Reviews

Figma – Tracer

I have this incredible love/hate relationship with Overwatch. I do enjoy the game and the characters, but I kind of hate a lot of aspects of the game play. There are a lot of annoying balance issues going on right now. I also feel like the lack of community servers still really hurts the game and the ability to get over a lot of it’s flaws by at least playing with fun people regularly. This isn’t really supposed to be a rant about Overwatch though, it’s about Figma Tracer.

Good Smile Company has two main lines and a bunch of other sub lines, they are producing Overwatch figures for the two primary lines, Nindoroid and Figma. Both lines offered Tracer as their initial offering, though so far the Nendoroid line is far outpacing the Figma line in terms of releases. Where Nendoroid Tracer is a stylized Chibi version of the face of Overwatch, the Figma is much closer to the likeness you’d see in game.

Unfortunately it’s not a perfect likeness. The worst offense on this toy is the face. It’s just… off… all over. It’s almost like it’s a sort of bizarre bishoujo version of Tracer. There is definitely too much “anime” in the sculpt. I mean, Overwatch is pretty heavily cartoon in it’s stylization, but it’s not manga styled. It’s kind of funny because the Nendoroid version almost looks more like Tracer in the face, despite the goofy proportions.

The Nendoroid also has some accessories that the larger version really should have included as well, even if they were straight up the same pieces. Aside from the obvious blink streak included with the Nendo, the Nendo also has the little flippy hair piece on it’s head, which was a nice little fun touch. The pegs on the stands aren’t the same size at all, so there isn’t even a way to use the blink effect piece with the Figma. Also notable, is that the guns are not the same between the two figures, though they are pretty close to being the same size. Aside from the guns, Tracer includes some alternate faces and a decent selection of hands and her pulse bomb.

I also have a bit of an issue with the poseability of the figure. It’s pretty good, except for the hips, which are extremely limited by the design and the belt straps. I’m not sure what could have been changed but the knees also don’t bend as far as they could. Basically, a little more bend all around in the legs could have really helped Tracer pull off some of her signature poses better. The “real” straps are nice, but I can’t help but think sculpted straps might have allowed a bit more range of motion.

Tracer is decent, overall, though I honestly think I like the Nendoroid more. At the moment it’s the best Tracer figure available, but Hasbro has recently announced a new line of Overwatch based figures coming, and you can bet it will include Tracer. Figma Tracer isn’t a bad figure, but it could have been better without that totally off face sculpt.

S.H. Figuarts – The Rock

Nov 21st, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

1 comment

I’m going to be straight up honest. I don’t have any interest in Wresting, at all. But I think Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the actor, is pretty cool. Plus this figure has a lot of hilarious faces and possibilities for photos. I also ended up getting a good deal on him from the closing of Toys R Us, so there’s also that nice bonus.

As far as Figuarts go, he kind of feels like a mixed bag. The face sculpts are great. They look like the rock and convey a lot of nice goofyness and character. Even without relating it directly to The Rock the wrestler, they still show off several of his “signature looks”. He is also very poseable, even for a Figuarts toy. He even has a jointed set of hands.

The poseability is also his major downside. The joins on this figure are ugly as hell. There isn’t really any way around that. He also isn’t going to fit in with any other wrestling figures aside from the other Figuarts Wrestlers. Most of the wrestling figures on the US market seem to be closer to 7″ in height. The Rock is closer to 6″, and he’s a little on the overall small side of 6″. So he’ll definitely look really puny next to any mainstream Wrestling toy.

He does work pretty well with a lot of other figures though, especially other Figuarts figures. He’s not a bad figure by any stretch, but he does have his ups and downs compared to other figures out there. He’s still a lot of fun to goof around with, ugly joints and all.

Review – Transformers – Titans Return Overlord

Nov 15th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

Overlord may be slightly less familiar to a lot of people because he wasn’t a part of any major show continuity in the US. He was the big dog Decepticon in the Japanese series Super God Masterforce, and showed up a bit in some of the other Japanese only G1 shows. His other major role was as the protagonist in the popular IDW comic arc, The Last Stand of the Wreckers. In the original continuity he was a double Power Master. He had two Power Master figures who could slot into his chest behind the panels on his chest. In the Masterforce cartoon, these were Giga and Mega, a husband and Wife combo recruited by Devil Z to combat the Autobots. In the IDW books he was just a big tough guy. In this new iteration, he is a headmaster, like all of the Titans Return figures. He also only has one head, though the Japanese version includes two head options, representing Giga and Mega.

