Cubegeek

Fallout 3 - Game of the Year

Fallout 3 is the game of the year. I know this already. Although I only got it four days ago, I have put in 31 hours of work.

Fallout Three is superb and has set the new standard for turn based RPG combat. In a brilliant move they have created a system called VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) that allows you to stop time, target your enemy (with a single weapon) and engage. The system then puts moves forward in time, animating all of the effects of your turn in slo-mo then moves back to real-time. The results are really well done. I have had situations in which a bear-like creature is caught in mid pounce two feet in the air above my character. I got off two shotgun blasts using VATS and splattered the beastie. 

Being from Bethesda, F3 is very Oblivion-like with several improvements. First of all, it gives the appearance of being about a 60 hour game whereas Oblivion is at least three times that. But I could be quite wrong about that - I'm about 30 hours into it and only two of my 20-odd skills are >50%.  There is a bit less human interaction and fewer ways you can seem to grow your character but plenty of diversity possible. 

The artwork is much more striking in F3. The entire effect feels more immediate whereas in Oblivion you seem to have a bit more distance between yourself and the avatar, it being sword and sorcery. With Fallout 3 you have a constant sense of being Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes. 

There are little touches that I like - for example you don't get woken up in the middle of your sleep by some creature wandering by. You are also incompetent for a much shorter period of time than in Oblivion. The action is more immediate, you don't spelunk for 15 minutes into a cave and then get ambushed by 10 creatures all the way in the back so that you need to run back another 15 minutes for life & weapons. Encumberance is handled better; you can repair items wherever you are which consumes spares in the field, lightening you. 

Whereas Oblivion was a kind of awe-inspiringly, overwhelmingly massive work, Fallout Three is merely jaw-dropping and stays closer to the plot and adventure. You don't spend inordinate amounts of time, as you did in Oblivion, shopping the diaspora for goods and visiting your prize vendors every day. 

The environment is huge, but not quite as large as Oblivion's. It's more compact and there are fewer side missions. The missions in F3 are very well crafted and have subtleties of negotiations between characters and factions that are very appreciable. As in real life, nobody is quite so evil as they may appear. The 'Blood Ties' mission surprised me in this way. 

There is a Karma system which is very nice, and some great computer hacking puzzles that make you put down the controller, get a pencil and paper and do some different kind of thinking. The quality of these games within the game shows through. 

Control of the character in the environment is good, I've gotten stuck in a few places. You get unlimited saves so you don't have to work up to checkpoints. There is fast travel between major discovery points on the map which comes in handy, but you can't jump out of combat like a genie and teleport yourself to safety. 

Like Oblivion, there is a limited 'alchemy' skill. You can combine found objects within the game and craft them into weapons and technologies. Bodies in the road are persistent, so if you kill it it doesn't vanish over time. There are thousands of nooks and crannies filled with worthless junk that you pick up and drop as well as roaming caravans of merchants who will sell you stuff. 

Your health is three dimensional. You have basic life points, you have a radiation count and you have 'effects'. Everything you eat is radioactive so you trade off health for radioactivity. At 200 rads you start to get ill and need special meds or the services of a doctor. There are all sorts of drugs to take which add 'effects' including increased or decreased perception, strength, intelligence, etc. You can get addicted and suffer withdrawl which also alters your performance. 

What is startling about the F3 world is how Mad Maxian it is and isn't. In the ruins of Washington DC, it's heartbreaking. There are two competing radio stations, both echoing melancholy songs as far as their signals go. Of course everything has a 1947-58 look and feel. Analogs of the voices of the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald croon out songs of love and loss, of hope and sadness. A DJ named 'Three Dog' whose voice and attitude is a cross between Wolfman Jack, George Carlin and Samuel L. Jackson spins these tunes and offers helpful hints to his 'children' in the wasteland. The other, the evidently pre-recorded voice of 'John Henry Eden', the president of the US, makes nostalgia come alive and promises a brighter future - a restoration of a simpler past among patriotic songs.  After about 20 minutes or either station, you see how empty and sad the whole place is - all the books are burned. There is no legend and little history, there is only survival in the now and your character plays a part in every dream anyone in the Wasteland manages to keep.

Fallout 3 is the game of the year. I know this already. Although I only got it four days ago, I have put in 31 hours of work.

