Sunday, December 30, 2018

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.jpg

The second anime series based on the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, Brotherhood is a more faithful adaptation, about two brothers who try to revive their dead mother through alchemy, with Edward losing an arm and a leg and Alphonse his whole body, with Ed affixing his soul to a suit of armor. Both seek the fabled Philosopher's Stone to restore their bodies to normal, although there are several twists that affect this crusade. Definitely enjoyable, and different enough to where even those who watched the first anime will appreciate it.

Monday, December 24, 2018

The Path of Daggers

WoT08 ThePathOfDaggers.jpg

The eighth main entry of the late Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time saga begins with a prologue following various characters such as Ethenielle, who rides through the Black Hills with a small army, and Rand, who believes he still has supporters in the divided White Tower. Despite the onset of hot weather that causes even plants used to heat to wither, Elayne Trakand is reluctant to use the Bowl of the Winds to counter the changing climate. Furthermore, winged creatures known as the raken regularly attack throughout the novel, with the Seanchan making good use of them.

The conflict among the Aes Sedai also continues, with Egwene and Elaida serving as separate Amyrlins, and the forbidden Black Ajah wreaking havoc. Winter storms gradually accumulate, and Rand occasionally channels the tainted saidin, sometimes using the sword Callandor whilst doing so, and Lews Therin sporadically makes his voice heard in the Dragon Reborn’s mind. Elayne also believes she is ready to take the Lion Throne of Andor, with a battle against Corlan Dashiva ending the book, along with the onset of a severe winter and varying accounts of what is happening in the world.

All in all, this is another enjoyable book in the series, given plenty of well-described action, scenery, and complex characters, although given its occasional convolution, a passage preceding the chapters summarizing the events of prior entries would have certainly been welcome. As with other entries, furthermore, Jordan makes a few nods to the Star Wars series with elements such as the One Power that has light and dark halves. Those who enjoyed the book’s precursors will most likely enjoy this one, although readers without any experience or familiarity with the franchise would be most obliged to start with the first main entry or its prequel novel.

Saturday, December 22, 2018


Aquaman poster.jpg

Follows the events of Justice League and isn't entirely an origin story, with occasional flashbacks by the eponymous hero and lots of action, and being one of the better DC Extended Universe films.

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Annabelle's Wish

AnnaBelle's Wish, VHS cover.png

A score-old Christmas special about a calf who dreams of being one of Santa's reindeer, with the subplot of a mute boy Billy and a wicked aunt who wants to take custody of him. Was a little saccharine but still decent.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie

Poster of the movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.jpg

A somewhat saccharine Christmas film featuring the eponymous crimson-nosed caribou, with some celebrity voices such as John Goodman, Whoopi Goldberg, and Eric Idle, and features the typical error of reindeer depicted with button noses instead of the moose-like snouts they actually have.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Art by Alex.Fetter, In Two Flavors

by jmg124 on DeviantArt

by jmg124 on DeviantArt

Christmas Exchange Art

by jmg124 on DeviantArt

Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!

Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu! Box Front

This reviewer will admit he isn’t the biggest fan of Nintendo’s popular Pokémon franchise despite being on the autism spectrum like its creator Satoshi Tajiri, although the announcement that the next set of remakes, based on Pokémon Yellow, somewhat captured his attention with the indication that it would gear towards newcomers, with his experience of the Fire Emblem franchise being similar before he played Awakening. In keeping with the series tradition of One Game for the Price of Two, the Big N divided the latest remakes into two versions on the Nintendo Switch, marking the first mainline series release on a home console (although one can still play it portably). One of the halves of the gameplay experience, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!, does contain many nods towards first-time players, which is for the most part a good thing.

When starting the game, the player has a choice of several controller options, the left or right joycon (effectively making the game playable with only one hand, perfect for physically-disabled gamers), the Switch Pokéball, or the handheld screen with both attached joycons, no choice available of using the console’s joycons together. Consequentially, one aspect significantly altered is the system of catching new Pokémon, with monsters visible in and around tall patches of grass and consistently so throughout dungeons such as caves. Rather than pitting the player’s primary Pokémon against encountered monsters, the game allows players to use the motion controls of whatever style they select to throw an in-game Pokéball (the player mercifully receiving a liberal amount to start) to try to capture the target.