He does have his chest slot gimmick still however. Sort of. The chest flaps open and have slots where you can stick Titan Masters. Except the holes aren’t deep enough to allow the doors to close with the Titan Masters inside. This is actually a real shame given the whole gimmick of the follow up line and it’s Prime Masters. Having Overlord be able to “power up” with the Power of the Primes would have been a neat little play pattern to tie the two lines together.

The Titan Masters kind of look funny anyway, with their obvious faces and all. Disappointing chest face gimmick aside, Overlord still has a few tricks up his sleeve. Unlike a lot of Transformers, he eschews the standard one bot, one vehicle gimmick and splits into two vehicles, a Jet and a Tank. Neither vehicle has an independent robot mode and both are somewhere between a deluxe and voyager in size individually. The tank is pretty nice, but even without the need to hide a bunch of extra bulk that most jet Transformers suffer with, the jet is still kind of chunky and weird.

For a Leader class Transformers with two vehicles, the overall transformation is pretty simplistic. He definitely falls into the category of “G1 with more articulation” in his design in that respect. Considering Overlord isn’t one of those staple characters who gets a new look every few years, that’s probably for the best. He fills the role of “Classics Overlord” pretty well. Certainly better than the TFCC version we got a few years ago. As much as I like the Bludgeon mold and that figure, he doesn’t work nearly as well as Overlord as the Titans Return figure.

In addition to his two vehicles, Overlord also turns into a pretty nice little base for Titan Masters. This fulfills the line gimmick of the Leader toys becoming bases and homages back to G1 Overlord, who also became a base. It’s works really well in this line too given the emphasis on the little Titan Master figures.

Overall, Overlord is just a nice solid toy. His vehicles and base work well with the Titan Masters. The robot itself is all around solid and nicely poseable. He isn’t the most well known character, but he does look the part of being a big menacing bad guy, which is pretty much what he is trying to do. I’d definitely recommend Overlord.

Review – Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)

Oct 17th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

Konami – GBA – 1 Player

Castlevania is a game series I haven’t always cared much for. The early games were just plain too difficult for my tastes. If I was going to play a tough platform game I’d play something fun and fast like Blaster Master or Ninja Gaiden. After many recommendations I picked up a copy of Symphony of the Night. It languished for years, un-played, on my game shelf. I’d never been a big fan of the whole “horror/gothic” thing, why would I want to play a game full of it?

I then of course played Symphony and loved every minute of it. This sort of side scrolling action game just isn’t made anymore on these next-gen systems. It’s all about 3D! Sadly, Symphony left me wanting more. Armed with my trusty Game Boy Advance, I managed to find more with Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. 2D is all but dead on the home console but it’s still pushing it self out on the Portable system.

Fortunately, Konami realized the popularity of the new format used in Symphony and continued the new exploration and RPG style elements from SotN into its Game Boy series of Castlevania games. This installment takes us back to the whip thrashing heroes of the older games with out hero, Nathan Belmont, err… Nathan Graves. Nathan sets out with his companions Morris and Hugh Baldwin (No relation to the actor) to slay the newly resurrected Dracula. There’s pretty much only one staple for the Castlevania series, and that’s the fact that Dracula is always pulling the strings SOMEHOW and is pretty much always the final boss. If you didn’t finish by killing Dracula, you’re probably not done yet or you got a “bad ending”.

Gameplay is pretty comparable to Symphony. In this game you’re stuck with using the whip for the entire game however. To help out though you collect DSS (Duel Setup System) cards. These cards are themed around mythical animals and gods and are combined for varying themed effects. For example, combining a Flame based Salamander card with the whip enhancing Mercury card will give you a flaming whip. The Earth based Golum card with Mercury gives an longer earth based whip. At the same time combining either of these animal cards with say, the Jupiter based recovery card will cause Fire or Earth damage to heal you. Only two cards, one from each set, can be used at a time though so you’ll find yourself often switching and strategizing. The cards are obtained randomly from enemies and can be a bit of a challenge to collect.

