ToyVey!

Comic Con Day 2 was a big day for fans of BBC’s Doctor Who and Torchwood series! A two-hour block was dedicated to these two series, with appearances by new Head Writer Steven Moffat, producer Julie Gardner, and Torchwood stars John Barrowman, Gareth David-Lloyd, and Naoko Mori.

…Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures to share from the panels. Instead, please enjoy the following pictures taken while I shuffled through the line to purchase San Diego Comic Con exclusives from Mattel. It was only an hour long wait, thank goodness, and we were able to get the exclusives we wanted.

We’re at San Diego Comic Con, where the air is hot and heavy with excitement over the latest comic, gaming, and pop culture news.

Wednesday night was Preview Night, when preregistrants were permitted to enter the exhibit hall early to get a glimpse of what’s in store. Here are a random selection of things that we found exciting or notable… the My Little Pony 25 Ponies for 25 Years project, the 3 3/4 inch Hellboy action figures, and some upcoming World of Warcraft action figures!

Sam & Max Season 2 Episode 4: Chariots of the Dogs
From Telltale Games (http://www.telltalegames.com)
Available now

Okay, I admit it – I’ve been a lousy reviewer this season. It’s not Telltale’s fault! The Sam & Max Season 2 episodes have been good! But between traveling for work and Toy Fair and basic procrastination, I keep missing my chance to review the new chapters until it’s too late.

Well, not this time, bucko.

We’ve had a pretty good season up to now. There’s been more variety of locations and storylines, a few new characters, and lots of good gags. Just like last season, there’s generally been one puzzle per episode that’s stumped me for hours until I’ve finally slapped my forehead and said, “Oh, DUH.”
Okay, I’ve needed to ask Max for help a couple of times, too. Yes, this old-school adventure gamer is ashamed. But I also appreciate this season’s clever new hint system, which lets you set the frequency at which your loveable lagomorph companion offers vague chatter to gently steer you in the correct direction without outright hitting you over the head with it. And I especially like that the default setting for this hint system is “off,” so that I can continue to feel good about myself and my awesome puzzle-solving skillz.

So hey, new episode! Flying saucers! Time travel! Faces from the past, present and future!
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Tamagotchi Connection V5

Manufacturer: Bandai

MSRP: $14.99

Availability: Mass retail, now

Website: tamagotchi.com, TamaTown.com

Question: What’s even cuter than a Tamagotchi virtual pet?

Answer: A whole bunch of Tamagotchi pets, bouncing around on your screen!

Bandai’s fifth-generation Tamagotchi virtual pets have arrived, and they’ve brought their entire family! Old-school Tamagotchi fans may remember the whispered rumors of secret codes that would let you have twin Tamagotchi. Now, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, you can raise an entire family of Tamagotchi brothers and sisters at once. No special codes required! Just pull out the tab, set the time and your birthday, and you’re immediately presented with three bouncing Tamagotchi triplets, each with its own unique appearance and personality.

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Oh, what a day.

We spent the bulk of our day travelling from shopping mall to shopping mall, getting clothing repaired and returning items and picking up items and buying the World’s Tiniest Unicron and hunting down the elusive Sector Seven Truck.

Yes, Sector Seven, the highly secretive government agency from the 2007 Transformers Movie had brought its Mobile Command Unit to Springfield to assure citizens that NBE (Non-Biological Entities) absolutely did not exist.

Locating the Sector Seven Mobile Command Unit was no easy task. Keep reading →

Introducing a new segment of ToyVey: TOy GeVault! A catch-all for old toy reviews, items in our toy vault that we’re just now unpacking, and anything else that’s not quite new-news.

Tamagotchi Connection V4

Manufacturer: Bandai

MSRP: $14.99

Availability: Mass retail, now

Website: tamagotchi.com

In past years, I have been a veritable Tamagotchi maniac. I bought Tamagotchi-related books while in Japan, translated any Japanese information that I could find into English and put it on my website, and kept copious notes on the results of my inhumane experiments in light deprivation and so forth.

With Tamagotchi Connection V4, though, I’ve been considerably more relaxed. In fact, my Tamagotchi Connection V4 lay dormant and in-package for some time after I purchased it (the glow in the dark one which was the winning design in the Great Tamagotchi Shellection Contest). I didn’t do any research on what the “good” Tamagotchi characters looked like… or even which characters were part of the teen stage and which were part of the adult stage.

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What does June 2nd mean to you?

For some, it was the same as any other Saturday… the beginning of a weekend, with the promise of fun in the sun, fireworks at night, and many other early summer pleasures.