While the player readies to throw one of a few types of Pokéball, a ring indicates the rate of capture success, red being the lowest and green the highest, shrinking before enlarging. Players can feed prospective Pokémon different types of berries for effects such as slower shrinking of the capture ring and a higher success rate of capture. When the player throws their Pokéball using motion control and hits within the shrinking ring, the game “scores” their throw, the highest result coming from a capture ring of minimum size, and no score provided if the player hits the monster outside the shrinking ring. Sporadically, encountered Pokémon may move around or make an aggressive move, in which case even hitting it with a Pokéball will cause it to bounce off with no capture attempt made.

If the thrown Pokéball manages to suck in the monster, it will fall to the ground where the Pokémon will struggle up to three times before breaking out, necessitating recapture, and unfortunately, the quality of the throw, no matter how great, has no influence upon the success of capture. Furthermore, the motion controls, this reviewer playing mostly with one joycon, can be somewhat finnicky when the player throws to the side (swinging the joycon straight at the screen makes it go forward, and left and right in those respective directions), although playing the game on the Switch in portable mode allows the player to move the screen to allow for a centered Pokéball throw, with most players likely wishing to only throw straightforwardly, else risk wasting Pokéballs.

Should the player succeed in capturing a Pokémon, the game, depending upon the quality of the throw, will award all living monsters in the player’s party of up to six experience, a definite improvement over prior games that reserved experience for those mons that actually participated in combat. Actual battles only come when the player crosses the line of sight of trainers on routes between towns, in dungeons, and in gyms, with players first sending in their default Pokémon, in this version’s case Pikachu, to fight whomever their opponent sends in, with the options of using one of up to four of a mon’s skills of different types, using an item, or switching to an inactive monster, which unfortunately like other series entries wastes the player’s turn, a step down from the superior character swapping systems in other RPGs such as Breath of Fire IV and Final Fantasy X.

After the player selects a skill for their current Pokémon to use, whoever has the highest agility (or if a skill comes with striking first) executes their command firstly, the amount of damage dependent upon a monster’s type, up to two of which they can have, adding a degree of strategy present in prior entries. The death of the player’s monster necessitates them to send out another in its place, although offing the enemy mon rewards those that participated against it a bulk of experience, with inactive mons also receiving a share of points for occasional level-ups, which may come with the opportunity to learn new skills, or cause an evolution into a more powerful form to occur (although certain items are necessary to make evolutions manually occur).

Defeating all an opponent trainer’s Pokémon rewards players with money usable for purchasing consumables in shops, although the death of all the player’s monsters results in some lost cash and a trip to the last recovery facility, where fully restoring mons is otherwise free of charge. Money is a mildly-finite resource, with players who wish to play more conservatively likely wanting to make repeated trips back to recovery facilities should their party suffer at the hands of opponent trainers instead of using items to heal, although the game ultimately allows the player to rematch gym leaders for supplemental monetary gain. In fact, one can potentially make it through the main quest without using or buying items at all except before the final adversaries, the Elite Four.

Those who have extensive experience with previous Pokémon titles might find Let’s Go, Pikachu! to be easy, although this more casual gamer didn’t think it a total cakewalk, given the potential unbalance in leveling (which may necessitate keeping a few dedicated monsters for regular use plus leveling and minimizing “experimental” mon training) and potential for one-hit kills either by the player or the enemy. The issue of swapping mons is also a mark against the game mechanics, with the mon brought in during the middle of a battle totally vulnerable to the opponent’s command for a turn, the potential for an OHKO also existing in such a case. Regardless, the battle system is definitely a step above other mainline entries, despite its flaws.

Control is generally above average, with easy (if a tad clunky) menus, nonproblematic shopping, an always-welcome save-anywhere feature, and few problems figuring out how to advance the main storyline, the in-game map of the world tracking visited routes, encountered towns, and the facilities available in them. Granted, those playing conservatively might find annoying the desire to constantly return to healing facilities after taxing Pokémon battles, and there are things that one can easily overlook without a guide or talking to everyone, such as a Hidden Move (an improvement in Let’s Go being that these don’t consume monster move slots) allowing for instant conveyance between visited towns. On the whole, interaction could have been better, but isn’t a huge detriment.

The weakest link of the Pokémon games has most of the time been their narratives, with the latest round of remakes once more pitting the player’s character against the sinister Team Rocket, with prominent members being Jessie and James. Let’s Go, Pikachu! doesn’t really delve into the organization’s backstory, and the ending of the plotline is generally anticlimactic. The translation, however, is largely polish, as most have come to expect from Nintendo, with only a smidgeon of slightly-unnatural lines. As one could expect, the story isn’t nearly as much of a reason to play the Let’s Go games as much as say, the gameplay.