Still, you’ll end up using the same half dozen combinations for most of the game. A lot of them are mostly useless, especially the projectiles and special whips. I found only the Earth whip to be of any true use since it has a longer reach. This lets you hit many enemies before they get too close and start attacking. Hit, not kill, mind you. Most of the enemies take about twice as many hits as should really be necessary to kill them. I find the hits tended to decrease by one for each level gained but near the end of the game the experience necessary to level becomes astronomically too high. I believe while I was “power leveling” I figured up having to pass through the entire Coliseum bonus areas (filled with the toughest monsters) something like 2-3 times before gaining a level. This is not a small task and the Coliseum enemies are tough and give more exp than normal enemies. Still, with a few DSS exploits the final boss was still relatively easy to defeat at my finishing level.

At least there is a fair variety of enemies to keep you entertained in your times of leveling need. Even basic color swaps (like the armors) have completely different attack patterns. The castle is also expansive and varied enough to keep things interesting the whole trip through. You’ll do some backtracking, but it’s backtracking that makes some level of sense.

In comparison to Symphony of the Night, which is a game that all three GBA Castlevania games try to emulate to varying degrees, I’d say it’s a decent follow-up. It’s not quite as polished overall but it has its own merits and methods. A game doesn’t have to be an exact copy of its great predecessor in order to be worthwhile.

Review – Vigil: Blood Bitterness (PC)

Sep 11th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

Freegamer | Meridian 4 | June 29th, 2007

So these days I try to make it a policy to complete a game before doing any sort of review. The thought is, I should experience all of it before passing judgment on it. Sometimes in order to complete this task I do resort to walkthroughs or even in game cheat codes. This tends to factor into the review however. If a game is too confusing to get through without a walkthrough or too difficult to finish properly without cheating then there is clearly a problem with it. I’ve had enough experience and skill development in a wide spread of games to know how to figure out even really tough games.

There is a problem though when a game is buggy. Especially when it’s buggy enough that I can’t seem to get it to move on or I spend more time fighting through poor controls than I do playing the game. Vigil: Blood Bitterness is extremely bug ridden. The basic controls are simple enough but the path finding of the player is terrible. I gave up trying to navigate through this game early in act 2 when I couldn’t get the screen to roll over to the next area after running around repeatedly where it should transition.

How do I know it should transition? Well, strike 2 against this game is that it’s extremely cryptic about it’s presentation. Ok, cryptic is not the right word, cryptic implies that there is a book or a note or some sort of arrow hidden in the surroundings to point you in the right direction or the right method to solve the game’s puzzles. There’s nothing of the sort present in this game. You wander aimlessly through the stylized landscape until you’ve managed to find both cut scenes in Act-1, then you pray on the circles in Act-1 then you look up a FAQ and discover you have to pray in a certain order unlock the ability to pray to another symbol in another room. There are no clues telling you to do this, without assistance you’re left to trial and error.

Trial an error is only good for artificially extending the length of a short and terrible game.

The game itself is essentially a Gothic Horror puzzle game. There is some vague plot about your character and his world being destroyed by some unknown entity (unknown by act 2 anyway). There isn’t any real explanations though of anything. The cut scenes consist of random sinister sounding one liners with no meaning or coherence. Honestly the only reason I have any idea of what the plot is about is because it was summarized in the game’s description when I bought it.

What attracted me to this train wreck of a game was the visual styling (that and it was on sale for like a buck at Gamer’s Gate). The art style is very interesting and stark using almost entirely Black and White lines. There are splashes of color spotted around to give emphasis to different aspects though they are infrequent. The IDEA of the game is also a nice draw. This sort of “dark adventure” genre is one that has started to get my interest lately. I tend to steer clear of “horror” in movies and games but there’s a difference between the horror of atmosphere and the unknown versus the horror of say, Left 4 Dead. In this respect though, there are much better titles than Vigil: Blood Bitterness to be found. Amnisia is the best example of a much better alternative in the Gothic Horror Puzzle game genre.