Dragons Review: "How to Pick Your Dragon"

Dragons returns in its new Wednesday night time-slot.  Stoic has decided it's time to embrace the new way of life and wants to learn how to fly on a dragon.  Unsurprisingly, his attempts to fly on Toothless are a bit less than successful at first.  But Hiccup is able to convince his father that having a dragon would make his job as the island chief much easier.  It has unintended consequences, however, as Stoic beings to take Toothless out flying everyday, leaving Hiccup dragon-less.  (And Toothless is none too thrilled to be lugging around a four hundred pound viking all the time either.)  Can Hiccup find Stoic his own dragon that is as good as Toothless?

Oh yeah, and there's a rogue never-before-seen dragon terrorizing Berk.  Where could this story be going, I wonder?

Yeah, this yet another episode of the series to have it's plot be painfully predictable.  But, at the very least, it doesn't really try to hard to hide that fact.  Heck, even the commercial for the episode flat out reveals that Stoic ends up riding on the new dragon.  It's not meant to be much of a reveal.  Instead "How to Pick Your Dragon" focuses on making the story as entertaining as possible, if not especially surprising.  And, despite being predictable, "How to Pick Your Dragon" does tell a unique story that could only be told in the world of Dragons, rather than relying on television cliches like several past episodes.

Admittedly, Hiccup taking his father on a reprise of the "romantic flight" scene from the film (complete with the musical score) comes off a lot goofier than it was likely intended.  But beyond that this is another fairly solid episode, and it was nice to see Stoic's character continue to be fleshed out.  The climax of the episode was also a bit on the silly side, but it was still quite entertaining to watch and had an extremely satisfying conclusion.

These reviews are starting to sound redundant, but honestly there still hasn't been a poor episode of Riders of Berk.  The show's biggest flaw is being predictable, and "How to Pick Your Dragon" is no exception, but the episodes still manage to provide solid enough storytelling and great enough visuals that the predictability of the plot does not get in the way.  Bring on the next episode!

Dragons Review: "Alvin and the Outcasts"

This week's episode picks up where "In Dragons We Trust" left off.   Thanks to Mildew's meddling, all the dragons have been banned and sent away to the island they originally came from.  But while Hiccup and the gang are busy looking for evidence of Mildew's plot, a new threat has come to Berk.  Enter Alvin the Treacherous.  He and his ruthless gang of outcast vikings invade and quickly conquer the island demanding to see the legendary "Dragon Conqueror" who resides there.

Though Mildew stepped up to the plate as the main antagonist of the first part of this story, Alvin the Treacherous represents the first full-fledged villain to be introduced to the series, and what a villain he is!  While Mildew has mostly served as a comedic antagonist, there is nothing funny about Alvin.  Though the pacing is quick due to the nature of being a TV show, Alvin is still firmly established as a force to be reckoned with.  The climax of this episodes brings with it some of the fiercest action seen in the franchise as a whole, original movie included.

This episode was not completely devoid of the humor we've seen in the previous episodes, but there was a much larger emphasis on suspense and action this time around.  Plus, my long standing complaint that Stoic the Vast has so little personality in this show is addressed at last, and in a big way.  Stoic is a very prominent character and, at last, he's the powerful viking we saw in the film once again.

"Alvin and the Outcasts" manages to end on a very satisfying note for this two part story but it also sets up some interesting new directions for the series and it actually does not tie up all the loose ends, leaving threads for future episodes to deal with.  Looks like Riders of Berk is as strong as ever.

Dragons Review: "In Dragons We Trust"

Mildew is back, as determined to get rid of the dragons as always.  First a dragon crashes through his roof.  Then the dragons steal all of the viking's boots.  Who knows what other havoc the dragons may cause at night?  To keep the mishaps under control, Hiccup goes on night patrol to see what the dragons are up to.  His findings?  Dragons sleep, just like everyone else.  Yet somehow damage continues to appear in the morning that appears to be the work of those pesky dragons, and the incidents continue to become more and more severe.  Could there be some foul play afoot?

At first it seemed this episode would again build it's plot out of common television cliches.  For a portion of the episode, it seemed like a reasonably traditional Scooby-Doo mystery.  But Riders of Berk surprised me again by ending the episode on a rather captivating cliff-hanger and avoids the obvious ending I expected to see play out.  Mildew remains a great new addition to the cast, and he's portrayed in a much more villainous light this time around. Plus Stoic got to display a bit more personality at last.

What at first appeared to be a rehash of the first episode turned out to be the start of what appears to be a multi-episode story arc.  With the fate of the dragons left unknown, I look forward to the next chapter in the story.  Bring on the next episode!