The soundtrack, however, definitely takes advantage of contemporary console technology, with much of it sounding orchestrated, some pieces such as an early “Polly Wolly Doodle”-esque Route theme sounding whimsical, and the battle themes being energetic and sometimes toe-tapping. The sound effects are largely pleasing, with Pikachu’s voiced cries sounding absolutely adorable, although the unique cries of other Pokémon are digitized, a few actually sounding like they came straight from prior incarnations of the series. Still, that doesn’t much detriment a superb-sounding game.

Let’s Go, Pikachu! further features some of the best three-dimensional visuals in the current generation of roleplaying games, very well replicating the artistic style of the Pokémon anime short of cel-shading, with a noticeable lack of reskins and believable, reasonably-proportioned character and monster models. Environmental textures, furthermore, rarely, if ever, appear blurry and pixilated as they do in other RPGs with similar graphical styles, the only real issue being some minor jaggies that definitely don’t tarnish a superb-looking game.

Finally, the game is of reasonable length, one to two days’ worth of total playtime, with the tagline Gotta Catch Them All goal naturally heightening potential playtime.

In conclusion, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! for the most part does a great job bringing the series to a new generation of gamers, given its slightly-more lenient gameplay, and superb aural and artistic direction. For certain, however, it does have its issues, such as the potential for unbalanced combat, finnicky motion controls, some features such as the useful Fly Hidden Move being overlookable, and the unengaging narrative. Admittedly, furthermore, those who have extensive experience with prior installments might find it a cakewalk, but this reviewer believes playing a game should never be a chore, and would recommend it especially to those having minimal experience with the series.

The Good:
+Solid strategic Pokémon gameplay with improved catching and leveling means.
+Catchy soundtrack.
+Visuals do a superb job replicating the style of the anime.

The Bad:
-Can still be a little unbalanced, with motion controls potentially finnicky.
-Some features hard to find without using a guide.
-Story isn’t really engaging.

The Bottom Line:
A Pokémon game geared towards newcomers.

Score Breakdown:
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Game Mechanics: 8/10
Controls: 7/10
Story: 6/10
Localization: 9/10
Music/Sound: 9/10
Graphics: 9/10
Lasting Appeal: 10/10
Difficulty: Unbalanced
Playing Time: 1-2 Days

Overall: 8.5/10

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

The Lost Command

The Lost Command by Vaughn Heppner

The second installment of author Vaughn Heppner’s Lost Starship series opens with a memorandum indicating that Captain Maddox returned from the Beyond with an alien starship (the Victory) and that the New Men attacked the Commonwealth, the events believed related. The first four main chapters occur near Caria 323 in the “C” Quadrant, likely of the Milky Way Galaxy, with an attack by the New Men being imminent, although many in the Commonwealth believe they have “victory disease,” blinded by their accomplishments. The enigmatic Oran Rva leads the New Men, claiming to be the conqueror of the Commonwealth, with the galactic organization talking of using the Victory against them.

The chapter numbering restarts at one when the events shift back to Earth, where its inhabitants are ignorant and apathetic about the New Men, Captain Maddox, one of the primary protagonists, told to commence Operation Odysseus. Meanwhile, his love interest Meta finds herself attacked and kidnapped by strangers, with Maddox ultimately coming by her apartment complex and finding that the security footage showing her capture had been subject to tampering. Believing Meta to still be on Earth, Maddox heads to Monte Carlo to visit Octavian Nerva, who denies having a role in kidnapping her. Maddox quickly finds himself in a hostage situation, although he ultimately connects with Brigadier O’Hara, nicknamed the Iron Lady.

Maddox’ superiors believe like he does that the Victory is the key to triumph over the New Men, and the Captain is tasked to find Professor Ludendorff to exploit the alien starship, whose traps have claimed the lives of researchers. An initial antagonist other than the New Men is the alien vessel’s artificial intelligence that identifies itself as Driving Force Galyan, which indicates the ship to be the remnant of the extinct alien civilization the Adoks, who were a peaceful race, and promises eventual conveyance to the homeworld of the Swarm. A series of battles between the New Men and the Commonwealth round out the novel, with Maddox also learning about his lineage.

