I bought the “Love Machine Theme” for my Megaton home some time ago, and for the longest time all I noticed was the gigantic heart-shaped bed in the middle of the main room and Christmas lights strung about the place. Only now, days later, did I notice this… thing suspended above the foyer.
I had to stare at it for a while before I realized that in addition to being really tacky, it was also two women.
Back in November I was considering doing my “24 Days of Materialism” again this year (because it’s such a hit, you see). I had a rough draft of the items I was going to pitch and everything.
Clearly, I forgot.
It’s okay though! I have a backup plan! It’s not a very good one, but at least it’ll be something. So check back on December 24th to see what I’ve got cooking. And now for something completely different:
I spelled “forgot” wrong at first, and WordPress’ spellcheck suggested that I meant to type “faggot.” Why would it suggest that? Come on WordPress, have a little decorum. But that did remind me of a rather hilarious blog that I’ve been following since last week: Texts From Bennett. It’s sooo inappropriate but sooooo hilarious. It’s not often that I have a hard time containing my amusement while browsing the web. I definitely recommend against reading this at work because you’ll laugh real hard, then people will wonder why you’re laughing and come have a look, then you’ll get fired for looking at offensive material during work hours.
By popular request:
Wait a minute… This is what Google Image Search is for! Go find your own damn cupcakes.
Catherine is yet another game about duality. Yeah, there are lots of those. Ikaruga might be the most obvious and easiest example (Breath of Fire IV being the least obvious but most noteworthy). It’s not a terribly original idea for a video game anymore, and really, it wasn’t even an original concept in general by the time video games came around. I’m not a literature enthusiast, so I can’t name any examples, but I’m certain that traditional authors beat the idea into the ground long ago. Catherine however, uses it to great effect and unlike Ikaruga, does so a little more subtly. And by “subtly” I mean it’s not a core gameplay mechanic.
This duality becomes apparent if you notice the game’s logo, which is a yin-yang-esque seal that features Catherine and Katherine, the game’s two… I’m really not sure the best way to describe them. They play many roles in the game, which change depending on how you play it. They aren’t really the leading ladies and I’m even a little hesitant to call them secondary characters, because there are very few situations in which you can interact with them directly. Actually, I think the best description for the K/Catherines is “plot devices.”
The story of Catherine is a week in the life of Vincent Brooks, a man wavering under pressure to marry his longtime girlfriend (Katherine), who ends up spending a night with another woman (Catherine). The game follows Vincent for each of the seven days in this week, and possibly farther. I’ve only achieved one ending so far (of… three, maybe?), and it extended the story into nine days.
Over the course of this week+, Vincent goes through a lot, but the focus is on whether he longs more for the stability of a life of order, or the excitement of freedom. In the game, you are asked to make many decisions. The bulk of them are how you make Vincent react to the problems of the people around him, and only influence what ends up happening to those characters. There are a handful of questions asked to the player specifically though, which will shape how Vincent approaches his own problems. Every one of these choices, and even some other actions (like replying to text messages) affect a small meter that pops up and lets you know which way you’re headed. The NPC choices will tip the meter a little, depending on the answer you choose, but mandatory story choices will sometimes knock that thing a good quarter of the length of the whole bar.
The difference between this meter and the morality meter in countless other games (Mass Effect, Fable, etc) is that it not, in fact, a measure of how good or bad Vincent is. Though you can easily get the wrong idea, due to the fact that one side is blue (and is topped with a cherub) and the other is red (and adorned with a tiny devil child). This meter actually represents whether Vincent values freedom or order more, which is pretty morally ambiguous. Maybe Vince wants to live a life of freedom, not falling to the pressures of society to settle down and live his life the way he’s told to. But this doesn’t necessarily make him evil. It’s not even the <i>wrong</i> way to live. On the other hand, what makes “order” so inherently good? If you think about it even a little, it could easily be spun either way.
Therein lies the more subtle duality of the game. I mean, it’s not actually subtle because the game’s gonna be beating you over the head with that meter, but the point is that Vincent has a choice to make, which will affect what kind of person he ends up being. The subtlety is that little events are influenced by the meter here and there, but none of it makes a huge difference until late in the game, when Vincent finally has to confront his demons, whatever they may end up being.
The gameplay itself shows another kind of duality, but not within the mechanics themselves, but rather the separation of game mechanics. The game takes place over the course of a week, and you get to take control of the more interesting points of every day within that week. Each day is split into two separate play types. During the game’s “daytime” phase, which usually takes place between 8PM to 1AM, you get to watch the majority of story events unfold, and then get to hang out at Vincent’s favourite bar, The Stray Sheep. Sheep are actually a secondary theme in the game, but that’s someone else’s article. In the bar, you saunter around, talking to the various patrons and staff. About half of them are dealing with their own mid-life crisis, and you can listen to their stories and encourage them to face their problems. The other people about are generally around for entertainment purposes, generally giving cryptic hints about events to come, or cracking wise about Vincent’s predicament.
Other bar-time activities include texting the K/Catherines, visiting the washroom, changing the music via a jukebox, having drink, and playing an arcade game. Once in a while, Catherine will send a seductive photo with a text message, and Vincent won’t look at it unless he’s in the privacy of the washroom. That about all it’s there for. Also, you can have him wash his face, which will trigger a short event that will likely make you jump the first time it happens. A new music track for the jukebox is unlocked with each achievement you earn, which is great because achievements are almost never accompanied by a tangible reward. And sitting down to have a drink will (obviously) increase Vincent’s alcohol meter, which will cause him to move faster at “nighttime.” Also, when you finish a drink, the game will show you a little trivia about whatever you just polished off. It’s an odd feature, but I found it compelling and proceeded to get Vince stone drunk every night so I could hear as many as possible.