Fallout Three is superb and has set the new standard for turn based RPG combat. In a brilliant move they have created a system called VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) that allows you to stop time, target your enemy (with a single weapon) and engage. The system then puts moves forward in time, animating all of the effects of your turn in slo-mo then moves back to real-time. The results are really well done. I have had situations in which a bear-like creature is caught in mid pounce two feet in the air above my character. I got off two shotgun blasts using VATS and splattered the beastie. 

Being from Bethesda, F3 is very Oblivion-like with several improvements. First of all, it gives the appearance of being about a 60 hour game whereas Oblivion is at least three times that. But I could be quite wrong about that - I'm about 30 hours into it and only two of my 20-odd skills are >50%.  There is a bit less human interaction and fewer ways you can seem to grow your character but plenty of diversity possible. 

The artwork is much more striking in F3. The entire effect feels more immediate whereas in Oblivion you seem to have a bit more distance between yourself and the avatar, it being sword and sorcery. With Fallout 3 you have a constant sense of being Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes. 

There are little touches that I like - for example you don't get woken up in the middle of your sleep by some creature wandering by. You are also incompetent for a much shorter period of time than in Oblivion. The action is more immediate, you don't spelunk for 15 minutes into a cave and then get ambushed by 10 creatures all the way in the back so that you need to run back another 15 minutes for life & weapons. Encumberance is handled better; you can repair items wherever you are which consumes spares in the field, lightening you. 

Whereas Oblivion was a kind of awe-inspiringly, overwhelmingly massive work, Fallout Three is merely jaw-dropping and stays closer to the plot and adventure. You don't spend inordinate amounts of time, as you did in Oblivion, shopping the diaspora for goods and visiting your prize vendors every day. 

The environment is huge, but not quite as large as Oblivion's. It's more compact and there are fewer side missions. The missions in F3 are very well crafted and have subtleties of negotiations between characters and factions that are very appreciable. As in real life, nobody is quite so evil as they may appear. The 'Blood Ties' mission surprised me in this way. 

There is a Karma system which is very nice, and some great computer hacking puzzles that make you put down the controller, get a pencil and paper and do some different kind of thinking. The quality of these games within the game shows through. 

Control of the character in the environment is good, I've gotten stuck in a few places. You get unlimited saves so you don't have to work up to checkpoints. There is fast travel between major discovery points on the map which comes in handy, but you can't jump out of combat like a genie and teleport yourself to safety. 

Like Oblivion, there is a limited 'alchemy' skill. You can combine found objects within the game and craft them into weapons and technologies. Bodies in the road are persistent, so if you kill it it doesn't vanish over time. There are thousands of nooks and crannies filled with worthless junk that you pick up and drop as well as roaming caravans of merchants who will sell you stuff. 

Your health is three dimensional. You have basic life points, you have a radiation count and you have 'effects'. Everything you eat is radioactive so you trade off health for radioactivity. At 200 rads you start to get ill and need special meds or the services of a doctor. There are all sorts of drugs to take which add 'effects' including increased or decreased perception, strength, intelligence, etc. You can get addicted and suffer withdrawl which also alters your performance. 

What is startling about the F3 world is how Mad Maxian it is and isn't. In the ruins of Washington DC, it's heartbreaking. There are two competing radio stations, both echoing melancholy songs as far as their signals go. Of course everything has a 1947-58 look and feel. Analogs of the voices of the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald croon out songs of love and loss, of hope and sadness. A DJ named 'Three Dog' whose voice and attitude is a cross between Wolfman Jack, George Carlin and Samuel L. Jackson spins these tunes and offers helpful hints to his 'children' in the wasteland. The other, the evidently pre-recorded voice of 'John Henry Eden', the president of the US, makes nostalgia come alive and promises a brighter future - a restoration of a simpler past among patriotic songs.  After about 20 minutes or either station, you see how empty and sad the whole place is - all the books are burned. There is no legend and little history, there is only survival in the now and your character plays a part in every dream anyone in the Wasteland manages to keep.

2008 Games of the Year

As you know, I play three types of games. Shooters, Drivers and RPGs. My favorites are shooting RPGs which is why I tend to enjoy Tom Clancy's stuff. This year wasn't much different, except that the number of high quality games this year was very impressive.

