Transformers Animated: Return of the Headmaster

Ahh, another great episode of Transformers Animated. Today's episode was the Return of the Headmaster. As you can tell from the title, the criminal Headmaster returns, but now works for Sumdac Corporation. He's up to his old tricks of stealing Transformers bodies, but this time someone who deserves it. It works out, of course and helps Optimus Prime earn Sentinel Prime's respect. Good ending. I love this show. No Decepticons this time around though.

Transformers Animated: The Elite Guard

Today's episode, The Elite Guard, is very different and interesting. The Cybertron Elite Guard has come to Earth to take back the All Spark and deal with Optimus and his crew . It's very odd to watch Optimus get disrespect from his superiors, but again this series is showing us a version of what it would of been like if Prime was brand new. What was nice is that we got to finally see what Cybertron looks like real quick and it actually looks like the G1 version of the planet. The episode gets good as it goes. Our autobot friends get to prove themselves.

Excellent episode, and great for Optimus Prime fans.

Transformers Animated: Megatron Rising - Part 2

This is the best Transformers Animated episode ever so far, "Megatron Rising - Part 2". This is what everyone has been waiting for. A true legendary battle between the new autobots and decepticons. Megatron is simply awesome and all powerful. He has his arm cannon, but also has a sword to fight with. During this episode, Prime and Megatron finally got to fight off in a way reflective of their legendary battle in the movie along with their hand weapons. However, of course Prime didn't get serevely deathly damaged though. Megatron did beat his ass real good and they got to battle it out alone. We also get to see the autobot starship again in better detail and it is very similar to the Ark from G1.

As the episode goes on it only gets better as Optimus Prime and Megatron face off yet again, but this time with the All Spark reflective of the live action movie. Good thing it wasn't a human that put the final punch to Megatron. It's not over, of course, but now Megatron looks like his damaged self from the G1 movie. I don't think he's turning into Galvatron any time soon though. So, I must leave you with this. If you never watched Transformers Animated, this is the time. Megatron Rising Part 1 and 2 are legendary episodes to kick off a new generation of Great Wars to be remembered.

Xbox 360 Game Demos: Viva Piñata & Turning Point

Clive Barker's Jericho (Demo)
I decided to replay the Jericho demo since i gave it a bad review at first. This time around, my experience was much better. Maybe I wasn't playing it correctly. I don't know, but it was a lot better this time. However, the game is a bit average and not something really special. If you got stuck with this guy, you would surely play through it once and that's about it. I don't really see a lot of replay in this game. Overall, it could be greatly improved, but if you picked it up for like 15 bucks, it be alright. One time through it would be fun, it's just average and limited.

Viva Piñata: Party Animals (Demo)
I almost accidently bought this game thinking it was a newer version of the Viva Piñata sim game. Luckily I realized it wasn't and now playing the demo, glad I didn't buy it. Viva Piñata: Party Animals is a collection of mini-games based off of many other Mario Party rip offs. The demo offers a number of mini-games to play one after another. I found that most of these games were uninteresting and boring. They also reuse gameplay options in different ways for a number of these things. The only mini-games I found really interested from the demo were the racing games. Some people may think they're underdeveloped, but they were fun. They did let you collect items to shoot at other players like in Mario Kart. Otherwise, this party game is best avoided. The reviews don't like it, and I don't see a lot of fun for a group of people. If you really like the Viva Piñata characters and world, you may want it then. Otherwise, I say avoid it big time. [ IGN Entry, GameSpot Entry ]

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty (Demo)
This FPS is very unique, at least the beginning of the game. Turning Point has you start out on top of a huge skyscraper as New York City is attacked by the Nazi's in an alternative timeline of American history. You have to work your way down this building as all hell has broken loose around you. It's pretty amazing and unique. The game uses the Unreal III engine, which i'm not a big fan of. The main thing I dislike is that the controls are pretty tight and strict in their movements. I guess this is to make the feeling more realistic, but i prefer typical FPS controls that are more loose. Oh wow, this game actually got terrible reviews. Seemingly, this game suffers from a lot of bugs, framerate issues, and a bare plot. Well then, I wasn't planning on getting this title anyhow. However, I do recommend trying out the demo. It's unique for sure! [ IGN Entry, GameSpot Entry ]

Beanie Babies 2.0

Beanie Babies, one of the major fads of the late 1990s...I used to be a part of that fad for a couple of months as a kid. Somehow I ended up giving up the ones I owned. I don't really remember what actually happened to them. About a year or two ago, my mom decided to get into beanie babies after she started to help my girlfriend buy some one day. So, we went down the dark path of collecting many of them for my mom. Luckily, most of them were pretty cheap because the fad has been dead so long. A lot of people want to get rid of their beanie baby collection, which makes it pretty cheap. You can buy a lot of them for a dollar a piece at flea markets.

This review below is based on the web site before the April 3rd update
The original beanie baby line came to an end at the end of December 2007. Ty, the producers and creators of beanie babies, decided to relaunch their legendary toy line. To compete against Webkinz, Ty created Beanie Babies 2.0. This new line of beanie babies offer similar, but higher quality beanie babies along with a secret code for an online flash game world web site. This site offers a 2D cartoony virtual world with games and chat rooms. The competition, Webkinz has had many years to develop and create their own hot selling brand with their own web site. From my quick research, Webkinz pretty much ripped off the Neopets game system. Unfortunately, Beanie Babies 2.0 virtual world doesn't even compare at all that Webkinz and Neopets offer in gameplay, features, and content. It's still extremely early, but it's very worrisome.