Overall, the first Lost Starship sequel effectively and satisfactorily continues its predecessor’s plotline, with the characters definitely being believable and the story itself full of good science-fiction action and occasional twists. Granted, the author could have come up with a better-sounding name for the antagonists other than “the New Men,” with the writer likely a fan of the various Star Trek television series and movies in the creation of the aforementioned narrative foes. The story also touches briefly upon the eugenics pseudoscience, with this reviewer somewhat relating to the themes of genetic superiority and inferiority, and would recommend the book to fans of the sci-fi genre.

Monday, December 17, 2018

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.jpg

The storyline was a bit messy, but the film is full of pleasant Scenery Porn and other cool effects and ideas, and I definitely don't regret watching it.

Friday, December 14, 2018

Transformers: The Last Knight

Transformers The Last Knight poster.jpg

The latest main entry of Michael "Star-Spangled 'splosion" Bay's Critic-Proof Transformers film franchise follows Mark Wahlberg helping the Autobots fight the Decepticons again, with some ties to the Legend of King Arthur. The plot was a bit of a convoluted mess, but the effects are good, at least.

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Commission by ChocolateFeathers

1544741346.chocolatefeathers Telephone
by jmg124 on DeviantArt

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle

Mowgli Legend of the Jungle poster.jpg

A Darker and Edgier take on Rudyard Kipling's stories, where Mowgli towards the end seeks to strike a balance between tiger antagonist Shere Khan's violating jungle law by killing humans and their beasts of burden and the lives of the jungle animals, with a bit of a Green Aesop plotline.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Art Trade, 11 December 2018

Khei as Princess Zelda
by jmg124 on DeviantArt

Their half:

by jmg124 on DeviantArt

Shenmue I & II

Sega’s Dreamcast would be the company’s final venture in the videogame console business before developing titles for other systems, with among the better-received titles on the system being developer Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue, ballyhooed as the most expensive game ever developed in its time to the point where even if every Dreamcast owner purchased a copy, it still wouldn’t have profited, some of the expense covering its first and thus-far only sequel, which would see an Xbox port before further entries fell into development hell. Over a decade later, both games would see mostly-untouched direct ports to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as the collection Shenmue I & II. Though it has a few things going for it, the first game ultimately comes across as a rushed product, despite its alleged cost, and its successor doesn’t fare any better.

Both games follow the same protagonist, Ryo Hazuki, in a classic tale of revenge, Ryo yearning to avenge his deceased father, traveling his Japanese town (in the first game) and mostly Hong Kong (in the second), accomplishing a fair amount of detective work, recorded and somewhat unorganized in his journal, in order to advance what little meaningful storyline the game has, with abundant red herrings in the first game the narrative generally dragging until the end of the sequel, which ends on a cliffhanger. For the plot actually to make sense proved miraculous considering the abysmal quality of the translation, with characters repeating themselves way too much and sounding way too unrealistic, alongside occasional errors even middle schoolers could find.

Thus, the gameplay remains to shoulder the burden, and mercifully, neither game falters horribly in this regard. The quick time events necessitating successful button presses within a second or so can possibly catch players off-guard, though fortunately, the sequences don’t randomize during repetitions, and a few leave some room for error. Players don’t actually engage in combat until a few hours into the game, with these particular segments pitting Ryo against one or more foes, players able to input sequences of button presses to have him execute special fighting game-style moves, although attempting more complex attacks can be somewhat tedious and make him more vulnerable, especially when faced with multiple foes.

In the first game, the player can assign one of Ryo’s many fighting moves to a shortcut, although this feature is absent in the sequel, where the player can acquire multiple skills with the same sequence of buttons, one for each sequence equippable at a time. Unless players have eidetic memories, they may find it easier to stick to two or a few more key moves, and this reviewer actually beat the final boss of the first game by simply spamming regular kicks, the difficulty of the game regarding combat generally inconsistent, some pre-final-battle fights actually harder than the true final ones.

Successful execution of moves slightly increases their level and power, which is pretty much the only real roleplaying game aspect of both games. Some fights in the second game necessitate frozen-time button presses for success, with one battle late in the sequel requiring a simultaneous press of two face buttons that can be difficult, failure resulting in the repetition of the preceding melee battle. Overall, the gameplay definitely doesn’t burden the game, although it can definitely drag at moments, with money slightly hard to come across in Shenmue II, where the player early on has all money acquired in the first game stolen early on unless they stock up on certain buyable items they can later resell.

