A quick look at a mammoth book! I reviewed all 800+ pages of “Old Boy: Deluxe Edition Volume 1” for Anime UK News, which you can look at by clicking HERE.
I enjoyed it, it had its flaws characters wise but I couldn’t fault the core storyline.
“Cybergene” was one of the more hyped Big Finish boxsets in recent years and much like TV story “Asylum of the Daleks”, which suffered from a fan backlash when it didn’t in fact have “Every Dalek Ever!” in it, this box having loads of different Cybermen on the cover and promising much the same you’ll be unsurprised to hear it had a similar backlash from hardcore fans, made worse by the fact its audio so it’s hard to know which Cybermen featured at all beyond one or two obvious ones. Ignoring all that though, what is the story like by itself? It’s… fine. Basically a decent War Doctor story that happens to feature Cybermen. Let’s take a look…
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I don’t really have a great deal of interest in the Walking Dead spin-offs, not being the greatest fan of the last few seasons and all, but “The Ones Who Live” mini-series peaked my interest (not enough to subscribe to the service it was on, but enough to pick up the blu-ray cheap!) because it tied up the Rick and Michonne loose ends, and given Rick leaving the show was one of the major reasons I didn’t like it as much seeing him back in the spotlight was worth the price of admission alone. What about the rest though? Like the really… REALLY stupid Michonne stuff from the main show, was that brought to a reasonable conclusion? Let’s take a look!
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The second half of “Empty Vessels”, or the other two-thirds I guess, is “Lure of the Zygons”, a two part/two hour story that similarly deals with a spooky abandoned space craft but throws in some Zygons for some extra flavour. Well… sort of, honestly this felt just like the previous story in being rather bland, thankfully inoffensive, but still just that little bit too predictable and meandering to stand out. Let’s take a look…
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The next Eighth Doctor boxset is already here, just a month after the previous one released and this time we’re back with Liv and Helen in their post-Stranded, pre-Liv-returning-to-Tania period, and it seems we might be gearing up towards bringing this period of the Eighth Doctor’s life to a close… in a few years’ time, given the amount of Eighth Doctor ranges/time periods that get shuffled through each release! “Eos Falling” reminded me a bit of some of the middle episodes of the Eighth/Lucie Miller run in that it was just an hour long and while inoffensive it was also not particularly original either. With that glowing endorsement, let’s take a look!
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Shinobi: Art of Vengeance was a game I was looking forward to but didn’t actually pay a lot of attention to until it suddenly released. Given it was an old Mega Drive era SEGA franchise in the hands of the same people who made Streets of Rage 4 I wasn’t worried though, and sure enough I loved my time with this game. Let’s take a deeper look.
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The Ninth Doctor and Rose adventures continue on with the third and hopefully final visit to the Powell Estate (this was clearly supposed to be a three episode boxset…) which sees the classic idea of a “children’s game come to life” as an imp-like creature begins to make people do and say things they think to themselves but otherwise would never do, which starts off as innocent pranks but soon becomes something far more sinister. Let’s take a look!
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The third season of “Visions” is an odd one. The first season had the whole fresh ideas and “weird, Star Wars made by anime studios!” thing going for it, and Season 2 had fresh ideas from animations studios around the world. This season is more shorts by anime studios, some of which are sequels to ones from the first season, so it all feels less special this time round. Some are good, some are middling, some are bad, as per usual with any collection of short stories, but overall I felt this was the weakest Season of the three. Let’s take a look, anyway (and with no Spoiler Section because that would just take too long to recap the ends of all nine shorts…)
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Finishing off the Causeway boxset is “The Time You Never Had”, which ramps up the Causeway story arc / buzzword that I’ll be honest didn’t know was a thing until it was brought up. Still, this is once again a good story but also once again has its faults and has an ending that felt a little bit like having your cake and eating it too. Still, I think more good than bad at least! Let’s take a look…
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The first of two Eighth Doctor boxsets within a month of each other, “Causeway” features the new Charley and Audacity combo of companions and certainly puts the latter through the wringer across both stories! “Lost Among The Stars” is a really fun story, full of a creepy soundscape, interesting world building and a good “how will they get out of this one?” twist, but sadly the end and predictability makes it fall short of something truly great. Let’s take a look!
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Hogan Reviews 