Website Review: Amazon.com

What is Amazon.com?

Amazon.com is a website that is a very large online store. You can buy electronics, books, movies, video games, and clothes and shoes. You can browse through products, read reviews, ask questions, engage in discussions on the forums, and order products from the website. You can either have them shipped to a P.O. Box or have them shipped directly to your house. Some products can only be shipped to your house, so keep that in mind when placing an order.

 Shopping at Amazon.com

Another great thing about Amazon.com is that they offer free shipping, called Super Saver Shipping, for products that cost over $35.00; it used to be $49.00, but since they have to pay taxes in my state, they lowered the minimum free shipping cost.

Although I do not shop for other items as much as I used to, it's still cheap to buy books from Amazon, as it offers free shipping on books if you buy over $25.00 worth of them.

I have had a great experience shipping on and the only times that an order has not arrived are when it wasn’t available, and they emailed me telling me that it wasn’t available.

 Buying Through Third Parties at Amazon.com

I have purchased items used on Amazon.com. I’ve never had a problem with any used products, but I would definitely only recommend sellers that have a 99%-100% seller rate, that way you know that the product you purchased will actually work when it arrives. I bought Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Special Edition DVDs, and they work like they’re brand new, even though they were used. I still prefer to buy new over used if I can help it.

 Amazon's Verified Customer Reviews

Amazon reviews have a label called “Verified Customer Reviews”, and it proves that the person reviewing the item purchased it because anyone can submit a review to the site. When it comes to video games, I did hear that Amazon was removing low ratings of verified customer reviews and people noticed it.

 User Reviews

Amazon.com is a very helpful website because users can leave reviews about their experiences with the products they’ve purchased from the website. I find that these reviews are informative, most of the time, and have convinced me to either buy a product or not buy it.

 Amazon Forums

Amazon has forums, and they can be very helpful if you want to ask about a product before buying it. There are also all sorts of discussion forums, and it’s pretty entertaining to look at the forums.

Flaws in Amazon Customer Reviews

If there are any flaws with Amazon.com, it would be that you have to be careful when buying used items from sellers; you have to look at their feedback percentage and what buyers have said about them. I only buy from sellers that I know are good and have sent me items I’ve ordered. I haven’t had any problems with buying used, and I’ve always received items I’ve ordered.

Retruns

I have only ever had to return a few things to Amazon, and I did get a refund, but not a full refund, but it was easy to return them.

Buying eBooks for Kindle

I recently got a free Amazon Kindle Touch, and I find it very easy to purchase books on Amazon for it. It's easy, you just touch the buy button, and it purchases the e-book. It also accepts Amazon gift cards as payment, so you can get free books using Amazon gift cards.

Just the other day, I bought a book by accident while browsing through the Kindle Store. I was able to cancel my accidental purchase, and they refunded my money the same day.

My Rating: A

Overall, Amazon.com is a great website that lets you buy anything you want and has a lot to offer its customers. I’d recommend using this website since it’s easy to find and purchase items from the store. Just be careful when buying new or used from 3^rd party sellers. I’ve never had a problem but I’m very careful when choosing a 3^rd party seller to purchase from. I try to buy straight from Amazon when possible. You can’t go wrong with this website and I buy a lot from Amazon.com. If you want a good online shopping experience, I’d recommend Amazon.com.

Video Game Review: Assassin's Creed (PS3)

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Quick Info

Studio: Ubisoft
Game Genre: third-person, pen-world, action/adventure, historical
Platform: PlayStation, Xbox360, PC, Version played was PS3
Release Date: November 13, 2007

Plot Summary

Assassin’s Creed is about a man named Desmond Miles who is kidnapped by the mysterious Abstergo Industries and put into a machine called the Animus, which lets him relive the life of his ancestor through his DNA.

Abstergo is looking for something in Desmond's ancestors' memories, and now he has to relive Altair's life as an assassin.

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Gameplay

The game itself is pretty fun; it does get repetitive at times. You have to ride to a city, find viewpoints to get a better view of the city, which will update your map, perform investigations to learn about your target, and then assassinate them. There are also optional missions like killing Templars and rescuing citizens who will become vigilantes and help you when you get into fights with guards.

