BIT.TRIP BEAT

BIT.TRIP BEAT is like Pong on acid. Except instead of the sparse black background and one block you're knocking about, you have rainbow colored pixel imagery of brains and bushes and trains and whatever the fuck dancing around in the background, distracting you from the dozen blocks hurling toward your paddle at any given moment. The goal is to block all those blocks. You have to be Neo to accomplish such a thing, and I was far from it.

The first time I played this game, I thought it was fun but categorized it as something that I would probably never beat. I was fine with that, but in an attempt to get silly Steam trading cards, I started playing it again. After swallowing my pride and turning it down to Easy, I started having slightly more success. That is, until the third level, Growth. That level is evil, and the final boss is back to basics with a simple Pong game to 15 which made me feel incredibly bad about myself.

This section was surprisingly hard. If the bossman gets to 15 before you do, you have to start the level over. The trick is to hit the ball on the very edge of the paddle to get it going fast and at a sharp angle, but actively trying to do that led to more failure. The music on the boss level is also pulsing, kind of like a heart pumping, which makes everything more stressful, and also led to more failure.

So so many failures...



It wasn't until I played music over top the game that I relaxed enough to beat the damn thing. (Thanks Gwen Stefani's "Baby Don't Lie".) I wouldn't say I'm good at this game now, but I can confidently say that I don't altogether suck, and that's more than I could have hoped for with this ridiculous game.

Dragon Age Inquisition: PS3 Edition May Have Been a Mistake...

Today I was happy. I got Dragon Age: Inquisition in the mail, and I was ready to sink serious hours into a franchise that I love. Unfortunately, right when I was ready to play, the Playstation Network took a shit. I couldn't log in and import my Dragon Age Keep saved world state. I refused to start the game using the default game state, so I wait. After waiting for a couple hours for PSN to come back up, I finally get into the game. After spending about 15 minutes in the game after character creation, I think I may have made a mistake getting the PS3 version. I heard people complain about the graphics, but I dismissed them because I'm no graphics whore. However, there are visual problems that are distracting me from the game, and it sucks. Some points of suck:

• It takes forever to load. It takes so long to switch scenes to the point where I think it may have froze when it hasn't.
• All the people's clothes seem to have a low res texture on them. They all kind of look blurry.
• The draw distance is really close. I'll be walking and objects on the ground will pop into existence once I got close enough to them. It's distracting.
• It seems like there's no lighting effects on, so everything looks a little too bright and because things are not getting environmental light, it's just a certain brightness level always. This is especially noticeable with people's clothes, and it just calls attention to the crap texturing I mentioned earlier.
• The particle effects look really crummy.
• I saw clipping during the initial cut scene.

I didn't think it would look bad at all. Dragon Age: Origin looked a lot better. Skyrim and Uncharted both look amazing on PS3, so I didn't think it would make a difference. The PS3 seems like a strong enough workhorse to show awesomeness. I know it's capable. I think the problem is that those titles were developed for the PS3 and optimized for that system. They got all they could out of it. However, with Inquisition, I'm sure they worked to get all they could out of the next gen system, and the PS3 version had to have the settings turned down significantly just to make it work.

I'm bummed now.

I'll probably try to trade this in for the PS4 version, and it'll just sit around til I actually get a PS4. *sigh*

SteamWorld Dig

"SteamWorld Dig": It's...fine. That's as glowing as my review's going to get. You are Rusty, a steam-powered robot who shows up at a mining town after your uncle gave you the deed to the place.

As you go down into the mine, you can mine for various ores and sell them to upgrade your gear, including your pickaxe, lantern, drill, and other various mining implements you unlock as you go deeper into the depths.

This got very tedious to me because I was mining without a real purpose. Why do I even need this shit? Why should I keep making trips above ground to sell this junk? And the act of mining alone was not fun to me.

My goal then became to go as deep in the mine as possible. I'll just dig up ore on the way as it's convenient. And so I did, and I reached the bottom. Now what? In my haste, I apparently missed a door that was blocked by lasers and would trigger a new objective to, you know...unblock it.

It wasn't until my shitty robot existence was given this purpose that I didn't feel like the game was a chore. I mined more by choice to upgrade my gear and worked to turn off the lasers by destroying hidden generators. And once that was taken care of, I got to fight a mean mad boss man.

Because I hadn't leveled up much during my non-fun having, my health bar wasn't maxed out, and this fight was more difficult than it should have been. I'm glad I beat it and it can be checked off my backlog list, but SteamWorld Dig is not something I would necessarily recommend.

Gone Home

"Gone Home" was a really interesting game. It's what one might call a narrative exploration game. I'd never played one of those before, but for those who don't know what that is, it's a game where there are no enemies to fight, merely a space to explore, and a story to uncover.

You are a 21 year old girl, Katie, returning home from a year long trip to Europe. Your family has moved to a new house since you've been away, and when you arrive there for the first time, no one's home, and your sister has left a perplexing note on the door.

As you make your way through the house, you'll find notes and clues that you can piece together to figure out where the hell everybody has gone to. Like I mentioned, there are no enemies to battle in this game, there's no beasties going to jump out to scare you, but the game still manages to keep you on edge at all times. Making your way through this eerily empty house while a thunderstorm rages on outside, you fully expect something to be lurking in the shadows. Every dark room or area I entered, my first priority was to find a light to turn on. Every creak of the house kept me on high alert.

And it's surprising how compelling a game that's based on simply reading bits of paper can be. As you explore the house, you'll start getting a sense of who each character is and hypothesizing on what happened. Those hypothesis will probably be wrong, and you might get them wrong a couple times as this game is quite good on playing with your expectations.

"Gone Home" is a fairly short game, being only a couple hours long, but you'd do well not to rush through it. Entire character storylines can go over your head if you don't piece together all the data that's available. Take your time, explore everything thoroughly, and enjoy the interesting experience that these developers crafted.

Hammerwatch

I'm going to write this while my rage is still fresh.

Hammerwatch is a dungeon crawly hack and slash title that feels kind of old school NES. My opinion of it changed from "It's alright, I guess" to "Fuck you" after I beat the game. I actually wanted to quit playing numerous times and almost did after beating the first boss. At that point, I had played enough to learn what the game was about and realize that it didn't have a lot extra to offer me, but I continued because I had quitter guilt.