10. Too Human
Almost didn't make the cut. I was surprised that I liked this game at all because it's so corny and rather button mashy. However it was very engaging and had a good mix of squad play that got me emotionally involved.

9. Frontlines: Fuel of War
This was a very good game and I spent a good deal of time in it. It had a lot of great promise for massive online squad based conflict that simply never lived up to its potential. It wasn't the game designers' fault, it just that gamers didn't run with it. If gamers who like R6V2 would have taken more to it.. well. They didn't, but even the single player was worth it.

8. Tom Clancy's End War
Same problem here. I'm going to give this game another chance however. It just got launched in during an awesome season. Lots of competition. This game is completely unique, nicely complex and yet very playable. It also lacks some enthusiastic support online, and is probably the underrated game of the year.

7. Call of Duty: World At War
Back to WW2 again? OK they did a good job. It's everything you expect COD to be but no more. Although I did have a lot of fun online with the zombies, the whole graduating to a 40s era tommy gun was a turn off - very ponderous and hard work for online shooting fun. However, as usual, the single player is extraordinarily chaotic, and COD gets the award for best flamethrower.

6. GRID
GRID is really a great driver. I have to say that I like it more than Forza. The great thing about GRID, aside from the huge variety of driving styles, is that it works the physicality of online driving better than any other game. PGR basically encourages ridiculous stunts with Cat and Mouse but is very annoying when you want pure driving. Forza is too damned touchy to be fun, and you have to be a genius mechanic to tune those cars. GRID is right in the middle, and does demolition derby right.

5. Midnight Club LA
I am so glad that I got this game. I had no idea it was going to be as much fun as it is. For a gearhead like me there is no other driving game that exploits the pure beauty of the automobile as this one. Online gaming is crappy but the single player more than makes up for it. A lot less realistic than GRID or PGR, but it does have precise control. A bit better than Burnout Paradise, MCLA benefitted from snappy dialog and memorable characters. Plus driving in recognizable LA was a huge plus. The open street mode of racing in MCLA is exactly what PGR was missing. This is an excellent driver.

4. Gears of War 2
I didn't expect Gears of War 2 to be so much better than the original. It was in every respect except one in which it was exactly the same. Basically when you hit the wall on single player, there is no way you can get past it without coop. For me it was the big courtyard before going down into the hole of Jacinto. I swear I played that level 100 times. Still, shooting from moving platforms did transform the feel of the game. Losing the detail of directing your partner and leaving it up to the AI was so good that I didn't even miss it. Everything seemed to click together better. New weapons, moving cover, new baddies, online lobbies, online game modes. They improved every single thing. This is an instant classic, and like its predecessor, burns you out in six weeks.

3. GTA 4
Everything great has been said about this game and it has lived up to its reputation in every way, except one. For some reason, I just never felt compelled to complete it in single player mode. I don't know exactly why that is, because unlike San Andreas, I didn't get weary of being a bad guy in this episode. For a sandbox adventure, this has some of the most tight and compelling storytelling of any game ever. And yet as soon as I put it down for a couple weeks, it lost all momentum.

2. Mercenaries 2
I don't know where this game came from, but I have never had so much fun being a destructive badass in any game. It found the perfect balance between realistic narrative, personal indestructability, variety of adventures and quests and stright up destructive fun. M2 has the largest destructable environment I've ever played in, and the widest variety of guns and vehicles as well as one of the largest maps. Super fun game. Just super.

1. Fallout 3.
This game owns me. I never thought I would play another game with as much intensity and devotion as I played Oblivion, but the folks at Bethesda have me pegged. I had no idea the game was coming, nor did I know they had been working on it for four years, but it shows. This is a massive, massive game. It is as intriguing and complex a world as ever has been written for any platform and it continues to fascinate and amaze me. I can only hope that as with Oblivion, I can continue to play and acquire skills after the completing the main quest.

Honorable Mentions
Fable 2 - I really didn't expect that I would play it once and then drop it. The problem was that my son got into it and instead of playing myself, I just watched him play. Realizing how huge the game was, I stayed away from it.

Left 4 Dead - I hate zombie games. As great as L4D is Even Valve can't make me like exterminating vermin. I played for an hour or two and gave up. Beautiful, fast game. But I haven't been twitchy lately. Maybe I'll come back to it.

