I have to admit I almost didn’t buy this month’s LEGO City magazine because I knew it would be rather unspectacular. I’m fast approaching the end of my patience with how repetitive it has become, but for now I got over it one more time. We’ll see how long this goes before I really give up..
Despite the ever same subject (you know, the umpteenth chase scenario), the comics are the least of my worries as at least they are drawn dynamically enough to generate some interest and excitement.
I also like that they keep playing with full page or even double spread panels, My only small complaint this time would have to be that those train carts and a few other things look a bit too much like they’ve been drawn with a ruler. At least varying the ink lines’ thicknesses would have made it look a bit more organic not to speak of other techniques like intentional misalignment or faux lens curvature here and there.
The poster sadly continues the trend of reasonably tolerable content, but really terrible technical execution. Again the colors look extremely dull and murky, lacking visual depth. Given, that even the most lo-fi 3D rendering apps available today crank out pretty decent images with their default settings, I can only assume someone is sabotaging Blue Ocean and intentionally mis-tweaking this stuff to make it look ugly.
As I already wrote in my last review for this magazine, I wasn’t particularly enthused about this issue’s extra, being that it would just be another red bike and so here we are. I’m really at a loss for words on how lazy it is to recycle those same leftovers over and over again. Anything would have made this better – a different color for this shell or one of the Stuntz theme ones depicted in the comic and poster – just not that. Even the minifigure looks stuffy, though at least it is a unique combination of body parts. The “Xtreme” jacket torso can be found in a few other sets with other leg and head combinations, so it’s not entirely useless, it’s just the figure overall is boring as heck. Perhaps a Bright Light Orange helmet might have spiced it up enough? Point in case: Everything is just Red and without contrast.
The decline in overall quality for the LEGO City magazine at this point is so obvious, I’m really beginning to wonder if it’s still worth it. This one in particular blows all its potential out of the door by simply refusing to give us something “good” in the form of one of the Stuntz bikes. It’s really telling when LEGO can’t get over themselves…
Mylenium's Brick Corner 