It's a rather simple game. You're in a dungeon. There are monsters and puzzles. Why you're there, who you're fighting, who the fuck you are...you won't find answers to these. Story driven this ain't. Kill the monsters and solve the puzzles to make your way through the dungeon. Got it? Got it. Now, I said "puzzles", but what I meant was buttons strewn about that you'll press simply by clearing each room of monsters and loot. Brain busting this also ain't.

The controls are simple. WASD moves you around, the up arrow performs your attack, and the left arrow performs your special ability. These differ depending on which class you choose: Paladin, Ranger, Wizard or Warlock.

I chose Ranger. The ranged main attack was good at picking off beasties from a distance. The general tactic was to kite a group of critters around a corner, and pew pew pew the lot of them as they so kindly line up single file to turn the corner. The main hinderance to progression was finding all the switches around the level. This was made difficult at the beginning because my screen was not cranked up on brightness. It made some of the monsters hard to see, it made switches hard to find, and I was unable to find many of the secret areas because of this. My Hammerwatch life got much better once I turned my brightness all the way up.

And thus I continued to play, though I probably shouldn't have. The entire game is very samey. You're just shooting a bunch of assholes that don't differ that greatly from one another. Murder all the dudes on 4 floors then kill a boss, murder more floors full of beasties and another boss, lather, rinse, repeat for 12 total floors until you get to the dragon.

It's after the dragon is slain that I go from apathetic to angry. The dragon is slain, huzzah! But the castle begins to crumble and I must run. I run to a passage that has opened, and there is no walkway but a series of columns that you must put planks on in order to cross. You need to have found 12 planks throughout the game or you're just fucked at this point. I found about 5 because I had no idea what those motherfuckers were for and I wasn't going to spend anymore time than I had to on each floor to find some bullshit that hadn't been useful to me the entire game. I use my 5 sad little planks and a score screen pops up saying you have slain the dragon but didn't escape the castle, here's your score. Uhh...that's it?

I look on Youtube for someone who finished the game with all the planks. They use all 12 and are then required to run through a few floors to escape as the camera shakes to say, "Hey, shit's crumbling. Nothing's really visually breaking but trust me, it's crumbling." When they reached the exit, that same score screen pops up but with no text except for their score. Great... Way to wrap that up nicely...

In summary and conclusion, suck 14,000 dicks, Hammerwatch. You were boring. I can't believe I wasted as much time as I did on you, and your ending was bad and you should feel bad.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

Back in the day, I played Baldur's Gate II on Mac but never had an opportunity to play the first one because it was only on PC. When Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition came out, it seemed like a good opportunity to fill that hole in my gaming history.

Baldur's Gate II is pretty much my favorite game, and the first one was pretty much along the lines of what I expected. Isometric RPG style that I love, focus on story, and it kept my interest like whoa. When I started out, I did every side quest and searched every inch of every map. My Labor Day weekend consisted of playing this game and only playing this game. That next day at work, my forearms hurt. I temporarily carpal tunneled myself.

This madness kind of ended after a timed quest screwed me over. In my enjoyment of every side quest and every map, I had dicked around too long, and there was a timed quest I didn't realize was counting down. One of my NPC buddies, Minsc, wanted me to rescue a woman from gnolls. After completing a bajillion side quests beforehand, I showed up to the place to rescue Dynaheir, and Minsc flipped his shit, saying I took too long. He then attacks the party. The 20 in-game hours it took to travel to that location put me over the time limit. I had to load a saved game from way before to make it in time, which made me lose a ton of playtime.

Most of that lost progress was spent on fluff, extra maps. I kind of stuck to the main quest line after that. I was paranoid that any one of my companions could have been a ticking time bomb.

It took me about 40 hours to finish, but I could have spent far more if that whole Minsc thing hadn't put a damper on my funtimes. Baldur's Gate II is still better, but this one's certainly worth the play.

Papers, Please

"Papers, Please" is surprisingly intriguing. I've never seen anything like it, and when I try to explain to people what it's about, they all think it sounds ridiculous and the opposite fun. They'd be wrong. In "Papers, Please", you are an immigration officer for the country of Arstotzka. You have to look at peoples passports and various paperwork and verify if they are fraudulent or valid, letting them in or denying them entry into the country.

Your choices affect the lives of the people you interact with. How well you do your job and what you're willing to do to make an extra buck will affect your ability to provide for your family.

My first playthrough was a disaster. I was thorough in my job at the expense of speed. Each day, you only have so many hours in the day, and it's in your best interest to go fast to process as many people as possible. You get more money the more people you process, but if you go too fast, you're going to start making mistakes. Make too many mistakes, and they'll penalize you with fines, and you might let a dangerous person through unwittingly.

My slow ass didn't make enough money to pay for heat AND food, so my family was cold and hungry and eventually sick. I had to spend what little I made on medicine, but without food and warmth, assholes still died. Eventually, wife DEAD, son DEAD, uncle DEAD, mother in law DEAD. Since I couldn't take care of my family, they assumed I couldn't be trusted to perform my work duties, so I got fired. Whoops...

The second time, I realized how important it was to make as much money as possible in order to keep my family alive, so I whored myself out at any opportunity. Detain people to get a bonus? SURE. Advertise jobs to all engineers you meet? SURE. Accept mystery money you have no idea where it came from? SURE. This was an interesting departure from my normal game playing M-O. In all games, I try to make the "right" moral decision. I'm the good guy, but here, I chose to do things that weren't very moral in order to help my family. The one I felt the worst about involved a guy trying to bribe me to let him through. He placed some money and a nice watch on the counter. I had him detained and still took his shit. WHAT HAVE I BECOME?!

That particular strategy did not serve we well in the end. That mystery money got me thrown in jail, and who the hell knows what happened to my family.

This game required you to make tough decisions. Most times I needed all the money I could get. On one occasion a woman begged me not to let a certain person through that was waiting in line after her. She feared he was going to sell her into slavery. When he came to the window, all his papers checked out. Do you deny him entry and take the hit to your paycheck, risk getting fined, and lose that money you need to buy medicine for your dying son, risking his life...or do you let the guy through and endanger this frightened woman? These types of debacles are an interesting balancing act, and you'll have to make these decisions frequently.