It does get annoying when Altair won't quite run in the direction you want him to, and sometimes he won't jump off the roof quite the way you want him to.

Combat is also somewhat repetitive, but you can cheese most fights except against Templars by using the block button (for PS3, the Square button). The knife aiming isn't perfect, and sometimes you won't hit your target. The horse riding is also a little clunky as well.

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Graphics

The graphics look quite nice and still hold up, but there is some texture pop-in. Overall, the presentation is good, and the cities are very large and interesting to explore. It’s very fun to go rooftop all over the cities and look around.

The viewpoint synchronization sequences are really pretty, and they've become a staple of the franchise, even if Assassin's Creed has sequelitus-ed itself to the point of becoming "meh", I still enjoy playing the game, and it does look pretty good, even if the graphics look much better now in the sequels than the first game did in 2007.

Story Thoughts (Spoiler Free)

The story itself is pretty good, although it’s kind of hard to care about Desmond Miles because he barely has any character development whatsoever. Lucy is okay, but everybody in the modern world is kind of boring compared to the characters in the Third Crusade.

It's a problem when you don't care about many of the characters. I like it when we see Altair's story; everything else feels like padding.

I also find it interesting that the story takes potshots at Christianity, saying that it never happened and that it was all a lie, but won't ever say anything offensive about Islam, even though the setting is during the Third Crusade.

And it makes sure to say that the development is made up of various people of different faiths and religions, but that just feels like a religious flame shield, so they can avoid the criticism that they're only criticizing one religion and not another.

Assassin's Creed Intro Video

The Flawed, Overalert A.I. is Annoying

The game isn’t perfect, though. The A.I. can be a little annoying. Guards will be suspicious if you just start to run, especially later in the game. If you’re not walking and blending, they’ll notice you no matter what you do, and you find yourself either running away to hide or fighting them a lot, and that can get annoying.

Voice Acting

The voice cast is pretty good. Nolan North is good as Desmond Miles; he tends to be in a lot of games I’ve been reviewing lately. Kristen Bell is also very good as Lucy Stillman; she’s one of the characters who are actually likable, unlike everyone else. Phil Proctor is also good as Warren Vidic, and he does a good job of making his character come off as a jerk.

For the characters in the Third Crusade, Phil Shahbaz is the best voice actor in this game as Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, who gets the most character development and seems to be into his character. Peter Reneday is excellent as Al Mualim, and he has an interesting character.

Parental Advisory

This game is rated M for Mature, which is ages 17 and up. It has strong profanity, including the F-word. It also has graphic blood and violence, but you can turn the blood off in the options menu, but not the profanity. This is a game for adults, so it’s up to you as a parent if you want your younger teens to play this game.

Quick Grade

What Works:	What Doesn't Work
Good Story in the Historical Period	Don't feel attached to modern characters
Fun gameplay	"Real world" segments feel like padding
Nice environments	A.I. can be over-alert and annoying
Pretty open world	A one-sided view on religion won't address the other aspects of religion in the game

"Assassin's Creed" was Fun Before it became a Franchise Zombie

Assassin's Creed is a fun game, and it was unique and special. when it came out. It's not that way anymore. It was so different when it came out because there weren't open-world games that were like this. It was interesting and had a good story.

Nowadays, Assassin's Creed is stale, and every game feels the same, but back when this was first released, it was refreshing. But it is still fun, as long as you don't play one after the other, it's a game I enjoyed a lot.

Overall Grade: A-

Assassin’s Creed is a pretty good game. I do feel I got my money’s worth out of it, but it’s not necessarily a must-buy for people. It’s interesting historical fiction, but if you’re a Christian, you might be offended by it; if you’re Muslim, you might be offended by it too, but it just depends on what you’d find offensive about it.

I recommend it to people who want an interesting historical adventure. It is repetitive, and the A.I. is not perfect, but it’s pretty fun. Check it out if it seems interesting to you.

You can buy the game on Steam for Windows, Mac OX, and Steam OS + Linux and GOG.com.