For Transformers fans, it was the street date for the toys and associated products for the upcoming Transformers live action movie, aka Shiny New Robot Toy Day.

Here at ToyVey, we joined our Transfan brethren in setting up a detailed plan of attack.

8 AM sharp, be at the local Target store for the opening of the doors!
Make sure to get the Target Exclusive Transformers Stratego game, as well as the Target Exclusive Robo-Vision Prime action figure!
Don’t forget to get one of their Transforming gift cards!

10 AM, be sure to swing by Radio Shack to pick up their exclusive Transformers ZipZaps remote control cars!

We ran into a few fellow collectors and swapped tales of the hunt. “The Wal-Mart in the next town over has had the whole movie assortment out since last week!” “I hear there’s going to be a sale on some of these tomorrow…” “I already got the Movie Preview toys and all the Deluxes at a different store.”

The toy-hunt intensified with the late-breaking news that some of the Optimus Prime Voice Changer helmets (”with real movie voices!”) had the voice of Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime’s voice-actor in the original series and the live-action movie), whereas others had a voice that sounded like Gary Chalk (Optimus Primal from Transformers: Beast Wars, as well as the more recent Transformers cartoons).

We ended up getting the Gary Chalk variant, and will be keeping our eyes and ears peeled for the Peter Cullen version. We apologize in advance to Target and Wal-Mart customers for the endless cries of “I… Am… Optimus Prime!” that will echo through stores as we mash buttons in an attempt to figure out whether the helmets sound sufficiently like Peter Cullen.

In the meantime… we have some serious toy opening to do!

Sam & Max Season 1
From Telltale Games (http://www.telltalegames.com)
Available for download now

All six episodes of Telltale’s first season of Sam & Max are now online and available for purchase and download. So what’s the official Toy Vey verdict? Let’s sum up.

The Good

• The graphics and animation – Hardly a pop, sizzle or fratz (I may have just made those terms up). The character models were solid, the designs spot-on and the animation smooth and cartoonishly lifelike (lifeishly cartoonlike?). Extra kudos for all the great face and body movements during the dialogue. The emoting really helped to solidify the Freelance Police and their supporting cast as “real” characters.
• The voice work – Every casting choice was pretty much perfect. Sam and Max themselves were great despite having to live up to the voice actors from both the original game and the TV series, and all the other character voices were well chosen and acted as well….even if some of the characters themselves were kind of annoying.
• The writing – That was some great, snappy dialogue. Steve Purcell should be proud of the job these guys did.
• The score – Every chapter had its own catchy tunes, and the new version of the old theme music was a great twist on a classic.
• The musical numbers – One of the things I found myself most looking forward to with each successive episode was stumbling
  upon the full-blown musical number. They weren’t all major hits, but when they were good (especially in episodes 3 and 5), they were *great*.
• The nostalgia – The Telltale team knows their stuff, and they didn’t miss a beat in recreating and even improving upon the classic style of games. This old adventure gamer was well and truly pleased.
• The in-jokes – It was good to see that the game’s creators didn’t let a little thing like not actually making this game at Lucasarts dissuade them from including plenty of references to the original Sam & Max game and other Lucas titles.
• The craziness – I complained in an earlier review about insufficient insanity in the first few chapters, but the last few more than made up for it.
• The trophies – It was always fun to try to guess what souvenir from the current adventure would turn up in the Freelance Police’s office the next month.
• The extra stuff – Who wants to burn straight through a great game? I found myself deliberately choosing the “wrong” dialogue path or action constantly, just to see what the characters would do or say, and my efforts were consistently met with copious unnecessary-but-welcome dialogue. I’m sure there were a bunch of easter eggs that I missed in there, too.
• The other extra stuff – The game makers kept fans provided with a steady stream of videos and other fun stuff on the Telltale website throughout the season, keeping us coming back for more on a regular basis. An excellent touch.
• The payoffs – From punchlines to puzzle solutions, you really felt rewarded from start to finish for playing each episode.