To add moral dilemma on top of moral dilemma, this game makes you feel kind of icky about the whole process. On occasion, the potential immigrant will have a discrepancy where their gender on their ID doesn't seem to match. This requires a search, and when the nude photos that were taken pop up, it's pretty horrifying. Sometimes searches are also required if the person's weight doesn't match. Sometimes that reveals nothing. Dude probably just ate too many cheeseburgers. Other times that will reveal motherfuckers with grenades strapped to their thighs. I can't be sure and therefore I must check.

Prior to playing this game, I had never thought too much about either party involved in this kind of situation, but after playing, you can't help but look with some compassion to both sides. Things are not always black and white. There's a shit ton of grey.

Whether or not I "won" was even hanging out in this grey zone. My gauge for success was that I wasn't in jail, wasn't executed, my 5 family members that depended on me were still alive, and I get to keep working a horrible job that barely supports me. #thisshitisreallife

Pokemon 2048

I don't normally talk about mobile games here, but when one monopolizes my thoughts and time as much as this one did, it's worth mentioning.

Pokemon 2048 is a clone of a clone of a tweak of a clone. It was the theme that made me want to play this one though. The standard 2048 game is a sliding tile puzzle game where you combine like numbers together to form the square of that number. Match the numbers to make bigger numbers. Turn bigger numbers into bigger numbers until you get a tile that reads 2048.

The goal in Pokemon 2048 is exactly the same...except, you know, Pokemon. Match two Bulbasaurs to make a Ivysaur, two Ivysaurs make a Venusaur. The Bulbasaur evolution is followed by the Charmander evolution, which is followed by the Squirtle evolution, and finally the Pikachu evolution. Once you reach Raichu, you win.

My friend that's all hot for math is obsessed with the classic 2048, but turning 2s into 4s just isn't as fun to me as turning Charizards into Squirtles. Call me crazy.

It may not sound exciting but it's addictive for sure. I played it on the train, during any second of downtime at work, while eating... I am tired today because I stayed up later than I should, trying to see that elusive Raichu. It even screwed with my brain a little bit. While I was driving, I would see similar cars and match then in my mind, like that was going to make them get the hell out of my way. (Apparently my friend who likes 2048 also had this experience, so I'm not certifiable or anything.)

Today at lunch, I finally saw a Raichu.

And now I'm done.

Fairwell, Pokemon 2048. May we never cross paths again.

Prison Architect

I've just sat here for the past 5 hours, building a prison. I guess I was having fun. I'm still not quite sure.

"Prison Architect" is not the kind of game I play too much anymore, a build it and watch what happens/design on the fly type game. You build a prison, prisoners arrive at regular intervals, and you have to make room for them and fulfill their various needs or you'll have riots on your hands. It kind of reminded me of the game "Theme Park" that I used to play as a kid. There's no real end or way to win, you just keep accommodating more and more people and upgrading your facility until you get sick of it, which I have.

You have to build spaces for the prisoners to sleep, eat, exercise, visit family, etc. And as you research and unlock new abilities in your...it's not technology, but it's like a technology tree...you can build rooms in which to give medical attention, do laundry, press license plates, etc.

The game is still technically in alpha, so some of the tech tree options don't work 100% quite yet. There were some issues I ran into that I wasn't sure if it was a bug or if I just did something wrong. For example, I could never get people into my workshop to do the license plate pressing thing. I couldn't assign people to work there for some reason. Also, I could only assign 2 workers to the kitchen and laundry room when I needed to have three to fulfill the objective of one of my grants. Not sure if I needed a bigger room...or if shit was just broke.

Speaking of grants... The grants system is probably what kept me playing as long as I did. You can have two grants active at a time, and to get all the grant money, you have to fulfill the objectives outlined within it. For example, the Health and Wellbeing grant required you to build an infirmary, hire at least two doctors, and hire a psychologist. An infirmary requires medical beds and a psychologist requires an office to work out of, which has to be at least 4x4 and contain a filing cabinet, office desk, and chair. Grants kept me busy building new things.

Keeping with this example, having a psychologist opens up one of the reports tabs that was previously empty. With a psychologist, you can see what the prisoners are generally pissed about and do something about it. In my prison, everybody was pissed and fighting each other at one point, and it turned out it was because all the guys I was keeping together in a holding cell weren't getting any sleep. I was building individual cells for them, but that was taking a while. Dudes were getting cranky because the only requirements of a holding cell is a bench and a toilet. They were getting "Deadliest Catch" style sleep debt rage. I threw some beds in there, and they were happy as little clams.

Trying to complete the grant requirements keeps you moving forward and building all the various specialty rooms, and the constant inflow of prisoners keeps you building more and more cells. Kept me busy for about 8 and a half hours total.

I finally called it quits when I encountered problems with one of my grants. I had unlocked most of my research options, built most of the different types of rooms, and this grant required me to research mealtime preferences by serving a meal in which the quantity and quality of the meal both were set to low. Meal time came and went, and the objective didn't complete. I wasn't sure if it was because all the prisoners didn't get to eat it... If that was the reason, I wasn't sure if it was because my dining hall was too small and had too few tables to sit at to accommodate everyone, or if there needed to be more serving tables, or if I needed more cooks in the kitchen, or if the cooks needed more stoves, or if I needed to make the scheduled mealtime longer... There were just too many potential reasons why that mechanic was fucking up, and I had experienced enough of the game that I felt done.

"Prison Architect" is worth giving a try if you like that management/simulator style of game, but I'd probably wait until they're out of alpha to give them a chance to iron out all the kinks.

The Last of Us

Daaaamn, Naughty Dog... You're rull good at making games. "Last of Us" puts story first and accompanies it with great gameplay, excellent sound design, and it's a very pretty game for a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Like the "Uncharted" series, which Naughty Dog also makes, this game has excellent characters, writing, and voice acting. You become immediately invested in these characters and their plight.

In Last of Us, the world has basically gone to shit. Most of the population has fallen victim to infection. And those victims are creepy as fuck. They come in three flavors: Runners, Clickers, and Bloaters. Runners are the newly infected. They're quick, scream like banshee's, and if you call attention to yourself, you're likely going to get 5 of them in your face. Clickers are...well, horrible. They've been infected for a while, and as a result, they've got these crazy growths that cover up their eyes. So, good news, they can't see you, but bad news, they can hear you, and they make this awful clicking/gurgling noise to echolocate your sneaky self. It's kind of terrifying to hear a bunch of Clickers in a dark room. Fabulous sound design...I give this game so much credit for this. Stressed. Me. Out.

