February, 2017:

Review – Fez (PC, PS3, XBox 360, PS4, Vita)

by Ramen Junkie.

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2012 – Polytron Corporation – 1 Player
* Review is based on the PC Release

The Good

Neat and well executed 3D rotation Gimmick
Interesting and reasonably complex puzzles

The Bad

Some of the puzzles are a little too complex and not obvious that they are even there.
Drives to be a community experience but the community has kind of dried up.
Navigating around the world is tricky and can get confusing.

Review

Fez is a platform game centered around a 3D rotation gimmick. The core game play is simple platform mechanics. Walk around, jump and climb, with moving platforms and such thrown in. There aren’t a lot of enemies to contend with which doesn’t really matter because dying has no consequence anyway. The trick is, that Gomez, your character has been bestowed with the Magic Fez (or whatever) and can rotate the world 90 degrees left and right. This changes the layering of some objects allowing previously inaccessible paths to be accessible. The object is to collect these cube things. There isn’t much of an actual story.

It’s something that kind of has to be seen to really be understood but the general idea is, that say, there is a platform floating off to the right that you can’t jump to. Rotating the world may bring that platform in front of your current platform. You can then jump to it as if it’s in the same 2D plane. You can then rotate the world back and you will have no cross the gap that was previously not crossable.

Keeping track of the 3D environment can be tricky if the player is poor at spacial logic. The other puzzles all tend to revolve around learning (read Googling a key) for the multiple in game alphabets. These are little symbols that show up from time to time. Sometimes they look like Tetris pieces instructing the player to enter a certain button sequence, sometimes they are little riddles that you must answer. They are basically cryptogram puzzles. I probably would have figured it out eventually but I didn’t even know these factors were a “thing” until i went searching for answers online, which is kind of a problem of game design. It’s not a bad idea, it’s just not presented in a way that is overly intuitive to the player.

This is also a problem with the in game map. I went through almost the entire first half of the game before even knowing there was a map. a map that not only makes navigating the 3Dish world much easier but tells me when I have cleared out an area. You might think “how can you blame your own stupidity on the game?” Because it’s, once again, poor design. I played most of this game using a controller with at least a dozen buttons. Not one of the buttons was mapped to the map. Both the right shoulder buttons were mapped the same and both the left shoulder buttons were mapped the same, yet I had to press escape on the keyboard to open the map. In a game with such redundancy in it’s controls I would expect something as almost necessary as a map to at least be on the Start or Select button, it was not. This is likely not an issue on console versions of the game which don’t have a keyboard.

The game itself also has a few bugs, at least one pretty substantial one that I uncovered (though I am sure I am not the first). One of the puzzles involves cubes which only shot up on certain time intervals, the longest of which is every 48 hours. Firstly, any puzzle which requires player intervention at such a specific time period is pretty shoddy to begin with. This can be “circumvented” by futzing with the time settings of your PC (or console). Doing this seemed to screw up my save file though. I ended up resetting my play time. Not a huge deal. I did however seem to reset several cubes that I had collected, sort of. The map showed them uncollected and I could rediscover them, but at some point I had collected “everything” and could still get more cubes. It didn’t increment my cube counter though. and I could complete the game as if I had everything.

I believe in my searching for clue to complete the puzzles I read that you can collect all of the cubes in one play through but finishing the game once unlocks a FPS view mode which is required to see several hidden codes. It also unlocks a flight mode which basically turns the game into “easy mode”.

Completing the game a second time unlocks a Red and Blue 3D view (which can be disabled). I am not real sure how effective this mode is as I don’t have any 3D glasses floating around to test it with.

Anyway, it’s an interesting game. If you like the idea of combining cryptographic text puzzles with a platformer in a slightly confusing 3D environment then by all means give this game a go. Frankly, I probably enjoyed this game less than i should have. I don’t have the time or patience for this sort of puzzler so I ruined half the fun by just looking up the answers. I did find the 3D rotation gimmick enjoyable though.

Review – Marvel Legends – Juggernaut Wave – Deadpool

Feb 20th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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I’m a little torn on Deadpool here. He’s a pretty great figure. Not the perfect Deadpool necessarily due to a few minor design issue but he’s solid. He also comes with a ton of accessories and no Build-a-Figure piece for Juggernaut. Which is why I’m torn. What Deadpool represents is essentially what I wish we got from Marvel Legends as a line. Dump the dumb BAF aspects, load up more accessories, alternate heads, weapons, effect parts, alternate hands.