The Less Good

• The voice direction (rarely) – This is a pretty minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things, but occasionally a piece of dialogue would have totally the wrong inflection for the context of the conversation, and it jumped out at me.
• The locations – I was pretty sick of the office neighborhood by the end of the season. Let’s have a wider range of new settings next time around. Unless the budget won’t allow it, in which case just opening a new store or two in the area might help.
• The supporting cast – Sybil and Bosco grew on me, but the Soda Poppers tended to grate, Hugh Bliss was pretty annoying, and a lot of the others were kind of generic. I would have liked a bit more diversity and weirdness in the characters from episode to episode.
• The partnership – A couple of episodes let you select one or two dialogue choices for Max, and you could talk to him for vague hints, but in general this was Sam’s show and the bunny was just there to tag along and quip. I would have liked a little more utility for Max, whether it be more speech paths, more wanton acts of senseless violence, or the ability to make use of him as an inventory object as in a few puzzles from the original game.
• The continuity – It won’t be spoiling too much to say that a war starts in Episode 4, but despite a background reference in the last two chapters, it’s never really addressed again. Is it still going on at the end of the season? What happened to the characters involved, especially given what later happens in the final chapter? While one major plot event does continue to pay off (and how!), there are a few things that happen in certain chapters that seem like they should have been brought up again later on.
• The story arc – While the individual chapters were written well, it didn’t always seem like the overall season story was thought out that much in advance. There’s a recurring theme of hypnosis that carries through the whole season, but it never really feels like all the individual crises are part of one overarching storyline, and the conspiracy revealed at the end feels a little more wedged-in than pre-planned.

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention “the puzzles” in either list. It’s a hard one for me to label – I found most of them pretty easy, but still enjoyed figuring them out. The first few chapters were a relative cakewalk, but the last few each tended to have one conundrum that I got totally stuck at for a while, and I’m not sure if that was just my own gamer mentality or Telltale making things a little too nonintuitive. At any rate, I made it through the whole season without needing to look up any solutions, which made me feel pretty good about myself, but may make other gamers complain that things were too easy. The game could have been a little more challenging, I’ll admit, but I’m pretty satisfied with the degree of puzzle-solving overall.

And I’m more than satisfied with the season as a whole – in fact, I’m downright ecstatic. Petty complaints aside, Telltale did a fantastic job, and they deserve plenty of praise and cash. Even though I’ve played the whole thing through, I’m definitely going to fork out for the retail collection when it hits stores later this year, just to have a shiny box and the ability to replay the season whenever I feel like it. I recommend that you do the same.

…So when do we get Season 2, again?

I-CY: chillin’ for the beat

Click here for our review photo gallery!

Manufacturer: Hasbro/Tiger Electronics

MSRP: $19.99

Availability: Mass retail, now

Website: hasbro.com

I-CY is the latest addition to Hasbro/Tiger Electronics’ iDog family of musical companions. For those late to the scene, iDog and its cousins iCat, and iFish are electronic pets that plug into various MP3 players and interact with the music through lights, sound, and just generally grooving. There’s also an iPup, which doesn’t plug into MP3 players but does react to music through motion and exciting light displays.

Although I was very excited when I first heard about iDog in 2005, I didn’t get one due to the shameful fact that I don’t have an iPod… and from the name, I assumed that iDog was specially designed to work with an Apple iPod. When I found out that a penguin version was in the works, I decided then and there that we had to get one, just so that I could have my own desktop penguin.

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Sam & Max Season 1 Episode 4: Abe Lincoln Must Die!
From Telltale Games (http://www.telltalegames.com)
Available now

Another month, another Sam & Max episode from Telltale! These guys are like clockwork…which is more than I can say for myself. Yeah, I never reviewed Episode 3: The Mole, the Mob and the Meatball. The truth is that I wasn’t quite sure what to say about it. Like the first two chapters, it entertained, was well-scripted, well-acted and well-animated, but it didn’t really offer anything new. Same general setup, same general cast of characters, same short play length and overall ease of puzzles, etc. etc. There was a nice song, but you can’t write an entire review about a song. Unless you’re a music reviewer or a thirteen-year-old kid on Myspace, I guess.

But Episode 4 turns most of that around. So why am I still a couple of weeks late reviewing it? Because I’m a lazy procrastinator. This one’s all my fault. Sorry!

Telltale has definitely learned from the feedback to the first few episodes, both positive and critical. Although our usual cast of characters is still here and the episode’s still fairly short (which is entirely reasonable for the price and the fact that it’s just one of six chapters in the full “season”), everything else is a great improvement on what was already a pretty solid model. For once, you don’t start out at the office! What’s more, you don’t even have to spend that much time in the office neighborhood, though you do need to stop by once or twice. This time around, most of the action takes place in and around the White House (yes, THAT White House) as our intrepid anthropomorphic duo seeks to foil a fiendish plot to…well, it’s never entirely clear what the plot’s ultimate goal is. But it sure is diabolical, and putting a stop to it is definitely fun.
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