The third member of this creepy family are Bloaters. Giant motherfuckers...fat ass infected that huck spore bombs at you and will rip the top of your head from your jaw if they get a hold of you. It's quite unsettling.

The manner at which you deal with these baddies can be via beating the hell out of them with crowbars and such, shooting em in the face with shotguns and such, or stealth killing them via choke out or a shiv to the neck. Melee doesn't work so good against Clickers, and nothing but fire works all that well against a Bloater, so they all require different tactics, and their concentration in one area becomes a major factor with how you deal with them. Alerting any of them to your presence is generally ill advised, as they'll call all their buddies to have a go at you. So..sometimes guns are kind of a bad idea. You don't want to go wasting your ammo if you don't have to either.

Resource management is very important in this game, with ammo and with the crafting system. You can craft med kits, shivs, molotov cocktails, nail bombs, and smoke bombs to give you an added edge. You make these items by finding their components throughout the environment, and boy...do they come in handy. Molotov cocktails are my jam.

In addition to infected, you're also going to have to deal with regular folks trying to murder you too because people can be dicks. The game is very good about balancing the encounters and changing up the scenarios so you're not just constantly hiding and wetting your pants trying to evade infected. There's sneaky combat sections, there's running and gunning, there's puzzle sections, there's perfectly safe areas that you'll probably sneak around in the entire time all stressed out because paranoia, and cutscenes interspersed with some damn fine voice acting and animation. These feel like real characters going through real shit. I'm not going to go into the plot at all because spoilers, but this game will probably make you have some feels.

But the feels are worth it. Go pick it up. You will like.

LEGO Lord of the Rings

When the topic of LEGO games comes up, unanimously, I have heard nothing but good things. Therefore, I was pretty excited to see a Lord of the Rings one come out. I have never played any of these, so this would be my first foray into LEGO land.

There is a certain charm to seeing movie scenes play out with LEGO characters, I'll give it that, but the actual gameplay sadly wasn't really all that fun. Leaving the Shire, there wasn't really anything to do. You just follow the blue stud trail to your next destination. You can mosey around and beat the hell out of random rocks and plants so little LEGO studs come out, but since that is not fun, I just left. After you're out of the Shire, the four hobbits meet up, and you can control each of them. Considering they're LEGO people and very similar looking, I couldn't tell who the hell was who. This was only really a problem with the hobbits since the others are fairly distinct with their beards, blonde hair, or dwarfism.

Each character has unique abilities that you use to get around blockages and solve puzzles. These unique abilities are a little weird though... Merry can fish, Pippin can collect water in his bucket... Sorry to break it to you, Pip, that was a pity ability. Any motherfucker can do that. No one's playing you. Sam's abilities are more prolific. He can dig shit up, start fires, and grow plants. However, I kind of had a problem accepting the use of these abilities during gameplay and especially during combat. No problem was ever solved in Lord of the Rings by digging holes or fishing. Problems were solved by stabbing it right in the problem.

I encountered more brain resistance when I came across any side quest. While in Bree, for example, some guy had apparently lost his cooking pot and would be ever so grateful if we went back out in the woods and found it. Umm...no. There's a sense of urgency to this tale. We gotta go meet Gandalf at the Prancing Pony. No way I'm traipsing back in the woods to look for some asshole's cooking pot. In that same vein, I ran across an Uruk-hai that lost his weapon and wanted me to find it. Heeeelllll no. How about I try to kill you instead?

Pity...it won't let me. Whatever, I'm still not looking for your shit, and even if I happen to run across it, I'm not bringing it back. Deal with it.

I skipped quite a bit, actually. There are many side quests, items, and collectibles that you can't even get until your second playthrough. Each level has items that are unreachable unless you have a certain character with you. For example, Gimli's special ability is to break cracked LEGO tiles. These tiles exist throughout the game, even in places where Gimli never actually was, like Osgiliath. You'd have to play Osgiliath again after it's been unlocked, bringing Gimli the second time. Fuck that shit.

There's a lot of that though. I played through the main storyline completely, and at the end, it said I had only completed 24% of the game. I'm only a completist when I'm enjoying myself. 24% is just fine when I'm not.

Now hold on, I wasn't hating my life the entire time. I did quite enjoy the Helms Deep section. There were lots of orcs to kill, and you had to keep the different ladders off the walls in different ways which kept it interesting. Some you had to shoot down, others you smashed, so you had to switch between Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. It was also kind of cool to use the tossing a person mechanic to throw Gimli across at the orcs carrying the battering ram, just like in the movie. The "LEGO humor" was pretty good in this section as well. I remember specifically enjoying that when they were bracing the gate with various things, they pushed a piano in front of the doors. Being an ent and smashing the shit out of Saruman's machinations was also quite enjoyable. Hooray for joy!

For the most part though, I was just waiting for it to be over. It was very repetitive overall. Once you figured out what to do, you had to do it like 12 more times. I was going through the motions for most of the game. I know these LEGO games skew younger, but I had heard all these positive things from grown ass people. I've now decided that they're all liars.

Saints Row 2

Welp, I did this in the totally wrong order... I played Saints Row 3 first, then Saints Row 4, and now Saints Row 2. While it seems a stupid way to have played it, I'm glad I did it this way because 2 would have never hooked me on the franchise like 3 did. I very well could have tried this game and not come back to the franchise. Not that it was bad...it just wasn't great.

My first issue was a technical one. This was an Xbox game originally, ported to PC. My copy I got from Steam had a known flaw in which everything was sped up to an uncontrollably fast tempo. I spent about 5 minutes attempting to just drive a car around, accidentally crashing into everything, and wondering why everything looked like an episode of Benny Hill. To fix it, I had to download some files to shove in the game folder and edit the speed to something tolerable.

After that was out of the way, the theme to this playthrough was "Man, I'm glad that's better in 3." Granted, if I'd played this one first, I wouldn't know what I was missing...in the future...

Anyway, there were plenty of these moments:

THE PIDLY STUFF

1. There is a mechanic where you can tag walls with some Saints graffiti. You have to spray within the lines, and if you go too far outside the lines, the tag fails, and you can try again. It's lame and not fun, and it would have been better if they'd just say Press "E" to tag like the photo-ops and whatnot in the later game.