Control fares significantly worse, aside from the thankful ability to record progress most anywhere, with the first game, for one thing, not having maps at all, a burden given the complexity of its urban Japanese setting, although the second entry rectifies this with maps buyable for some money. Both games suffer greatly in terms of pacing, with the first having no option to forward time (which, again the second resolves somewhat), and the sequel, if Ryo asks for directions on how to get to certain buildings, resulting in a lengthy sequence of following the person providing direction with no fast-forward option. The tank movement system was also a bad idea in both games, and interaction definitely feels loose and very unrefined.

One somewhat positive aspect of both games is their oriental soundtracks, although no particular piece is memorable, and the English voicework is generally abhorrent, the sequel’s poor enough to warrant a page on Audio Atrocities, the initial entry suffering in terms of quality that sounds as though the performers are speaking too close to their microphones, and interacting characters, given the unnatural disposition of the dialogue, sounding as though they’re galaxies apart. Fortunately, players can switch to the Japanese voices, although the audio as a whole could have used catchier music, mayhap a few central themes.

Neither game looks as though their development came at great expense, although in a break from most anime-inspired Japanese RPGs, most characters in the Japan, Hong Kong, and China settings actually look ethnic. However, the texturing job on the character models and their environments generally looks sloppy, blurry, and pixilated, the graphics looking much the way they did on the Dreamcast and Xbox. Neither game, furthermore, has any upscaled CG full-motion videos, although this reviewer definitely believes both game’s 1980s setting, with the real-life settings likely faithfully recreated. Regardless, the games would have seriously benefitted from greater graphical quality.

Finally, each game is beatable in between twelve to twenty-four hours, with some semblance of lasting appeal in the form of trophies.

In the end, the PS4 collection of the first two Shenmue games does have some things going for it, such as its more-than-functional gameplay systems, the ability to record progress most of the time, the above-average pleasant quality of the soundtrack, the ability to switch between English and Japanese voices, and the existence of replayability. However, there are many areas where it falters, such as the absolutely-abysmal pacing, the slight annoyance of the quick time events, the poor narrative with subpar localization, the weak English voice performances, and the absence of visual polish. The games definitely feel more like expensive turkeys than true masterpieces, although a forthcoming kickstarter-funded third entry provides the potential for true redemption should it take advantage of modern videogame technology, and the investment of time and money in the first two titles fortunately isn’t too great for PlayStation 4 owners.

The Good:
+Gameplay gets the job done.
+Save-anywhere (most of the time) feature.
+Much of the music isn’t bad.
+A choice of English or Japanese voices.
+Trophies add lasting appeal.

The Bad:
-Glacial pacing.
-Quick time events can be annoying.
-Disappointing narrative with subpar translation.
-Weak English voicework.
-Lack of visual polish.

The Bottom Line:
Definitely not bucket list games.

Score Breakdown:
Platform: PlayStation 4
Game Mechanics: 7/10
Controls: 4/10
Story: 3/10
Localization: 2/10
Music/Sound: 6/10
Graphics: 5/10
Lasting Appeal: 8/10
Difficulty: Inconsistent
Playing Time: 12-24 Hours per Game

Overall: 5/10

The Horse and His Boy


In modern collections of English author C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series, The Horse and His Boy is listed chronologically as the third entry, although the writer published it fifth overall, and it’s more a side-story (or midquel, for those familiar with that term) to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, taking place during the reign of the Pevensie siblings before they ultimately return to Earth after their first adventure, with the Narnian monarchs sometimes appearing throughout the story. As explained in the beginning, the plot occurs in Narnia, Calormen, and the lands between, with a Tarkaan offering to buy protagonist Shasta as a slave, who meets the male talking horse Bree and wants to run away.

Shasta ultimately meets escapee Aravis and the talking mare Hwin, and runs away with them, as well, the girl giving her backstory in an early chapter. The children and their horses soon reach the city of Tashbaan, which the Narnian monarchs visit, and where they are held captive, with the rulers of Narnia in response plotting to kidnap Prince Corin of Archenland and take him north, Shasta mistaken for the royal scion. The rulers of Calormen plot against Narnia and Archenland, the latter where the children and horses make their way, meeting the Hermit of the Southern March and getting directions to Archenland’s monarch King Lune from him.

Twists about Shasta’s lineage ultimately reveal themselves towards the end, accounting for a satisfying story, one occurring unlike most others in its series entirely within the land of Narnia and its neighbors, although there are some stylistic choices the author made with which this reviewer somewhat disagrees, such as the capitalization of some of the generic names for animals such as horses at times, not to mention the lack of a calendar system within the franchise itself indicative of exactly how many years after the main events of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe elapsed before the story opened, although fans of children’s fantasy will definitely appreciate this yarn.