Dragons Review: "The Terrible Twos"

The latest episode of Dragons: Riders of Berk finds Hiccup discovering a new type of baby dragon.  The little dragon, named Torch, isn't the friendliest of dragons, and when Hiccup takes the little guy home with him Torch and Toothless do not hit it off.  Hiccup and the gang also quickly discover that Torch has many unique abilities unlike any other dragon, a discovery that really seems to rub Toothless the wrong way.  However, Toothless soon realizes that jealousy may be the least of his troubles when he discovers that Torch's angry mother is rampaging across the island looking for her lost baby.

I was surprised and thrilled to see that "The Terrible Twos" turned out to be such a showcase for Toothless.  He's front and center the whole time!  And not only does Toothless continue to be one of the most appealing characters in the recent history of animation, his ample screen-time also shows off how well produced Riders of Berk is.  Despite being a large and complex character to animate, Toothless moves and emotes beautifully in this episode.  I was also very pleased to see that the creators of the show were willing to have one of the dragons be the main character, instead of merely serving as a sidekick for the human cast.  Here's hoping more episodes put Toothless in charge!

The story relies a bit less on television cartoon cliches than past episodes, even if the jealousy subplot has been seen before, and it easily features the most action-packed moments of the show thus far.  "The Terrible Twos" is yet another in a line of great episodes to start the season.  I can't wait to see what Riders of Berk has to offer next week!

Dragons Review: "Animal House"

Cartoon Network's new series Dragons: Riders of Berk officially premiered tonight with what is actually the third episode to air, "Animal House."  Once again the plot was centered around another challenge of living peacefully with Dragons.  This time, it turns out that the farm animals are terrified of the big scaly beasts that suddenly coexist with them.  And, out of sheer terror, the chickens have been rendered unable to lay eggs and the yaks have stopped giving milk.  With a terrible blizzard on the way, it's up to Hiccup (who else?) to figure out how to get the farm animals to relax so the Vikings won't starve during the storm.  But when the blizzard hits early, can Hiccup and the dragons round up the terrified animals before they all freeze to death?

The story isn't going to win any awards.  It's simple and predictable.  The episode beginss with an otherwise unrelated scene about snowboarding on dragons where we learn that dragons have a natural instinct to protect non-dragons in times of peril.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together and figure out where the story is going well before the halfway mark.  It's also a bit strange to see Hiccup so shocked and surprised that Toothless would be willing to save his life given that Toothless kind of did that a whole bunch of times already in the movie.  Plus the whole concept of dragons having a natural instinct to protect all other living creatures is a bit strange.

However, story nitpicks aside, "Animal House" has once again proven to be an enjoyable and well executed extension of the film's world.  The writing continues to be top-notch with lots of great one liners and visual gags that are perfectly in line with the film.  Plus, the tone does a good job of shifting to a more serious side once the blizzard hits.  Stoic continues to lack personality in the show, but all the other characters are spot on.  Toothless gets lots of screen time in this particular episode and he steals the show, as expected.  His animation looks great for a television budget and he even gets to reprise his trademark awkward smile from the film.  The score also does a brilliant job of creating the right tone and atmosphere, with a liberal sprinkling of the movie's themes throughout.

So in the end, even though it's easy to point out how predictable and flawed the story of "Animal House" is, it didn't actually detract from my enjoyment of the episode.  It matches the style and tone of the film perfectly, even if it doesn't offer a lot of surprises.  Plus, it was pretty cool to finally see one of the terrible snow storms mentioned in the film.  And snowboarding on a Night Fury should totally be in the next Winter Olympics.  Dragons: Riders of Berk is off to a good start!

Review: New Super Mario Bros. 2

Welcome to New Super Mario Bros. 2!  The game where everything is recycled and the coins don't matter!

New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS marks the third release for the "New" series of Mario titles.  First, we had New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, a very fun if not overly simplified revival of classic Mario sidescrolling gameplay.  Then came New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which did little to change the formula but did increase the scope of the game dramatically and added the hilariously chaotic 4-person multiplayer mode.  It felt a little stale if you had already played the DS original since it reused the same level themes and most of the same gimmicks, but it felt like a more full-featured fleshed out version of the concept.