2. That lovely mechanic in which you can jump through a windshield to hop in a car is not in this game. I'd run full speed at a car and just bounce off and roll on the ground, forgetting that I have to stop the car like civilized folks before I jack it. Lame.

3. The stores that are for sale are not shown as For Sale on the map like they are in 3. I only bought stores that I happened to see had a For Sale sign as I drove by. Pretty sure I missed 60% of them.

4. In this same vein, there's no way to know how much a place costs without going there. I took many wasted trips to a $50,000 crib that my broke ass couldn't afford at the time.

5. The ability to get your cash from anywhere via your phone was a wonderful addition to 3 because in 2, you have to go to one of your cribs and find the little money icon, which brings me to my next complaint...

THE FUCKING ANNOYING STUFF

6. Horrible level design... I could not find anything in my larger cribs, most frustratingly, my money stash. Sometimes I'd drive to my shithole crib just because it was only one room, and I wouldn't get lost in it. Bad level design was a problem in many of the mission locations, where you'd have to go through multiple floors of a building. The worst of these was a mall. Like a real mall, I couldn't find what I wanted, and I couldn't find a way out. I probably spent 20 minutes trying to get out of that place one time.

7. This could have been avoided if at the end of a mission I was just whisked to the front door of the building. I wouldn't mind. Truly. I don't need to walk down 30 flights of stairs to get out of this high rise. I walked up here, and it was much more entertaining on that trip because I was shooting people along the way, and as such, I was too preoccupied to take notes on how to get back out.

8. Fall damage is ridiculously high. I know jumping off stairs would probably break my legs for real real, but you're also allowing me to get shot like 27 times before I die. Give me some slack, man. Sometimes you gotta jump off a building.

9. I'm forced to do the side activities in order to gain enough respect to unlock missions. I don't know if this was removed in the next game, but I never encountered it as problem because I gladly played those side activities. Not so here because...

10. The activities all kind of suck, and to make things worse, each activity location has 6 levels of that one activity. I don't want to play the same bullshit 6 times in a row... Shit can stay incomplete. I ain't care.

THE "IT IS WHAT IT IS" STUFF

11. Saints Row 2 is a little more serious than the later titles. The over the topness is one of the things I adore about its sequel, so this tamer incarnation isn't exactly gripping. Yeah, my character's a bad motherfucker, but I prefer my bad motherfuckers with a side of humor.

12. Continuing with the lack of over the topness, there's no big set pieces or big built up boss fights. They all kind of fizzle out, and they're not very interesting. I shoot through a bunch of guys to get to the main guy who is pretty much just like those regular guys except it takes a couple more slugs to put him down.

13. And when they did have a different mechanic, they were usually obnoxious in some way. Example: While fighting Veteran Child, who was using Shaundi as a human shield, you had to huck flashbangs at him to get him away from her and THEN shoot him. The obnoxious part was that he would step away from her occasionally without flashbang, and he would be invincible during that period. Why do?!

14. Voice acting. In Saints Row 3, I loved Laura Bailey voicing my main character. She was great throughout and made me laugh out loud plenty. Saints Row 2 voice actor...eehhhh...it was fine. Not too many laughs, just your standard hard ass chick.

THE ACTUALLY GOOD STUFF

15. There were a couple missions that really were impactful. The loss of an important character, the creative takedown of an enemy's main squeeze... Those few memorable moments drew me in and made me more invested in finishing the game.

16. I got to see the introduction of Pierce and Shaundi, who I love in the following game. They're not quite fully formed characters in this one, but you can see the beginnings of their eventual personalities.



So yeah...there was way more bad than good, but whatever lessons they took from making this game, they obviously used them to improve the next one, so kudos. The moral of today's story is, if you're gonna Saints Row, just start with 3. You'll thank me.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up

Wow... That was one of the shittiest pieces of shit that ever was shat. Maybe that was a tad harsh...while searching for other reviews to verify my disappointment, I didn't really find any. Everybody claims this game is solid. But hoooowwwww?

As a bit of background on this decree of shittiness:
I've never played Smash Bros, but I'm at least aware of its style of play.
I love Ninja Turtles, have since I was 5.
I only played the single player arcade/story mode of Smash-Up.

I mention Smash Bros. because, while I've never played it myself, I've watched plenty of Smash-Bros, and I know a clone when I see one. That's not a dig, apparently. That's a selling point. They tout that they use the same Smash Bros. engine, and the fact that it's just like Smash Bros. is one of the most positive aspects of the reviews I read. I don't really get the fervor about that franchise, but to each their own.

Secondly, as a Turtles fan, the number of characters available to play or fight are pretty disappointing and sparse. You've got the four turtles, Splinter, Casey, and April to start, and the unlockables include a Foot Ninja, Fugitoid, Karai, Nightwatcher, Shredder, Utrominator, and bizarrely a Raving Rabbid. No Bebop, no Rocksteady, no Tokka, no Rahzar, no Metalhead, no Leatherhead, no Baxter Stockman, no Usagi Yojimbo, no Krang, no...okay, you get the point. Also, of all the ones that they DID include, who the hell wants to play a Foot Ninja?

I only played Leonardo in this little run through, and I only experienced the Arcade Mode, which is the single player story mode, so if multiplayer is somehow life alteringly good, denounce my heresy and play to your little heart's content, but I'll still probably think you've been hitting some manner of Kool-Aid.

In story mode, Splinter decides that he wants to have a tournament to determine who is the best. This is depicted via some old school style art from the comics with really minimal animation of the still images. The art itself is kinda cool, but the overall presentation is pretty weak. You then get into the game, where Smash Bros. vomited some turtles, gameplay is whatever, you progress through different people, and then Shredder attacks, and you fight about three battles with his lackeys and then him. Win those 6 or so fights, and you win and credits roll.

I spent a whopping 26 minutes with this game. I didn't expect much, and I didn't receive much, so I can't be too upset. But still...*sigh*

Psychonauts

The best way to describe my experience with Psychonauts was that it was an opinion rollercoaster. I had heard great things about this game and came in with high expectations, but once I started playing, I careened from bored to enjoying myself to just wanting it to be over and back again.

The story begins at a summer camp for people with psychic abilities. Your character, Rasputin, has managed to sneak into said summer camp with the hope of becoming a Psychonaut. They kindly allow you to stay and participate but only until your dad comes to pick you up. Shit goes downhill before that happens though, and before it's over, you're trying to stop a brain in a tank from taking over the world. It's all very dire.

