning's health issues due to his job.  Once the big event happens and he goes on his journey to prove himself to be innocent, you would have expected it to become more interesting.  If you predicted that there'll be a revelation of a journey in how the mastermind was uncovered then you'll be disappointed.  Instead, it is as straightforward as the previous two stories, but much less fun and way less gunfights.  It's actually really disappointing in how the plot progressed.  The previous two films had good set pieces to offset the simple story but Angel Has Fallen doesn't that to fall back on.  Banning's battles against others are boring, the stakes don't feel as high and the villain is underwhelming.  This leads to a very mediocre film that doesn't have much to stand on.

Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96)

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a 26 episode anime and widely hailed as one of the most influential anime of all time. This is apparent once you begin watching as it still holds up solidly after more than two decades. It takes place in a world where something called the Second Impact decimated a large chunk of the population. The governments have explained it was a meteor that smashed into Antarctica, causing the icecaps to instantly melt and rapidly raise the sea levels. This catastrophe decimated a large chunk of the population. Fifteen years later, giant alien beings known as Angels have returned and started attacking the cities once again. The anime starts right in the thick of things with the appearance of an Angel in Tokyo-3 and we’re shown that conventional weapons are useless against these beings.

A short cut to Shinji Ikari later and we are quickly introduced to Nerv. Nerv is a secret government organization that has developed giant mecha known as Evangelions, or Eva for short. Shinji’s father is the director of this organization and he had called in his son whom they had not met for three years. He asks Shinji to pilot one of the Eva and it seems like these Eva’s are finicky about their pilots and the pair has to be compatible in order to work.

The anime doesn’t go for the typical tropes. Shinji isn’t immediately amazing at piloting, nor does he easily win and bask in glory. Instead, Shinji is a reclusive person. He is not on good terms with his father, nor with anyone else. There is a complicated relationship between Shinji and his father. His father doesn’t have too many redeeming features as his demeanor is cold and he is too dedicated to his work. Shinji has trouble connecting with others and will often just agree and go along with whatever is being asked of him. This can make him a tough character to sympathize or cheer on for.

While there are pretty cool fighting sequences between the Eva and the Angels, with some of the best animations in these scenes that is not the focus of the show. It portrays the tough and traumatizing experiences of these young teenagers as the pilots of the Eva. It has a heavy atmosphere and there is tremendous pressure on these children that already have fragile emotions. There is a sense of grand scale with the anime, many of the scenes are tense with slow pacing and characters in deep thoughts, often without speaking while life goes on around them. There is an abundance of slow paced panning shots throughout the season.

When all is said and done, Shinji can be too much to take since he self-pities too much. He has various attempts at running away but he will always return to do his duty. However, there are enough moments where Shinji bravely moves forward that you still cheer for the guy. He slow learns and accepts the situation he is in, helped by having actual friends and calling Misato, the Major that he is living with, his family.

The other pilots aren’t perfect either, each of them have their own flaws. Rei is cold and seemingly lacking emotion. She also has trouble interacting with others but in a different way to Shinji. She seems to have a good relationship with Shinji’s father which puts his father in a bad light, and also makes you wonder what makes Rei so special.

The third pilot, who is introduced later, is Asuka and she is the complete opposite of the other two. She is self indulgent and has a personality that gives her too much of an ego. She immediately starts bullying Shinji and it takes a while before the trio gets over their differences and works as a team. The anime likes to show that nothing is as idealistic as one would hope, and the trio never actually become friends.

The first half of the anime builds up on the mystery of the Angels and the Eva. It constantly hints that there are more to them that what we are being told. It takes a long while before we get the first answers. Both the Angels and the Eva’s have unique and iconic designs that make them memorable. The Eva’s are shown to not only be mecha but has some sort of organic origin as well. Nerv is constantly doing tests with the pilots and their Eva’s, and the Eva has shown to exceed their expectations and do the impossible several times. The Angels on the other hand also appear to be adapting, as their attacks get closer to success each time. There appears to be a reason why the Angels always seem to go for Nerv headquarters.

The second half of the season still has the Angels attacking but puts a lot more focus on the toll it takes on the pilots. Shinji experiences several distressing moments, more than enough for anyone. Unfortunately, even though you’d expect the shift in tone and drop in animation quality due to its infamous production budget issues, when it actually happens it is still extremely jarring. It starts off a clip show midway through the season and then you’ll have the next episode dip in terms of the fluidity of the animation, but it is still acceptable. Then in the next episode, it completely changes in tone, reuses animation frequently and even has static images with voiceovers. The quality then keeps dropping and never recovering.

