Reviews

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 – 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.

Review – Movie – Speed Racer (2008)

Feb 10th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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The original Speed Racer anime series from the late 60s is one of the earliest Anime shows to be brought to the US. Originally titles Mach GoGoGo in Japan, Speed Racer follows the exploits of Speed Racer (literally first name/last name) and his friends as they participate in races and adventures using the Mach 5 Super car. Stylistically, especially at the time, it was quite unique, with it’s unique Japanese animation style and look. Though live action adaptations of animated features don’t always work well, Speed Racer does it’s best to replicate the intense colorful style of the anime, and anime in general.

Fortunately for the movie, it’s the one thing that it succeeds at, and succeeds at very well. The visuals of this entire film, from start to finish, are pretty incredible. A lot of what makes it work where a lot of cartoon to live action fails is that it completely embraces it’s origin and never looks back. There’s no out of place realism to the way the cars move and literally glide around the track, there’s no punches pulled on the stunts or action. Even during the downtime off the track the sets are colorful and full of detail that’s both dense and simple at the same time, keeping with the base styling you’d likely see in an anime series.

Everything just meshes together to keep everything believable within he context of the fantastical race obsessed world presented to the viewer. There are also a lot of interesting Transitions used almost constantly throughout the film that help push this effect even farther. Overlays of announcers, and crowd watchers and other drivers sweep across the screen giving everything loads of atmosphere.

Visuals don’t really make a movie though, even a really pretty movie isn’t worth watching without some sort of plot. The general plot is essentially Speed Racer and his crew working their way up through the racer ranks to become the best racer in the world. Along the way there’s a few subplots involving Speed Racer’s brother who died in a race in the past, the mysterious Racer X and an evil corporation trying to use the race for nefarious purposes. There isn’t a lot of depth to anything going on here, but it gets a little complicated and the film itself is pretty non stop in it’s pace which makes things feel a little messy at times. It also makes the film feel a little long, but more because it’s kind of exhausting keeping up with the constant barrage of crazy visuals.

The cast also does a great job of selling the whole experience. In the same vein as the visuals, the cast does a pretty good job of selling the idea of being cartoonish in nature. John Goodman and Christina Ricci are both pretty good as Pops and Trixie as do the rest of the supporting cast. Emile Hirsch as Speed does a nice job of selling the Speed’s obsessive racing desire and need to be good as well. What really helps to is they all look the part.

Often with adaptations such as this there are “changes” done to modernize things or make them more hip. Or worse, the actors chosen look nothing like their original counter parts. A lot of what makes Speed Racer’s style work is that it sticks close to it’s roots. Sure, there’s a “new” Mach 6 race car, but the traditional Mach 5 is plenty present in this film and the new car does a good job of keeping the spirit of the Mach 5 without going overboard in it’s redesign.

Speed Racer isn’t a movie that’s going to win any awards for depth, though it’s definitely a technically impressive film. It’s almost too visually busy at times honestly. It’s still worth checking out if you can handle the predictably simple plot that holds it all together.

Review – Marvel Legends – Juggernaut Wave – Phoenix (Jean Grey)

Feb 6th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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This may be a bit of a short one on the text. I honestly have very little to really say about Marvel Legends Phoenix. In fact, the main thing I have to say is something I really don’t say too often about anything. I think I legitimately hate almost everything about this figure.

I’m not even sure it’s an upgrade from my old Toybiz Phoenix figure. Sure that old Phoenix has some issues, and is far from perfect but this update just has so much that I don’t particularly like that makes for the perfect storm of dislike.

For starters, her sculpt is kind of nasty. The head is weirdly skinny and angular and the hair looks unnatural. This isn’t helped by how completely bland her design is. At least the old Phoenix has a few extra flourishes here and there to keep her from being so blandly green.

She also can’t stand for crap, which only really helps to push my dislike of this figure down farther. In fact the only reason I bothered at all was that she was the only figure left that I needed to complete the Juggernaut Build a Figure. There isn’t much else to say, he’s just extremely bland and kind of ugly on the paint and sculpt, which is a shame because several other figures in this wave are excellently done.