There are two main arenas of gameplay. With one, you're in the summer camp and surrounding area, running around, talking to fellow campers, finding collectables and whatnot. The second takes place in the minds of various people you come across. You gain access to their mind by slapping a tiny door to their forehead and in you go.

In a person's mind, you'll find figments of their imagination which are harmless, mental cobwebs that you can clear, vaults which hold their innermost secrets, and emotional baggage, which appears as actual baggage, that you can get rid of by finding its baggage tag and reuniting bag with tag. There are also plenty of beasties that will attack you, trying to expel you from the mind.

These different minds are where the bulk of the game is played, and my opinion of the game swung wildly from mind to mind. The first couple are the minds of your teachers. You're just beginning to learn how to move around, that you have powers and what they do, etc.

It didn't take long, perhaps the second mind, to realize that there were things about the controls of this game that I despise. The controls are very clunky and are dependent on the camera angle, which has a tendency to change whenever and however it sees fit. When you're out in the real world of the camp, the camera is controlled via the mouse, when fighting bosses or in various other on-rails segments, the camera does whatever the hell it wants, generally remaining fixed on the bad guy. In these moments, the camera cannot be controlled by you. This wouldn't be so bad if the controls weren't totally dependent on what direction the camera is facing. This causes problems when the camera moves while I'm in mid-jump, when I need to make a precise jump onto a small target, or when I'm on the edge of something perilous. The camera moving often caused the forward direction I'm going in one second to change to lateral movement the next, which becomes slightly problematic when that lateral movement runs me off the edge of a cliff.

This happened a lot...

The camera thinking it knew better than me also gave me trouble when trying to figure out where to go next. I needed to look around, but sometimes the camera angle would be restricted to a few degrees left or right. Most infuriating.

After this second mind, I entered into the "I thought this game was supposed to be good" mode. I was surprisingly kind of bored already. Then it was time to enter another teacher's mind. Teacher Milla's mind is one big dance party. Here we learn how to use the levitate power. There are lots of crazy flashing colors, spinning things, faster run speed, and dynamic camera movements. I don't know what it was about this level, but I think it actively made me ill while playing it. I don't often get motion sickness while gaming. (It happened once during Portal.) But this one screwed up my guts twice. So from bored to sick to my stomach, it wasn't exactly going well, but I pushed on.

The first segment that I enjoyed took place in the mind of a lungfish. In this mind, you are Goggalor, a huge city-crushing giant traipsing about the lungfish city of Lungfishopolis. It took the game in a direction that I didn't expect, it was fun, and was the first bit of writing in the game that I laughed at.

The next area, The Milkman Conspiracy, was also quite good. The level design here is fairly excellent, all twisting, turning, and topsy turvy. Plus, the promise of funny was also delivered here. This area is populated by hidden surveillance equipment and trench coat clad secret agents pretending to be road workers, landscapers, plumbers, etc. by holding an item signifying that role. To get through each marked off area that they're guarding, you have to blend in with that group by holding that signifying item. For example, a member of the road crew would hold a stop sign. There were many good bits of dialogue here, as they matter of fact state what they are supposed to be to maintain their cover. A few examples, if I may...ahem...

"The dead people are underground. And I have brought flowers because...I am sad."
~ Grieving Widow Secret Agent

"Although over time, my husband will desire me less, sexually, he will always enjoy my pies."
"Rhubarb is a controversial pie variety."
~ Pie-making Wife Secret Agent

"Yes, we all work on the road crew. Our backs are killing us."
"Look at that woman's breasts. They're large."
~ Road Crew Secret Agent

While The Milkman Conspiracy section was quite enjoyable, the next one, Gloria's Theater...not so much. It took place in a theater, obviously, and you had to change the set and listen to them perform parts of the play over and over to progress. It was just too wordy. I'll allow wordy if some of those words are funny, but these were just words...and there were a shit ton of them.

The following section pulled it back from "Ugh" and got back into interesting concept land. In Waterloo World, you're fighting the inner crazy of Fred Bonaparte. This inner crazy takes the form of Napoleon Bonaparte, who he is playing in a board game. You hop into the board game and have to round up game pieces to fight for Fred. There were some tedious bits here; there was some obnoxious platforming; there were some bizarre limitations/possible bugs when holding inventory items that I discovered, but overall this one goes into the positive camp.

Black Velvetopia was up next, and I give it points purely on style. It was visually interesting. Using telekinesis during the Boss fight was clunky and pissed me off, but whatever...I give you a pass. Moving on.

Blah blah blah, real world asylum stuff happens, and then we get to the final level...The Meat Circus. I had read that this was horrible online, and they were kind of right. This was where the "I just want it to be over" feels entered into it. There were like 14 different stages to this final level, and once I conquered one that pissed me off, another would show up to take its place. The combination of time-sensitive platforming, plus the camera doing whatever the hell it wants, a stark ramp up in difficulty, and the sheer length of these segments made me want to punch a baby.

There is also a point where you have to fight The Butcher, this hulking behemoth of a man with meat cleavers that I couldn't figure out how the hell to take down. I ended up having to look it up. When his cleaver gets stuck in the ground, I was supposed to run up his arm and punch him in the face. I tried and tried. I could not run up his arm to save my life. I maybe got one hit in on him every 15 tries. I was doing so poorly that every two seconds, Agent Cruller kept repeating that I should run up his arm and sock him in the face. "I KNOOOOOOWWW!!!" If I know what I'm supposed to do, and I still can't do it after numerous tries, that's a bullshit mechanic. Something about that model is wonky or there's a path I'm supposed to take or a place I have to jump over that's just not obvious. That shit's on you, Psychonauts. That shit's on you. I eventually found out, due to a Youtube video, that running up his arm is a suckers game. Bouncing up there via levitation ball is way less bullshit.

I kind of was hoping that was the end but no...now I must show my acrobatic prowess as my dad tries his damnedest to murder me. Water is rising, time is ticking, flaming clubs are being thrown at my face. Ahh...family. The camera was once again my nemesis here. There were points that I'd be walking across a tightrope and jump to avoid a projectile, only to have the camera view change mid-jump and cause me to fall into the abyss. Thanks camera. You sure do know better than me... It also made my life extra difficult when jumping from partially on fire floating fence to other partially on fire floating fence. The place I needed to land was very specific, and for one, I couldn't turn the camera to get a better view of where I was supposed to jump. The perspective made it look like there was no place to jump that wasn't on fire, and two, when I did jump, the camera would rotate and my jump toward the lattice would turn into a jump in the complete opposite direction, sending me to my watery death.