It keeps getting more and more personal as it inches towards the finale. It shows off how Nerv started and what the Eva’s are. This is also when the anime starts having massive tonal shifts with psychological themes resulting in odd scenes, and different ideologies. It becomes a lot more abstract with the pacing and narrative both suffering because of this.

The anime continues to deteriorate where all the cost saving techniques are culminated into the final two episodes. The result is that the scenes mainly involve seeing and hearing each of the characters’ thoughts as they contemplate their own existence and the events that impacted their childhood. The final episode is literally a combination of photographs, static images and recycled animation. There are literally scenes where nothing onscreen moves and it is in completely silence, which goes on for a tad bit too long to overlook. Considering how strong the first half of the anime was, you can’t help but be disappointed by this ending. It just makes it all seem so pointless and a huge waste of time. It doesn’t give us a satisfactory resolution to all the (interesting) questions it had raised. Maybe if the staff had enough budget this idea for the ending could have been executed better, but as it is, it is polarizing to say the least.

Overall, there’s no doubt that Neon Genesis Evangelion has done something different and unique that not many anime has done before or since. It merges the giant mecha genre neatly with an in-depth analysis on the personalities of the characters. It has a great balance between these two elements in the first half of the season but the second half leant too much on the psychological issues, where it becomes too much of a mind screw. This leads to an ending where you can’t help but feel disappointed and wondering what just happened.

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Rise of the Tomb Raider (PS4)

Rise of the Tomb Raider is the second game in the rebooted Tomb Raider series that started with the 2013 game. It was initially released as a timed exclusive for Xbox 360 and Xbox One before releasing a year later on PS4 with all the DLC included. Having all the DLC in the package helped make the wait more worth it, in terms of value at least.

The gameplay will be familiar to anyone who has played the first game. It is a third person action adventure. There are several distinctive gameplay elements. There is the exploration aspect where Lara traverses the huge environments to find collectibles, which often involves platforming and puzzle solving. Then there is the survival aspect where Lara find items to craft equipment and ammunition, as well as hunting down animals. Finally there are the combat sections where it is either all guns blazing, or Lara may have the opportunity to use stealth instead. Noteworthy though is that the game leans more towards the exploration and platforming aspect, which is great since having constant shootouts will be boring.

The controls are easy to manage and extra skills gradually unlock so you don’t get overwhelmed when you start the game. Lara can run, jump, shimmy, swim and climb on various surfaces. She initially has access to only her bow which she can use in conjunction with rope to access faraway platforms. Later on, she’ll obtain guns, and also the ability to craft different types of ammunition such as exploding arrows or grenade attachments to her rifles. In most combat situations, Lara can actually use stealth to kill most, if not all of the enemies and it is satisfying when you succeed.

Nearly everything you do will give you experience points. You’ll gain them by killing enemies, finding collectibles and progressing the story. You then use them to unlock new skills that make the game easier. These light RPG elements keep you hooked and helps give meaning to the collectibles.

On the topic of collectibles, there are way too many of them scattered about. If you are going for 100% completion then it is a huge chore. What make this worse are the huge environments. They will distract you for a long time each time you enter a new area and can be quite overwhelming at first.

One of the best aspects of the game though is the Challenge Tombs. These are interesting environmental puzzles that aren’t too hard but still requires a bit of thought. Anytime you are unsure of what to do, using the R3 button will highlight objectives of interest in the environment. Annoyingly, moving will cause the view to revert back to normal so you’ll find yourself constantly clicking the analogue stick as it’s too useful to leave off.

There are areas at the beginning of the game that you cannot access as you don’t have the required tools. They are gradually unlocked over the course of the story and is a great feeling once you get all the tools and nothing can stop you anymore. Once you get the grapple and can climb higher walls with its aid, the design of some of the platforming is terrible. There are not infrequent cases where it is not obvious where you can go. The jumping can seem a bit off and you end up not grappling the wall like you wanted, but fall to your death.

While the graphics are impressive, the constant snow and cave environments can get bland and boring. Disappointingly, the PS4 version doesn’t have HDR, that is only available on Xbox One. If you have PS4 Pro, then you can opt for one of three modes: high framerate, 4K resolution, or an “enrich visuals” mode which increases the visual effects.

The story starts off with Lara climbing an icy mountain and just doing everything she can to not die. It is an impressive beginning that sets the tone for the rest of the game. It then goes back to show the events that came up to this point. We then learn that Lara is following in her father’s footsteps to find the Divine Source. As her father was ridiculed before he died, Lara wants to find it in order to clear her father’s name. In contrast to the first game where she was forced into the situation that she was in and had to kill, here she is a lot more experienced.