Spore - The most fun in Spore was all up to the tribal level. After that it sucked. Plus the security on that game was totally retarded. I cannot believe the nerve of EA to make it a single player license. Just one more reason I hate PC games. This had great potential, but turned out to be a dud.

Tiger Woods 09 - I only bought this to play online with my buds. I think I can say now once and for all that I don't like golf. Or rather that I can't stand the way in which golf is an extraordinary waste of time. TW09 makes that perfectly obvious. That's how realistic it is.

10. Too Human
Almost didn't make the cut. I was surprised that I liked this game at all because it's so corny and rather button mashy. However it was very engaging and had a good mix of squad play that got me emotionally involved.

9. Frontlines: Fuel of War
This was a very good game and I spent a good deal of time in it. It had a lot of great promise for massive online squad based conflict that simply never lived up to its potential. It wasn't the game designers' fault, it just that gamers didn't run with it. If gamers who like R6V2 would have taken more to it.. well. They didn't, but even the single player was worth it.

8. Tom Clancy's End War
Same problem here. I'm going to give this game another chance however. It just got launched in during an awesome season. Lots of competition. This game is completely unique, nicely complex and yet very playable. It also lacks some enthusiastic support online, and is probably the underrated game of the year.

7. Call of Duty: World At War
Back to WW2 again? OK they did a good job. It's everything you expect COD to be but no more. Although I did have a lot of fun online with the zombies, the whole graduating to a 40s era tommy gun was a turn off - very ponderous and hard work for online shooting fun. However, as usual, the single player is extraordinarily chaotic, and COD gets the award for best flamethrower.

6. GRID
GRID is really a great driver. I have to say that I like it more than Forza. The great thing about GRID, aside from the huge variety of driving styles, is that it works the physicality of online driving better than any other game. PGR basically encourages ridiculous stunts with Cat and Mouse but is very annoying when you want pure driving. Forza is too damned touchy to be fun, and you have to be a genius mechanic to tune those cars. GRID is right in the middle, and does demolition derby right.

5. Midnight Club LA
I am so glad that I got this game. I had no idea it was going to be as much fun as it is. For a gearhead like me there is no other driving game that exploits the pure beauty of the automobile as this one. Online gaming is crappy but the single player more than makes up for it. A lot less realistic than GRID or PGR, but it does have precise control. A bit better than Burnout Paradise, MCLA benefitted from snappy dialog and memorable characters. Plus driving in recognizable LA was a huge plus. The open street mode of racing in MCLA is exactly what PGR was missing. This is an excellent driver.

4. Gears of War 2
I didn't expect Gears of War 2 to be so much better than the original. It was in every respect except one in which it was exactly the same. Basically when you hit the wall on single player, there is no way you can get past it without coop. For me it was the big courtyard before going down into the hole of Jacinto. I swear I played that level 100 times. Still, shooting from moving platforms did transform the feel of the game. Losing the detail of directing your partner and leaving it up to the AI was so good that I didn't even miss it. Everything seemed to click together better. New weapons, moving cover, new baddies, online lobbies, online game modes. They improved every single thing. This is an instant classic, and like its predecessor, burns you out in six weeks.

3. GTA 4
Everything great has been said about this game and it has lived up to its reputation in every way, except one. For some reason, I just never felt compelled to complete it in single player mode. I don't know exactly why that is, because unlike San Andreas, I didn't get weary of being a bad guy in this episode. For a sandbox adventure, this has some of the most tight and compelling storytelling of any game ever. And yet as soon as I put it down for a couple weeks, it lost all momentum.

2. Mercenaries 2
I don't know where this game came from, but I have never had so much fun being a destructive badass in any game. It found the perfect balance between realistic narrative, personal indestructability, variety of adventures and quests and stright up destructive fun. M2 has the largest destructable environment I've ever played in, and the widest variety of guns and vehicles as well as one of the largest maps. Super fun game. Just super.

1. Fallout 3.
This game owns me. I never thought I would play another game with as much intensity and devotion as I played Oblivion, but the folks at Bethesda have me pegged. I had no idea the game was coming, nor did I know they had been working on it for four years, but it shows. This is a massive, massive game. It is as intriguing and complex a world as ever has been written for any platform and it continues to fascinate and amaze me. I can only hope that as with Oblivion, I can continue to play and acquire skills after the completing the main quest.

