Baby Review

Indian cinema is over-clogged with action and romantic movies or both. They just realise on high budget action sequences or sizzling dance numbers. But Neeraj Pandey's Baby was I guess the only mainstream in Indian cinema that did not rely on either. It rather relied on thrill, and for a change it was great. It reminded me of Argo, butt for most of the Indian crowd it was something new and fresh.

Starring Akshay Kumar, Ranna Duggubati and Taapsee Pannu, movie followed the story of the story of secret project Baby after 26/11 which was started to stop terrorist organisation into India. Akshay was in the role of Ajay Rajput, a selfless undercover agent who would do anything for his nation.The story takes you many beautiful places. Nepal, Istanbul, Abu Dhabi and obviously India. I loved the direction of the movie. It showed the beauty of the places. The majestic deserts in Abu Dhabi or the clam ness in Nepal, the movie captured it all.

The movie had some issues, perhaps that the time did not progress same for everyone in the movie. And it borrowed a lot from Argo. But despite everything it was delivered well, acted well and directed well. It felt that Indian cinema could hope for much more in this thriller genre.

Transistor Review

Supergiant Games created a very colorful, vibrant and beautiful world in Transistor. Red, the main protagonist in the game is without a voice, as it was stolen in a assassination attempt. Red is now on a mission to get her voice back from the Camerata. How does a beautiful and voiceless nightclub singer get her voice back from a Camerata who control the entire city? Well you do it with the help of your Transistor, a talking sword which has your boyfriend trapped in it. \

The world of Transistor is almost inhabited with exception of you. Sound plays a very important role in this silent world. The game has a beautiful soundtrack that fills up this silence and sets the tone for the game.The world is filled up with abandoned concert halls where Red used to have worked.
The game's main obstacle is getting through the Process. Process is controlled by Camerata who command it to attack you and get the Transistor back for mysterious reasons.

I absolutely loved the gameplay of transistor. It was a mixture of turn based combat and real time. The Process always outnumbered you, you had to make your way by setting up your strategy on how to tackle them. Every time you used a turn, it had some recharge time in which you could not attack and just have to move around trying to protect yourself. The game has attacks which were called functions that help you go through anything you encounter. They can either be acquired by leveling up or by absorbing other people's soul. The best thing about Transistors gameplay is the availability of active slots and passive slots. You can combine functions to obtain different types of affect. This provided a great number of combinations and strategy to work out. And sometimes you just don't realize which combination works out best for you. All this combining of various function gives amazing depth and replayabilty the game. I found myself loving just to fight and kill the Process even before they realized what had hit them. Everytime your health goes down, one of your four usable attack gets overloaded and this makes it unusable for a while, this forced me multiple time to leave my best combination of moves and improvise.

Transistor tells the entire story either by the voice of our beloved through the Transistor or by the terminals, they are interactive points which enable some text and tell us about the state of the city. The story is told beautifully, through conversations held between Red and transistor. Its like a visit through a war torn city with a couple who is the reason for everything. It relies you to fill up the gaps. The story unfolds beautifully and is paced amazingly well.

This game really challenges AAA games in terms of story and gameplay. Every fight sequence has a sense of reward and progression to it. Supergiant Games really made on hell of a game. A story that left me thinking for quite a while.