The set pieces over the course of the game are big but it can be messy. There is too much happening such that you can accidentally die. While it puts you back right before that point so you don’t lose much progress, it breaks the flow. There are also clashes when Lara is supposedly escaping as part of the story or going through a heavily armed area, but still finds time to explore a tomb or translate some language.

Unfortunately, the story never really picks up. It feels like an afterthought or excuse for the excellent gameplay surrounding it. Just like the first game, there are some mystical elements but overall it is forgettable and lacks drive. The final boss was terrible. The situation Lara was placed in was oddly contrived and with restrictions placed on the player that makes no sense. It served to frustrate more than it was a tense or epic moment. While it heavily depends on how many of the collectibles you do, the story takes around ten to twenty hours to complete.

After you complete the story mode, there are a few other modes to keep your attention. You can replay any chapter, with or without all your upgrades. There is a score attack mode where you aim for a high score by finishing the level quickly, as well as completing other challenges like collecting flames scattered in the level or finding all the collectibles. In this mode, there are cards which you can use to give you positive or negative effects that affect the score multiplier.

Baba Yaga is the only traditional story DLC for the game and unfortunately, it is a disappointing one. It is extremely short, taking only around an hour or two with a tiny new area to explore. The worst thing is that the gameplay design is clunky. It is similar to those levels from Batman: Arkham Asylum where Lara will hallucinate and go through levels that has a weird visual effect applied on top. It’s done poorly and the boss battle, which takes up a huge chunk of the DLC, drags on for far too long. The gimmick to defeat it was okay at first but then you have to repeat it… and repeat it… and repeat it… which ends up being infuriating. The story adds nothing to the game and even judging it as a self-contained side story, it is still bad. Coupled with the wonky platforming design, especially when going for the collectibles and this DLC is poor value.

Endurance Mode is a survival mode where Lara is placed in a huge snowfield map. There is now a hunger meter and a warmth meter that will continually decline, as well as wild animals and enemies roaming about. The aim is to survive for as long as you can by staving off hunger and keeping warm while exploring crypts to obtain artifacts. The playthrough ends when you find a signal fire and then decide to light it up in order to get extracted. It’s a bit confusing at first since there is no map so it can be easy to get lost (which is the point). You also start with nothing and have to obtain the crafting materials while also looting enemies to get weapons and ammunition. The worst part though is if you die, it ends the playthrough, and it can feel cheap when you accidentally run into a trap in a crypt. There is also a co-op version of this but apart from some elements like marking enemies, there is no difference.

The Cold Darkness DLC puts you on a map infested with what are effectively zombies. The backstory is that a Soviet installation suddenly has everyone infected due to the leakage of toxic gas. Lara goes in to traverse to the various towers in order to shut off the production of the toxic gas. It takes place completely at night, and a flashlight is used to illuminate the surroundings. There are “puzzles” which you have to spend time looking for certain things in order to know which lever to pull. Every so often, a horde of enemies will gun for you. You have to gather resources and find equipment just like the other modes. It’s not a great mode, and some of the challenges are really annoying in that it relies on luck. The infinite enemies get tiring really quickly especially when they respawn very soon after you have killed them. A playthrough only takes 30-60 minutes to complete.

The final piece of DLC is Croft Manor which is comprised of two parts. The first is Blood Ties, which does not have any combat at all. Instead, Lara is exploring Croft Manor in order to find hints and proof that she has the legal right to the Croft inheritance. There are nearly 100 collectibles in this mode, and there are no puzzles, it’s basically just running around finding stuff in order to progress. Along the way, the backstory of Lara’s younger days, as well as her parents, are slowly revealed. The second part is Lara’s Nightmare, in which it takes place in Croft Manor as well. In this mode though, Lara is rushed by infinite enemies as she has to fight her way through the manor and destroy three skulls to spawn the final boss and beat that. It is actually fairly challenging given the tight spaces, limited beginning ammo and randomized nature, but like most of the game’s DLC, it is low effort.

Overall, Rise of the Tomb Raider is a solid game although doesn’t improve too much over the first. It is still a lot of fun but the collectathon is starting to get out of hand, and the bulk of the DLC all try to do different things. Unfortunately, they are too far removed from the base game to feel coherent and are heavily padded with fluff in a misguided attempt to make them last longer. The value of the PS4 version is still there though and is not a game to be missed if you enjoyed the first game.

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