Honorable Mentions
Fable 2 - I really didn't expect that I would play it once and then drop it. The problem was that my son got into it and instead of playing myself, I just watched him play. Realizing how huge the game was, I stayed away from it.

Left 4 Dead - I hate zombie games. As great as L4D is Even Valve can't make me like exterminating vermin. I played for an hour or two and gave up. Beautiful, fast game. But I haven't been twitchy lately. Maybe I'll come back to it.

Spore - The most fun in Spore was all up to the tribal level. After that it sucked. Plus the security on that game was totally retarded. I cannot believe the nerve of EA to make it a single player license. Just one more reason I hate PC games. This had great potential, but turned out to be a dud.

Tiger Woods 09 - I only bought this to play online with my buds. I think I can say now once and for all that I don't like golf. Or rather that I can't stand the way in which golf is an extraordinary waste of time. TW09 makes that perfectly obvious. That's how realistic it is.

NXE - All That

It took me about six hits of the (X) button on my controller asking for a display of more avatars to realize that my XBox 360 was generating a random set every time. But I kept pressing it because it was so cool to watch the crowd of them run up to center stage and make gestures like 'hey over here, pick me!'.

I'm talking about the New XBox Experience, the new menuing and operating system for the XBox 360. It's actually very, very cool.

Feature-wise, the big fat hairy deal is streaming HD video on demand. XBox Live has obviated my need for AppleTV. I should say my desire for it because I don't need any of this - it's just another way to see the same 200 movies currently in rotation which I could get from FIOS.

But the real coup is that Microsoft has, in a fairly successful fashion now created a UI that I'm much more willing and likely to use in getting my content. I can tell you this right now, the new XBox 360 with the NXE has bridged the gap. Anybody who games on XBox Live will tell you that the gaming experience is excellent, but with regard to watching DVDs - meh. I'm really at the point at which I feel comfortable using it as a DVR. I know MSFT is dying to hear me say so, but I'm now actually looking at the reasonableness of getting a second box instead of going Blu-Ray. But there is no question whatsoever that I appreciate the speed and ease of use of NXE on the 360 much better than that for FIOS on Motorola DVR.

I went ahead and signed up for the Netflix free trial - which is my third go round with Netflix which we cut off when Blockbuster added their mail service. The "Instant" feature is the only one I'd really care about but the assumption was that I'd have a bigger library at Netflix than I do on FIOS. Not the case at all. Only about 7 of the top 100 rentals on Netflix are available for streaming to NXE. So big whoop on that. What I want is the big library.

Advances in this direction make me think moreso than ever that I really don't want to own half of the DVDs that are in my library. I'm really anticipating the ability to manage my clouds because I have own a hell of a lot of data, but nobody is coming close to that  - except perhaps Carbonite. In the meantime, I'm still going to depend on DVD Planet for the depth of their library. Apple still rubs me the wrong way with their small perfections that don't scale. Yeah that's right MobileMe still doesn't work, and I'm buying all of my MP3s from Amazon nowadays. Apple still rules in podcasts.

If Amazon gets into NXE, it's all over for Netflix. I do wonder how it is that MSFT didn't consider that deal or try to make it happen. Speaking of which, does WalMart still sell MP3s for 83 cents? I'll be damned. 74 cents! And LaBelle has a new album out.

Anyway, I do want to now get the nextgen XBox with the big drive and HDMI connectors. That's the other big feature is that you can run games fully off the drive. Yes this software can sell hardware and move content. Nice job Microsoft.

It took me about six hits of the (X) button on my controller asking for a display of more avatars to realize that my XBox 360 was generating a random set every time. But I kept pressing it because it was so cool to watch the crowd of them run up to center stage and make gestures like 'hey over here, pick me!'.

I'm talking about the New XBox Experience, the new menuing and operating system for the XBox 360. It's actually very, very cool.

Feature-wise, the big fat hairy deal is streaming HD video on demand. XBox Live has obviated my need for AppleTV. I should say my desire for it because I don't need any of this - it's just another way to see the same 200 movies currently in rotation which I could get from FIOS.