New Super Mario Bros. 2, so named because evidently the Wii game doesn't count, continues to do very little to update the formula from the previous two games, but with a new gimmick thrown in here and there.  The primary new gimmick this time?  COINS!  COINS EVERYWHERE!  This game throws more coins at you than you know what to do with.  They spew out of pipes.  They drift around on parachutes.  They trail behind enemies.  Sometimes they just rain from the sky!  The goal is to grab as much money as possible to eventually reach the game's overarching goal:  collecting 1,000,000 coins.  The game keeps a running total of all the coins you've ever earned in the game so you can track your progress.

The result of this coin-grabbin' gimmick is pretty simple:  coins and lives are worthless now.  The game throws them at you so fast and furiously that you'll rack up hundreds of lives without even trying.  Plus, the game really doesn't reward you in any way for going out of your way to collect coins other than occasionally popping up a message to let you know that you've collected lots of coins.  The coins don't even unlock secret levels or anything, since series staple Star Coins remain hidden about the levels and are still used as the currency for unlocking secrets, like always.  The only goal to strive for is that 1,000,000 coin mark.  After playing through the main story and a few of the secret levels, I observed that I was at about 15,000 coins.

Only 985,000 to go...

So yeah, the coin grabbing mechanic is ultimately shallow and pointless.  But what about the rest of the game?  Underneath the gold-tinted facade is still a game of classic Mario platforming, correct?  And that is true.  But the result is sort of a mixed bag.  On one hand, I would be willing to say that NSMB2 probably has the best levels in the "New" series thus far.  While previous games in the series mostly presented Super Mario Bros. 3 inspired levels that provided short sprints to the flagpole, the levels in NSMB2 are much larger and open.  There are lots of secret little nooks and crannies to stumble upon in the levels, and while many of these do simply hold more useless coins, some contain the ever elusive Star Coins and some also house secret exits that lead to alternate paths.

The Raccoon Tail from Mario 3 makes it's return here.  But while the Tanooki suit in Super Mario 3D Land mostly felt like Nintendo forcing some heavy handed nostalgia into the game by sticking tails everywhere,  New Super Mario Bros. 2 is much more subtle.  Grabbing a tail simply serves to better allow Mario to explore the levels, as there are often hidden areas way up high.  Beyond the use of the tail, it definitely feels like the development team was actually looking at Super Mario World for most of their inspiration this time around.  Some levels even feature World's trademark slanted geometric hills in the background, and long-missing mid-boss character Reznor makes his triumphant return here.  That the game does not lean too heavily on Mario 3 for inspiration is quite refreshing!  It's nice to see that Nintendo remembered that there are other good games in the Mario series to draw influence from.

On the other hand...

As much as I enjoy the Super Mario World influences, that's part of the problem with New Super Mario Bros. 2.  Everything about it is pulled from previous Mario games.  Most notably, almost everything about this game's presentation is pulled directly from New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  The graphics, the voice clips, the level gimmicks, the enemies, and most notably, the music.  There's barely a new composition to be heard this time around.  Which is not to say that the soundtrack is poor.  It's quite good.  And I don't have a problem with reusing a few specific tracks in situations where it makes sense for old themes to return.  But lifting the entire soundtrack from a previous game and using it again with only a tiny number of new compositions and alterations comes across as extraordinarily cheap, even if the songs themselves are still decent.

Likewise, it's hard to appreciate the handful of new elements NSMB2 does bring to the table when visually it looks exactly like the previous two games in the series.  We've seen this exact same set of grassland, desert, beach, forest, volcano and other worlds in two games already, plus the fact that Nintendo seems to insist on using these same themes in all other Mario games now too, such as Mario Party 9.  The result is that this game looks tired and stale.  You've seen everything in this game already, so even when it does try to do something legitimately different, it's still impossible the shake the feeling that you've played this game before.  At least twice.  The only slightly clever thing I observed was combining the beach and forest themes into one world this time.  But that mostly just seems to be because there are fewer normal worlds in NSMB2.  (Six instead of the standard eight, though there are several secret worlds to make up for it.)

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is not completely devoid of new ideas.  The problem is that most of them are simply slight extensions or variations of what previous Mario games have done repeatedly.  So even when playing a level with a "new" feature it still feels incredibly familiar because you've probably seen something like it in a previous game before.  The result is a Mario game that is definitely fun to play, has everything that makes Mario games fun, but ultimately feels shallow and redundant.  In a series known for reinventing itself with each sequel, NSMB2 feels uncharacteristically safe.  Never before has a game with the word "New" in the title felt so stale.

