 Excellent! |
| Review Date: December 4, 2008 |
| Reviewer: John B. Goode, Earth |
Please ignore my other review because that account is now kaput! Let me start off by saying that I love 3D puzzles so this review may be necessarily biased.
Having said that, I'm not a great fan of the Puzz3D skycrapers (because they just tall buildings as opposed to castles, villages, cathedrals etc.) but having built almost everything else I'm slowly working my way through these as well.
This box is a trio of US West Coast skycrapers. None of them are very big, the tallest one only about 21 inches tall. The following is a guide as well.
Peeves: The problem with all these three in ones or two in ones is that everything is mixed up together and about 1/2 the time is spent in separating out all the pieces from each other, and that is not how I want to spend my time. My other peeve is that instead of being able to start building right away I have to find and throw out all the red dotted pieces. Why couldn't they have just removed them themselves? However, some people might enjoy this extra work so I won't complain too much about that.
So, to start, I separate the pieces of the 3 buildings from each other and throw away all the red dotted pieces. Generally I build all the bases first, then I build all the panels of the buildings, then I use the instruction guide to put all the panels of the building together.
1) Transamerica Pyramid.
Serendipitously I started with the Transamerica Pyramid and I say that because this one turned out to be the easist to build. I started by separating and building the base and then the top of the building. All the windows of this building are one way up so you can easily tell which way up the pieces face. I then found and put all the edge pieces together and then the inside pieces and then attached them to the bases and the tops. Build time about 20 minutes. Difficulty 3/10. This is a nice sturdy building. I've lived near San Fran but have never been to this building. Having built it, I'd like to visit it.
2) The Sun American Building was next. Started off with the base and roof again. Then I built the side panels of the building. There are actually 5 panels: 1 small one and 4 regular sized ones. This was harder than the above building as on about 1/2 the pieces you cannot tell which side is towards to the top of the building and which side is towards the ground. For the pieces that you can tell, the grey faces down. Difficulty 4/10. Build time: About 30 mins. This is another nice sturdy building. Architecturally boring as it's just a long box.
3) US Bank Tower is the hardest of the 3 because the side panels are somewhat irregular, not completely rectangular with cutouts at the tops and the windows all pretty much look the same, you cannot tell which side is up on the pieces.
As usual I built the base and roofs first. With this building I built all the edges first. The outside edge of the edge pieces are slighly different colors so you can tell which edge pieces go with with edge pieces. Another clue is that the widths of the edge pieces are different. It's hard to use color because the color of the windows change as you go up the building. Once the sides were built, I started started filling in the middles.
Once I built all the panels I opened up the instruction sheet and started putting all the panels together. This is the 2nd of the buildings in the box to have inner cardboard supports and they are a little tricky because there are more of them. This building has curved sides and curved sides are not the easiest to build because Puzz3D has not figured out a way to make curved foam pieces yet. Still the building fitted together rather easily without a lot of trauma, however I was still left with a few unsightly bulges on the sides being too lazy to take the panels back out and curve them over a curved surface before fitting them together again, which is what a perfectionist would do. Difficulty: About 5/10. Build time about 40 minutes.
Overall: Quite nice. I think that if Puzz3D were to do this series again they should double the size of the towers as bigger towers would be more imposing. The glow-in-the-dark doesn't last that long and fades away after a few minutes in the dark. Overall medium difficulty and highly recommended.
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Excellente!
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| Review Date: May 14, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Johnny B. Good, Seattle, WA |
Let me start off by saying that I love 3D puzzles so this review may be necessarily biased.
Having said that, I'm not a great fan of the Puzz3D skycrapers (because they just tall buildings as opposed to castles, villages, cathedrals etc.) but having built almost everything else I'm slowly working my way through these as well.
This box is a trio of US West Coast skycrapers. None of them are very big, the tallest one only about 21 inches tall. The following is a guide as well.
Peeves: The problem with all these 3's in 1's or 2's in 1's is that everything is mixed up together and about 1/2 the time is spent in separating out all the pieces from each other. My other peeve is that instead of being able to start building right away I have to find and throw out all the red dotted pieces. Why couldn't they have just removed them themselves? However, some people might enjoy this extra work so I won't complain too much about that.
So, to start, I separate the pieces of the 3 buildings from each other and throw away all the red pieces. Generally I build all the bases first, then I build all the panels of the buildings, then I use the instruction guide to put all the panels of the building together.
1) Transamerica Pyramid.
Serendipitously I started with the Transamerica Pyramid and I say that because this one turned out to be the easist to build. I started by separating and building the base and then the top of the building. All the windows of this building are one way up so you can easily tell which way up the pieces face. I then found and put all the edge pieces together and then the inside pieces and then attached them to the bases and the tops. Build time about 20 minutes. Difficulty 3/10. This is a nice sturdy building. I've lived near San Fran but have never been to this building. Having built it, I'd like to visit it.
2) The Sun American Building was next. Started off with the base and roof again. Then I built the side panels of the building. There are actually 5 panels: 1 small one and 4 regular sized ones. This was harder than the above building as on about 1/2 the pieces you cannot tell which side is towards to the top of the building and which side is towards the ground. For the pieces that you can tell, the grey faces down. Difficulty 4/10. Build time: About 30 mins. This is another nice sturdy building. Architecturally boring as it's a long box.
3) US Bank Tower is the hardest of the 3 because the side panels are somewhat irregular, not completely rectangular with cutouts at the tops and the windows all pretty much look the same, you cannot tell which side is up on the pieces.
As usual I built the base and roofs first. With this building I built all the edges first. The outside edge of the edge pieces are slighly different colors so you can tell which edge pieces go with with edge pieces. Another clue is that the widths of the edge pieces are different. It's hard to use color because the color of the windows change as you go up the building. Once the sides were built, I started started filling in the middles.
Once I built all the panels I opened up the instruction sheet and started putting all the panels together. This is the 2nd of the buildings in the box to have inner cardboard supports and they are a little tricky because there are more of them. This building has curved sides and curved sides are not the easiest to build because Puzz3D has not figured out a way to make curved foam pieces yet. Still the building fitted together rather easily without a lot of trauma, however I was still left with a few unsightly bulges on the sides being too lazy to take the panels back out and curve them over a curved surface before fitting them together again, which is what a perfectionist would do. Difficulty: About 5/10. Build time about 40 minutes.
Overall: Quite nice. I think that if Puzz3D were to do this series again they should double the size of the towers as bigger towers would be more imposing. The glow-in-the-dark doesn't last that long and fades away after a few minutes in the dark. Overall medium difficulty and highly recommended.
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