But the real coup is that Microsoft has, in a fairly successful fashion now created a UI that I'm much more willing and likely to use in getting my content. I can tell you this right now, the new XBox 360 with the NXE has bridged the gap. Anybody who games on XBox Live will tell you that the gaming experience is excellent, but with regard to watching DVDs - meh. I'm really at the point at which I feel comfortable using it as a DVR. I know MSFT is dying to hear me say so, but I'm now actually looking at the reasonableness of getting a second box instead of going Blu-Ray. But there is no question whatsoever that I appreciate the speed and ease of use of NXE on the 360 much better than that for FIOS on Motorola DVR.

I went ahead and signed up for the Netflix free trial - which is my third go round with Netflix which we cut off when Blockbuster added their mail service. The "Instant" feature is the only one I'd really care about but the assumption was that I'd have a bigger library at Netflix than I do on FIOS. Not the case at all. Only about 7 of the top 100 rentals on Netflix are available for streaming to NXE. So big whoop on that. What I want is the big library.

Advances in this direction make me think moreso than ever that I really don't want to own half of the DVDs that are in my library. I'm really anticipating the ability to manage my clouds because I have own a hell of a lot of data, but nobody is coming close to that  - except perhaps Carbonite. In the meantime, I'm still going to depend on DVD Planet for the depth of their library. Apple still rubs me the wrong way with their small perfections that don't scale. Yeah that's right MobileMe still doesn't work, and I'm buying all of my MP3s from Amazon nowadays. Apple still rules in podcasts.

If Amazon gets into NXE, it's all over for Netflix. I do wonder how it is that MSFT didn't consider that deal or try to make it happen. Speaking of which, does WalMart still sell MP3s for 83 cents? I'll be damned. 74 cents! And LaBelle has a new album out.

Anyway, I do want to now get the nextgen XBox with the big drive and HDMI connectors. That's the other big feature is that you can run games fully off the drive. Yes this software can sell hardware and move content. Nice job Microsoft.

Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 is an absolutely stunningly beautiful videogame. It's also, sadly, right smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley. It's too fake to be real and too real to be fake. It has an absence of style that makes it just wrong, wrong, wrong. Worst of all, it made me dizzy and gave me headaches, something I haven't suffered in a videogame since Doom, 1992. Sorry.

I don't think there has been a longer more drawn out intro into a videogame since Frontlines. Or was that Call of Duty 4, World at War? Anyway, it got real tiring real fast. So did the rather random nature of it. I really didn't like the slow pace, and quite frankly the game was too real to be fake.

Far Cry 2 is extraordinarily realistic in that it gives a very authentic feel of a sort of abused nature of operatives in low level conflict. I was very much feeling like somebody abandoned in a hostile environment with nothing more than my wits, a cell phone and an AK47, and a machete for God's sake. I walk around and take over hovels and shoot people who have no idea who I am. They're just in the way of a morally ambiguous mission. Ick. That's not fun, it's not entertaining. Not only FC2 visually deep into the uncanny valley, but morally and in game play as well. It's a disturbing narrative that I simply didn't have the patience to see along despite the fact that I totally buy it.

Far Cry 2 is an absolutely stunningly beautiful videogame. It's also, sadly, right smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley. It's too fake to be real and too real to be fake. It has an absence of style that makes it just wrong, wrong, wrong. Worst of all, it made me dizzy and gave me headaches, something I haven't suffered in a videogame since Doom, 1992. Sorry.

I don't think there has been a longer more drawn out intro into a videogame since Frontlines. Or was that Call of Duty 4, World at War? Anyway, it got real tiring real fast. So did the rather random nature of it. I really didn't like the slow pace, and quite frankly the game was too real to be fake.

Far Cry 2 is extraordinarily realistic in that it gives a very authentic feel of a sort of abused nature of operatives in low level conflict. I was very much feeling like somebody abandoned in a hostile environment with nothing more than my wits, a cell phone and an AK47, and a machete for God's sake. I walk around and take over hovels and shoot people who have no idea who I am. They're just in the way of a morally ambiguous mission. Ick. That's not fun, it's not entertaining. Not only FC2 visually deep into the uncanny valley, but morally and in game play as well. It's a disturbing narrative that I simply didn't have the patience to see along despite the fact that I totally buy it.