Yeah, it’s a dumb reason to dislike a figure, it’s more that I dislike the concept he is presenting, because it’s what I want from every figure. How much cooler would Havok be with a screaming head and an energy blast that strapped to his chest somehow. How much better would that boring Phoenix be with a flaming base and fire ball parts to strap on to for dynamic attack poses? How about a nice Ice base for Iceman to thrown down on? Is Deadpool representative of what we could have without BAF bits?

Enough talk about non Deadpool things though, that’s sort of tangential to the main topic here, and not totally some weirdly meta thing for a Deadpool related review. Also, referencing that it’s a review within a review isn’t meta and 4th-wall-ish either.

Deadpool has one really great thing going for him, his accessories. He has so many accessories that a few of them seem really pointless and dumb and out of place next to the others. The swords, the pistols, the knife, all have nice built in storage on Deadpool, which is great. The rocket Launcher could even peg onto his back. The alternative head makes sense, Deadpool with and without mask. The Taco’s fun. Then there are the two screw silver guns, they look ugly, they don’t really fit too well with the theme of everything else, personally, and they just don’t even need to be there.

Which just exacerbates my previous frustration, not only does he get a mess of accessories, he has extra mostly useless crappy accessories!

Honestly Deadpool only really has two real flaws. One, he has this goofy pinky finger sticking out hand. This problem could have easily have been fixed with a spare, normal hand, maybe in place of one of his useless extra guns. But it didn’t happen, it’s kind of really weird.

Then there is the part where he’s crazy hard to find, because, well, Deadpool. He had a super popular movie, he doesn’t have the saddle of a BAF piece and he’s a really good figure all around.

Review – Movie – John Wick (Chapter 1)

Feb 17th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Occasionally a movie comes along that’s just so simplistically perfect in what it’s trying to present. Recently it seems there have been two such movies, and John Wick is one of them. Where so many movies try to make everything a deep metaphor or some sort of social commentary on the world at large, John Wick gives us a straight forward tale of revenge, with hints at a deeper world beyond.

I feel like this layered simplicity is what really makes this film work. That and the top notch action choreography. This movie is loaded with shoot outs and guys getting shot and beat up, but it all works extremely well and flows along very well. Everything is intense and tight and fast, but it manages to keep some level of gritty realism as our hero gets injured and tired and remembers to reload his gun from time to time. The centerpiece moment is the fight in the middle of the film in The Red Circle Club, as John Wick, chases his target through a crowded night club battling henchmen all along the way.

But the action isn’t the meat of this film, and neither is it’s revenge based plot, the meat is the rich criminal underworld created as the film moves along. Specifically, the way John Wick never stops to explain anything to us, but still presents everything in a way that’s clear as to how things work. Take the Golden Coins we see several times in the movie. They are simple gold coins, probably valuable in their own right, but they also seem to represent more than just a coin, favors perhaps. A way of trading trust throughout this world of mobsters and assassins where everyone knows everyone else. John has many of them, and spends several of them in clear logical ways that give us the idea of what they are without hand holding the viewer along.

There is also John Wick himself. John is a retired hitman for some powerful criminal organization. We never get to see John Wick in his “glory days”. Instead, we get the feel of just how much of a bad ass John Wick is by the way other characters react to seeing him “back in action”. The way his old boss has nothing more to say than “oh” when learning that his son has pissed of John Wick. The way his colleagues immediately respect him and treat him highly. Through the vague story of what length John went through to retire and get married in the first place. And of course through how determined and skilled John is at dispatching dozens of grunts along the way despite being “retired” for some years.

It’s this little detail that helps keep the action flowing without stopping to get bogged down in the details while simultaneously not leaving tons of “well what the hell does that mean” moments. It’s a fine line that other similar movies often fail at because they are too vague with the details or too talky about it.

The movie itself may not be quite for everyone, mostly because it’s pretty violent, though it’s also violent in a way that’s not overly gory. Another nice point of this film, it would have been easy to get gratuitous with the violence, with constant blood splatters and whatnot, but the film avoids these cheap gimmicks which just helps push that subtle layer of realism that I mentioned earlier.