So far, the 2.0 system is very bare. There are many different flash games you can play, items that you receive from playing those games, and chat rooms, but that's about it. They hint towards some type of adventure game, but it's no where to be found at the moment. You can also max out your current stats of beanies, friends, hunger, and games played to unlock some type of item with no known purpose. So, to sum up the Beanie Babies 2.0 virtual world is simply that its an interface to play and unlock a collection of short flash games, a collection of limited graphical chat rooms, and a small collecting element. Each beanie unlocks their own personal room, however these rooms are featureless except holding your mouse over a couple of items that contains different animations. One could hope that since the site was recently launched in January 08, that Ty will push for the game system to be greatly improved and added to. I know they have fixed many bugs, but the engine still has glitches and slows down. Either way, if Ty expects to compete, the game engine has to be serevely upgraded with a lot more features than what they have right now.

I just completed an overview of the whole system. I realize now more than ever that the system is really still in beta. It's ultimately incomplete and still broken. There are locked chat rooms and games that can only be opened with a key. They give you this key, but you have to use it every single time to open any of them. However, based on what they say, there are meant to be unique keys to open selected areas. This concept doesn't work yet. You can also bypass some of those locks through a shortcut menu. I also maxed out my stats and was given a watering can. I have no idea what to use it for. The stats are still maxed out too. So, I'm basically at dead end for now. This looks pretty bad for Ty. That's for sure. However, I believe that the system holds a lot of promise if they keep developing it. I do really like the graphics and feel of the whole thing. If they could just upgrade it with a lot more, it'll be something special.

Transformers Animated: Megatron Rising - Part 1

The rise of the Decepticons is near as the episode "Megatron Rising - Part 1" begins. This is the first episode to seriously focus on the Decepticons and include all the characters we have met so far for their side. Finally seeing Starscream again since his first appearance, it's amazing how much he sounds like G1 Starscream. They did a great job at finding an actor who sounds like him. I also notice that his colors have been upgraded to red to match his G1 counterpart.

What's odd in this episode for the autobots is how Optimus Prime is trying to be really serious and hard on his troops with the upcoming threat. I guess the realization is that this generation of autobots are beginners at their claim to fame. I think this is a first to have an Optimus character that's only beginning to learn to be a leader and hero. Some people were against the idea that these autobots were not warriors, but held a maintenance job repairing space bridges. However, this is a way to show true character development of how characters with similar names to G1 began to become legendary. Afterall, G1 Optimus Prime didn't start off as a warrior either in his past. It was because of Megatron's attack that Orion Pax had to be upgraded into this leader warrior that we all know. Of course, the G1 series didn't focus on that, but wrote it as his backstory. Transformers Animated is the first to show how autobots go from average workers to legendary warriors.

Ah, the end of the episode was just getting good. All Hail Megatron.

Transformers Animated: Nature Calls

The series continues with "Nature Calls" which was a pretty good episode today. It was interesting that they nodded towards G1 again by having some construction vehicle robots that were similar in color and appearance to some of the constructicons. There was a supervisor guy that looked similar to Sparkplug and wore the same outfit. It's also cute that now the Transformers, well Bumblebee, plays video games and watch television. The main plot today focuses on space barnacles that are some dangerous alien life form from space that like to cling onto spaceships and machines. These barnacles made me thing of the Cosmic Dust organism from Geneation One but actually are completely unrelated. Cosmic Dust causes Transformers to rust away, while Barnacles engulf machines and take form into an alien zombie. Still, it's cool that they brought back the concept of alien viruses and organisms of deep space. The end was nice anyhow, heh heh. The next two episodes are going to be awesome.

Japanese TV: Bara no nai Hanaya

I started to watch a Japanese Drama called "Bara no nai Hanaya" which translates to "The Flower Shop Without Roses" or something similar. This drama starts off extremely sad as the viewer is given a summary of scenes that explains the main character's past that makes him who he is today. Shiomi Eiji suffers a terrible lost as his future wife dies while giving birth to their daughter, Shizuku. The summary of scenes continues to show a progression of his life with his daughter until she is aged to be in the second grade. Eiji is somewhat consumed by his girlfriend's love for flowers that he ends up opening a Flower Shop which he gets to meet a lovely woman who is blind. This is where the actual present story starts off along with his daughter and how she has began to hide her face since it reminds Eiji of his true love. What's somewhat odd is that there seems to be some form of man who is out to get our innocent main character. These cruel characters are only shown extremely briefly and mysteriously. This story is such a good hearted tale that it's going to hurt to watch cruel characters try to take advantage of Eiji. Overall, this show is a very human story and sad. It's just the first episode too. The preview shows that the plot is going to really start advancing with this devilish plot against our sad florist. Either way, I recommend people taking a look at it. The series is only in Japan, but has been fansubbed on the internet.

Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bara_no_nai_Hanaya
Official Web Site: http://wwwz.fujitv.co.jp/rose/index.html