© 2015 ReViewMeMedia

Manga Review: 'Bleach' Volume 1

Quick Info

Author: Tite Kubo
Publisher: Viz Media
Published: May 19, 2004
Page Count: 200 pages
Availability: Buy on Amazon, Rightstuf, and wherever books are sold, read on the Shonen Jump app

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Story Summary

Bleach is a popular Shonen manga about a high school student, Ichigo “Strawberry” Kurosaki. He seems like an average kid, but he has a special gift; he’s always been able to see ghosts and spirits. One night, he sees a mysterious woman in his room. She explains to him that she’s a Soul Reaper, someone who fights even spirits called Hollows and helps bring souls to the afterlife in the Soul Society. She loses her powers during a fight because she’s wounded by a Hollow and gives them to Ichigo, who must be a Soul Reaper until she can get her powers back.

The Popularity of Bleach

This manga is ridiculously popular, all over the world, but very much in the US. The anime is still running on Adult Swim’s Toonami block on Saturdays. The story is interesting and easily accessible to a wide audience. Bleach was one of the first anime I ever watched. I do enjoy the story and the characters, and the writing is good.

I do think that the beginning of the story is very good. But this was before Tite Kubo started dragging the story out too long with excessive plots and arcs, when many readers felt it should have ended. I'm very far behind in the manga, but I do enjoy "The Substitute" arc of Bleach, which is an interesting start to the story.

The Art

Tite Kubo’s art is pretty nice, but you can tell this is an early effort, as it looks pretty good, but his newer art is much nicer. The fight scenes are fun, though.

The character designs are all interesting and unique, and that's good because the pictures are in black and white, so the character designs have to stand out so we can distinguish all the various characters from each other.

I also like how the characters each have a unique feature that makes them memorable: Ichigo's red hair, Chad's tall and muscular, Uriyu wears glasses (We'll see him in a later volume).

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The Humor

Bleach has good, humorous bits, and it relieves some of the tension because the story and plot have a serious tone, so the art gags are amusing.

There are also humorous characters in the story (we'll meet them later) that bring comic relief to the story. In Volume 1, the humor comes from Ichigo's father, Isshin Kurosaki. I enjoy the humor, and if you like funny characters and gags, you'll enjoy Bleach.

Parental Advisory

This manga is recommended for ages 13 and up for language, violence, fanservice and tobacco use.

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The Cliches Are Here

Bleach is standard Shonen (manga and anime aimed at teenage boys), and it does have a lot of Shonen cliches: the hotheaded, extremely powerful hero, the ditzy girl, the mentor, and a monster of the week formula.

You'll recognize a lot of these tropes if you've read or watched a lot of Shonen, but it's still an enjoyable read, and it's excellent for people who've never read a manga before and want to get into it, the fact that it uses a lot of standard tropes in its story may turn off other manga fans.

Overall Thoughts

I recommend Bleach if you’re new to manga and want to get into the Shonen genre. It’s fun and enjoyable, it is pretty popular, so I don’t have to buy the manga because I can find it at my local library for free, and I’d recommend borrowing before deciding if you want to buy it for your own manga collection. It’s worth a read, but not necessarily your money.

Quick Thoughts:

What Works:	What Doesn't Work:
Good story, plot, and characters	There's a lot of Shonen Cliches
Artwork is decent, but it doesn't look as good as future volumes

Overall Grade: B+

Bleach is a really great read, and the story, characters, and art are very good. It's an easy read with a plot that's a great starting point for anyone looking to get into manga. It's got action, adventure, and comedy. It's worth your time to read, and if you want to buy it, I'd recommend it

Bleach is good, but there are a lot of typical Shonen tropes and cliches in the story, but it's well worth the time to read it. If you really enjoy the story, I'd recommend that you buy it. But if you buy it, you should prepare to get a bigger bookshelf, because this is a long-running Shonen, and that means there will be a lot of volumes to buy.

Still, I'd recommend borrowing it from your local library; it's popular enough that a lot of libraries carry the manga, so you can check it out if you ask them if they have it.

© 2015 ReViewMeMedia