The bottom line is, this movie is pretty fantastic, especially if you are at all into action movies with excellent fight choreography.

Review – Transformers – Generations – Brainstorm

Feb 16th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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If you’ve been keeping track, you might have noticed that I’ve gone through all of the original 7 Headmaster’s remakes from Titan’s Returns. You might have been expecting the last review here to cover Titan’s Return Brainstorm. Well, you’d be almost correct. The thing is, I have Generations Brainstorm already, and I don’t really need Titan’s Return Brainstorm, so instead, you’re getting Generations Brainstorm.

If you follow some of the recent lines just before Combiner Wars, it kind of felt like Hasbro was exploring and experimenting with ideas for future lines. We got Scoop with his Trigger masters, and the Minicon combiner team, and Brainstorm here, the first Headmaster in years, I believe since Transformers Energon with it’s Omega Supreme and Minicon head. Before that was Armada Sideways with his swappable headmasters.

As our first modern Headmaster, Brainstorm is pretty good. There were some early reports about issues with the neck joint on the Headmaster and body, but rumor has it that problem was fixed. He even fakes the classic power level gimmick with a flip down panel inside his chest that activates when the Headmaster is attached.

The Headmaster itself is a little iffy though, the arms are large chunks with the arm bits painted on in the appropriate areas. He looks nice for the most part for such a small figure though. He works well with his little cockpit in space ship mode.

The new headmasters though aren’t compatible at all. There is a size difference for starters, which breaks the port set up. In the broader sense though, I like the size difference here just because it makes for some nice variety from “All Deluxe scale”. I also am not huge on swapping the heads between bodies, so I don’t really mind that there is a lack of compatibility.

So I’m not saying the Titans Return Brainstorm is bad, he’s based on one of the better molds in the line, but I just really like this version of Brainstorm from a few years earlier in Generations.

Mafex – The Dark Knight Joker

Feb 15th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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I’m not a huge fan of the “Nolan Batman” films as a whole, but The Dark Knight is one of my favorite movies in the broad sense. Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises, both are kind of mediocre, The Dark Knight is so good though. A lot of this is because of the Joker as the villain. Loving Heath Ledger’s Joker isn’t an uncommon opinion at all for sure. Unfortunately, in the US, Mattel has the license for DC figures, and produces most of them. Mattel, honestly, isn’t the greatest toy company, mostly because they tend to have wonky articulation and really spotty assortments. The Dark Knight Rises 4″ line had cases of like 23 Batmans and 1 Bane or something ridiculous. There was a version of The Joker released in the US, but I really wanted something nicer.

Enter Medicom and Mafex, and their Dark Knight Joker. This isn’t Mafex’s first figure, though they don’t put out a ton of product. Actually, especially previous to this Joker, Mafex has had a really awful reputation for releasing really crappy figures. Not so much from a design standpoint but from a quality standpoint.

I’d heard that they had gotten better with this release, and I opted to go ahead and pick up the Joker here as my first figure from their releases. I have to say I was not disappointed. Though I also need to say, there are still some quality issues, particularly in the joints on these figures. As of writing this review, I’ve picked up three figures from the Mafex line, and all of them have had joint issues of some kind, most often in the neck. My Joker sometimes has problems with his arm falling off.

Aside from this issue, I’m really satisfied by this figure. The sculpt is great, the weapon assortment is great. The smiling head is a little too happy, which is kind of weird, but the normal glowering head is spot on great, and it’s really the onle that would be used most of the time anyway.

There’s a bit of hindrance to articulation by his coat, though the Joker, especially this iteration of the Joker, is pretty slow and shuffling in his movements anyway. He’s not exactly an athlete or a ninja on any level.

So the question is, is it recommended? It’s probably the best Heath Ledger Joker available in this scale. That said, the join issues could be a turn off. I’d recommend him, but not for a tremendous mark up, unless you’re a huge fan of this Joker. I add the last part because now that we’ve moved on to the DC Cinematic Universe and the Suicide Squad Joker, this Joker probably isn’t going to get any sort of future release in a better line (Figuarts).