I'm almost willing to give Nintendo a free pass here, because they have gone on record to say that they plan to make only one Mario sidescroller per console.  So once the equally stale looking New Super Mario Bros. U comes out later this year, it could be at least five or six years until we see another sequel in the series.  Hopefully that will provide Nintendo enough time to come up with some legitimately fresh new ideas for the series because as it stands, New Super Mario Bros. 2 is an overly-cautious retread on what has already been done repeatedly in its two predecessors.  It's still fun, but there's nothing really "new" about it.

My thoughts on "Dragons: Riders of Berk"

How to Train Your Dragon is one of my all time favorite films.  And it's no secret that it is one of my favorites for two primary reasons.  First:  Toothless is awesome.  If you put Toothless on the screen it will make anything cooler.  At least 20% cooler.  Second:  the movie had exceptionally good music, courtesy of John Powell.

And, it would seem, that I'm not the only one who enjoyed How to Train Your Dragon, as it's getting the full franchise treatment that Dreamworks has thrust upon all of their hits in recent years.  Short films, sequels, online games, vaguely Christmas-themed half hour specials, live arena spectaculars, and the obligatory television series.  Normally I'm skeptical about milking a franchise for all it's worth.  That could probably be a subject for a whole article in and of itself.  But How to Train Your Dragon created a world rich with potential for expansion.  So when Dreamworks announced its plans to throw the Dragons franchise into the milking machine, I was actually pretty excited.  The fact that Gift of the Night Fury managed to be a legitimately well made follow-up to the film instead of just a cheap cash-in holiday special made the future seem even brighter for the franchise.

And now we have Cartoon Network's new series called Dragons: Riders of Berk.  Recently the network aired two preview episodes of the new show set to premier this fall.   In the first episode, How to Start a Dragon Academy, Hiccup and co are faced with the task of figuring out how dragons and vikings can coexist before the curmudgeonly viking Mildew convinces Hiccup's father to cage the dragons and send them away.  The second episode, Viking for Hire, shows the struggles of Gobber, who is suddenly faced with a bit of an identity crisis now that his career as a dragon slayer and weapons blacksmith is over.

By and large, I was quite impressed by both episodes.  Both episodes dealt with an issue that the end of the film and Gift of the Night Fury both sort of glossed over:  the challenge of having a clan of vikings and a clan of dragons coexisting peacefully on a tiny little island.  It's a subject rich with potential for future stories so I'm glad to see the series exploring that direction instead of just having the dragons and the vikings being all best-buddies now right away.  Though it does kind of make one wonder why they didn't call the series How to Train Your Dragon: The Series or something similar because it looks like it is, in fact, going to deal with training dragons.  Oh well.

Either way, the first two episodes demonstrate that the creators of the show have some solid ideas for where to go with the series from here.  The writing, tone, and humor are all very much in line with the film.  Gobber seems a little dumber than he was in the movie and Stoic seems to be a bit more stoic than usual, but for the most part everyone is in character.  The cast is a fairly even mix between original cast members and sound alikes, but everybody sounds pretty good overall, even though most of the Scottish accents sound pretty fake.  The handful of new characters all fit right in with the established ones.  Mildew, the antagonistic curmudgeon of the island, is particularly enjoyable to watch.

Visually, the show looks quite good.  Being on a TV budget, there was no way it would look as good as the film, but it comes about as close as I think one could reasonably expect.  The visual detail has all been toned down a bit.  Hiccup's furry vest has been changed to look to be made out of leather now, for example.  And Stoic's beard took a pretty big hit, which is unfortunate.  But the overall look of the show is still surprisingly rich and very close to the level of detail seen in the film, which is quite impressive for television animation.  The animation is fairly decent, too.  The dragons' movement does tend to look a little robotic at times but it's clear that a lot of effort was put into making the dragons look good, especially Toothless.  Everyone's favorite Night Fury isn't on screen too much in the two episodes shown, but he's just as lovable as he was in the film when he does appear.

One last detail I was very pleased to see, or hear rather, is that the series utilizes the same character themes and musical motifs as the original film score.  A bit of research reveals that the show's music is being handled by composer John Paesano.  Paesano seems to have a solid grasp on the style of music that John Powell first established.  He weaves familiar themes in and out of the score without just copying the original source material.  Needless to say, I'm thrilled that the television series will have music that lives up to the great score crafted for the movie.

Based on the two episodes shown, it looks like Dragons: Riders of Berk is off to a great start.  Both episodes consisted of good Saturday morning cartoon fun, even if they were a bit on the predicable side.  The world of Dragons lends itself well to this sort of format, so I'm glad the potential is not being wasted!  Everything I enjoyed about the original film is present and accounted for and the new ideas and characters work very well with the established world.  I look forward to seeing future episodes when the season begins later this year!