After getting through that gauntlet and two more boss fights, the credits assured me that this hell was over.

Just kidding...just kidding... Overall, I'm more positive than negative about Psychonauts. It had its problems, sure. It pissed me off, sure. But there were some interesting concepts, and I commend them for trying something new. It was refreshing in that regard. Plus, it made me laugh so kudos as well for that. However, don't get too cocky. I'm still giving you a C+ for your shitty ass controls and camera. Those were bad, and you should feel bad... C+

HOARD

HOARD...oh HOARD. My first thought was, I do not like this. This is no fun. ...but then I played all the levels, so there's that.

In HOARD, you're a dragon, and your existence is all about amassing a hoard of treasure and burning to a crisp anybody that tries to keep you from said treasure, or that takes your treasure, or that looks funny at your treasure. If it exists, burn it and get gold for it. If it exists and has ouchy pointy things, burn it without letting it touch you and get gold for it. It's fairly straight forward.

I kept playing, even though I wasn't really enjoying myself all that much at the beginning. I think part of it is that the TREASURE mode levels are in short 10 minute increments. The bite size nature didn't require much of a time commitment from me, which kept me coming back, and once I started rolling, I relented...thinking, "Okay, this is enjoyable."

Once I had a dozen or so levels under my belt, I realized that there weren't all that many single player missions. I could potentially "finish" this game. There were three modes: TREASURE, PRINCESS RUSH, and HOARD. In TREASURE mode, collect as much treasure as you can in 10 minutes; in PRINCESS RUSH, capture 15 princesses as quickly as possible, and in HOARD, just stay alive as long as possible. The princess capturing was the most fun to me (stealing them from other dragons was particularly enjoyable), straight up treasure hoarding was a close second, and not fun to me at all was HOARD mode. Too stressful.

In each level, you could get medal status depending on how well you did. It's a standard gold, silver, bronze affair, but jokes on them. I'm enjoying myself but not nearly enough to give a shit about playing until I get gold status on any of these levels. I'm setting the bar low here. Bronze? Great. Let's move on. That's clearly not the intent of the game, but whatever, I do what I want. I experienced all the levels with mild levels of success, and now I'm done.

I give it a rating of three crispy knights. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but I wouldn't warn against it either.

Surgeon Simulator 2013

Surgeon Simulator 2013 seemed like such a horrible idea when I first heard of it. An entire game based around the fact that the controls are shit? That sounds awful. That's why no one's more surprised than me that I really enjoyed this game.

The controls are horrendous, yes, but in a fabulous way. You use the mouse to move your arm around and to rotate the hand, while the keys A,W,E,R, and SPACE each control a specific finger. Even though it looks like you're holding a scalpel like a toddler with a crayon, it's still possible to be...kind of precise.

First, you are tasked with performing a heart transplant. Many tools are at your disposal, including a bone saw, scalpels, a...hammer, etc. Each time you cut the patient, they'll start losing blood. Get a little overzealous in your jabbing, and they'll starting losing it by the bucket. Once they're out of blood, they're dead. Goal: Give them a new heart before making them dead.

Step 1: Remove all those pesky organs and throw em on the floor. Liver? Bah. Who needs that?
Step 2: Grab the shiny, new transplant organ and drop it in the surgery hole.
Step 3: PROFIT

Following up the heart surgery is a double kidney transplant and a brain transplant. Once you have completed those, you'll have the option to perform all three surgeries again...except you'll do it while in an ambulance. Lucky for you, the ambulance driver is a spaz...or possibly on crack. Either way, expect lots of bumps, sharp turns, and cutty tools flying around your face, out the back of the ambulance, onto the floor, and into your patient. I actually managed to get an A++ rating on my double kidney transplant in the ambulance, completing it in 2 minutes 46 seconds. My biggest problem with that one prior was getting the kidneys out once they were loose. It makes life easier when the ambulance hits a bump and throws the kidneys out for you. Swish.

Once you've completed these surgeries in the ambulance, you unlock those surgeries again, but this time you'll be in space. In space, all your tools are floating and plucking them out of the air is horrible. Most likely what will happen is you'll miss, the tool will start spinning, you'll freak out and try to grab it fast but instead you'll just smack the shit out of it, sending it flying and careening into other tools which will then spin and scatter, making life all that more difficult. I don't know why it's fun to perform these same three surgeries simply with different outside forces, but it was for me.

After those 9 official surgeries, there are 7 other secret ones. In one, you're a Team Fortress Medic performing an uber heart transplant on a Heavy. The other 6 are performed on an alien whilst on a spaceship. You'll be replacing its Pewdsball, Birgirspallex, Gobbleshaft, Cubed Trangrifier, Gavichal, or Robbaloraz.

Having completed all of these, I was dubbed Best Surgeon in the Universe. Aww yiss.

While this particular game turned out to be incredibly enjoyable and addictive, I think as genres go, "Horribad Controls" is probably not something that will or should take off. At least I hope not...

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken

"Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken" was a tag along I got in a recent Humble Bundle. It's a platformer that follows the story of Hardboiled, a chicken dude with a jetpack and a mission, to eliminate the penguin dictator Putzki and all his lackeys.

I basically started playing this game in the hopes that I would hate it, and then I could just unceremoniously remove it from my backlog and move on. Sorry, bro. I didn't dislike it enough to just quit though, so I finished it, but I still didn't necessarily like it. There were good things, there were bad things, there were...whatever things.

THE GOOD

There are animated cutscenes between levels that are pretty enjoyable. They're well done and have a pretty cool soundtrack by New World Revolution. It was kind of a jarring combo during the first cutscene, but they kind of became my favorite parts.

There was a mechanic too that I liked where you could throw mind control bugs at baddies. When they took effect, you could control the enemy as if he were your character, using him to kill enemies, unlock doors you couldn't get to, etc. It adds new puzzle possibilities, and I enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed the segments where you got to fly around outside dirigibles and shoot down enemies that were flying around, swarming you, and shooting rockets at your face. I hated these segments to start because the controls are kind of crummy, but once I got the hang of it, it was actually fun.

THE BAD

The environment is sometimes hard to navigate. The background isn't always immediately obvious as to what is climbable and what is just background. The ledges are sometimes concealed in the middle of what just looks like a floor. It was infuriating at times. There were also times you had to throw a mind control bug through a window or opening, but you couldn't tell it was an opening. It just looked like wall.

I couldn't figure out how to change weapons for the longest time either. Right after I picked up my second weapon, it flashed a symbol to notify me how to swap them out, but I had no idea what the symbol was. I think it must have been a symbol of a mouse. Symbols are supposed to alleviate confusion. That...it did not do.

In trying to figure out the controls, I made my way to the menu system, which is also a variety of terrible. There are Back buttons on the Main Menu that don't even do anything. Let's play "Find the real Back button". Dumb. Also, you couldn't change your control bindings while you were paused in-game. That menu option was just missing. You had to quit out to the Main Menu, and the Controls menu item would be available there. Whhhyyyy?!

Additionally, the sound design wasn't bad in general, but when any cardinal character spoke, it drove me insane. All dialogue is displayed as speech bubbles over a character's head, while some weird speech-like sound is played. The cardinals' in particular had a very annoying sound. I was probably more aware of it because they had the most dialogue, and that sound just seemed to loop for ages.

THE WHATEVER

Combat was fairly easy even with multiple attackers flanking you. It was all about burst firing. Shooting a baddy would throw them up in the air, keeping them from attacking you til they got up. You'd have to shoot them up in the air about three times until they died. If you had one baddy in front of you and one in back, you'd just shoot a couple rounds into one, then the other, back to the first one, and repeat until dead.

This super efficient way of dealing with enemies favored the machine gun. Later, you would get theoretically better weapons, but they would leave you open to getting shot more frequently, so I just stuck with the same weapon 95% of the time. Grenades were also pretty useless.

When you do happen to die, you'll restart at your last checkpoint with full health and ammo. This is great for progressing quickly, but it seems kind of cheating gameplay-wise. In the big wave upon wave fights, you don't need to be that good or conserve ammo, you just have to get to the next checkpoint. There were about 3 checkpoints in the middle of a multi-wave fight. Whether this is good or bad is based on what you want out of the game, I suppose. I just wanted to beat it, so I didn't care that much that it was spoon-feeding me success.


So yeah...it wasn't necessarily that fun, but it kept my interest enough to want to finish it. Quite the glowing review, I know...

Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge Special Edition

I went to 1991, and I liked it there. Might as well set up camp and stick around for Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge Special Edition. This Special Edition had some nice little upgrades from the Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition. In the last one, the new dialogue audio wouldn't play if you were playing in old school mode. This required me to switch back and forth whenever I talked to someone because I enjoyed the new audio but preferred the old graphics. In Lechuck's Revenge, the dialogue plays no matter what mode I'm playing in. Most excellent.

Another neat addition was that of commentary. While playing the game, certain areas would have "Press A for Commentary" text in the corner. Pressing "A" would start a recording of the creators Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer discussing something to do with that particular area. You get interesting little nuggets of where certain jokes or puzzles came from, interesting things about the production process, or fun arguments about such topics as: Guybrush's pants dropping in the cemetery...funny or not funny.

There are so many reasons why I love this franchise. Anytime a game makes you laugh out loud, it's doing pretty good. Each time you grab an inordinately large item and shove it in your coat, I'd laugh. A dog, a ship figurehead, a monkey...each time..out loud. Fabulous. There was also a point where I was just trying to use all my tools on something. I tried a hammer but thought, "What I really need is a wrench." As I said this, I used the monkey I had been carrying around. It worked, and I laughed. I also really enjoyed this one bit where the room was pitch black. In order to see, I figured I'd strike one of my matches. Before I did so, I thought, "This would be the perfect opportunity for a Looney Tunes gag. I strike the match, and it reveals a room full of explosives. If one could high five a game, I would have.

I must not have beaten this game when I played it years and years ago because the ending caught me by surprise. It was kind of cool because they kept you perplexed until the end of the credits. Only then did they reveal what was really going on. All in all, Lechuck's Revenge is a fine installment of the franchise, and if you enjoyed the original Monkey Island, you'll like this one.

Out of This World/Another World

I have once again reached far back into the vault, and this time 1991 fell out. Via Steam sale + extra Steam Wallet monies from selling silly trading cards, I picked up "Another World" for a whopping .56 cents. Back when it was originally released, my brother had it on the Apple IIGS. It was titled "Out of This World" for that version, and that is what I will forever call it. Out of This World tells the story of a scientist who, after an experiment gone wrong, has been transported to another world in which he's just fighting to survive.

Finally playing it myself, it was like a blast from the past. I recall very vividly many of the scenes that played out as my brother played it. I was about 6 at the time. I had watched him play many games, but this one seems to have stuck more in my mind than the others. It had a great art style and looking at it now, it had a very cinematic feel that you just didn't see in other games at the time.

...or even now. This game did so much with so little. It's very impressive.

I like the fact that he, and I say he because I'm pretty sure this game was the work of one dude, Éric Chahi...I like how he used simple polygons to such dramatic effect. The monster at the beginning, for example, is little more than a black mass and a suggestion of teeth, but this suggested form is perhaps more powerful because your imagination can conjure up far scarier things to fill in the visual blanks. In a world where modern games are so obsessed with looking more and more realistic, it's interesting to see a game like this still be so successful at sucking you into this world and evoking emotions of fear, relief, camaraderie, success, and the like.

As gameplay mechanics go, you have a small, manageable quantity at your disposal. You have basic movement of forward, back, jump, crouch, and additionally, you have a gun which, based on how long you hold CTRL, will either shoot, put up a temporary force field, or create a blast powerful enough to break small barriers. The way these limited mechanics are used seems very inventive throughout. I can't recall a game of this period that allowed you to do so much with the environment itself. The environment wasn't just a set piece. It often had to be used. What looked like decorative stalactites actually could be climbed on, a well placed superblast turned a rock formation into a handy ramp leading to freedom, and you learn that sometimes chandeliers are good for dropping on heads.

As a neat addition for the 20th Anniversary edition, there are some extra bonus features included with your purchase. They include two PDFs of design documents and a video with the creator and composer about the making of the game. Each provide an interesting look behind the scenes of this excellent title. It's been 23 years, and gladly, it still holds up. Definitely worth my .56 cents.