The daytime segments are cool, and do a great job of moving the story forward and building the characters, but they’re more than a little slow. That’s where nighttime comes into play. The other big dilemma Vincent is facing is that every night he gets trapped in a nightmare where he must climb a tower of blocks or else be brutally murdered. Not a huge issue normally, but due to a mysterious string of young men found to have died in their sleep, it seems quite likely that if Vincent dies in the dream, he dies for real. This is where the game does a complete 180, ripping you out of the safety of the bar and literally forces you to think on your feet or die.
The nightmare sequences’ “Levels” are made up of between one and six themed floors of crumbling block towers. They’re more like block walls, really, but the point is the same: you need to manipulate the blocks in the tower/wall to make a way to the top. On easy mode there are only a handful of really tricky parts in the second half of the game, but even on normal, you’re looking at some rather clever puzzles as early as the second night. Those puzzles are only half the problem too, because the tower below you is crumbling away pretty quickly. Having to think about a puzzle might lose you the high score, but if you really can’t figure it out, you’re dead. And of course, classic video game staples like bad guys and trap blocks are there to make life that much harder for you. Unlike the relaxed atmosphere of the bar, you really get a sense that in the nightmares, the game wants you to die.
Other notes here are that you’re scored on your speed and how many coins you pick up, and are given a trophy at the end of each night. They’re mostly irrelevant, but unlock new stages in an extra game mode if you earn them on normal or hard difficulty. The last floor of each stage is also a boss “fight,” where instead of racing against falling blocks, there’s a giant monster clawing at you heels. Occasionally they will change the properties of random blocks or shoot lighting bolts or razor blades at you. These floors are usually the most frantic, and far and away the most fun in the game.
Generally, Catherine (the game, not the character) is more than happy to keep the bar and nightmare sequences completely segregated. Though as always, there are exceptions. I’d mentioned that there is an arcade game in the bar, should you feel like whiling away your time on a game within a game. The really fun part is that Rapunzel is a tiny reproduction of the main game’s nightmare stage gameplay. Instead of the walls being hundreds of blocks high, they’re only maybe a dozen. At least, for the first few stages. There is no time limit in Rapunzel, but you do only get a certain amount of moves per stage, putting the focus on solving puzzles. These puzzles are much more devious than those in the main game too, as I’ve only managed to get to stage eight out of 64 (Maybe. There’s an achievement for beating stage 64, anyway. I assume it’s the end). It gets even deeper when Vincent receives a taunting text message that says that Rapunzel also has multiple endings. When has that ever happened before in the history of video games?
The nightmare stages also give you a change for a little reprieve in between floors. There, you’re treated to a nice little sanctuary, where every other man suffering from the nightmare stands waiting to challenge the next floor. These men all look like sheep in the dream world (which ends up being tied into the story), and some of them will have defining traits like ties or hair. These ones are people you can interact with in the bar, and will open up to you even more here, since to them, you’re the one who looks like an anonymous sheep. You can continue to encourage them to keep climbing here, and some will even share climbing techniques with you. Until late in the game there’s a merchant sheep here too, who will sell you items that can give you a small edge. But buying items costs points, and is therefore a bad idea if you want to earn gold trophies. Besides, items can be found while climbing the towers themselves, and the game (on easy mode at least) is pretty good about doling out items when they’ll be most useful.
The way Catherine draws its parallels is a fairly unique one in that it shows you two options, but then proceeds to blur the distinction between the two. Katherine and Catherine, freedom and order, the bar and the nightmare. While it goes out of its way to make it seem like there’s a proper and improper way to go about playing the game, that’s just to mislead you; it’s really all gray area. Just because you want Vince to hook up with Catherine doesn’t mean you need to be a complete ass to Katherine. But you can. Don’t like the puzzle stages and want to get back to the story? Choose easy mode and look up speed run videos on YouTube. Don’t like the slower bar sequences? Skip them. Or just play Rapunzel. The game is about growing up and taking responsibility. Or maybe it’s not, because the game is really about choices. (Actually, maybe it really is because I’ve only played through as a solid seeker of order.) The point is that Catherine wants to show you that there’s always a choice. It wants you to know that for every choice you make, there’s another you didn’t. For every yin there’s a yang. For every Katherine, there’s a Catherine.
I wrote 2000+ words about Catherine yesterday. I’ll post it tomorrow. You’re probably getting sick of hearing about it by now, so let’s talk about something else today, shall we?
I’ve been listening to Lady Gaga’s (is the second G capitalized?) Born This Way for a couple days now, and I’ve gotta say that I’m not sure how I feel about it. No, actually that’s a lie. In most cases, I’m sure I’d enjoy it much more if the vocal track were muted. It’s not that I have a problem with her voice or anything, but a lot of the vocals are filler that I find extremely annoying.
A lot of it has to do with that fact that it’s so damned repetitive. Seriously, and I say this to all songwriters out there, a chorus is not repeating the title of the song over and over. That doesn’t pass for the second half of the song either. I’m pretty sure the last two minutes of “The Edge of Glory” is just her saying “the edge the edge the edge” over and over until the song cuts out. This is bad writing any way you split it. You don’t see Stephen King describing the same tree over and over for five chapters. Maybe writing a short story/novel and a song are a little different, but the principle is the same: if it’s such obvious filler, you should probably cut it out. There’s nothing wrong with having an instrumental section in your song. I feel it actually adds to a song.
Another thing I need to vent about is the stuttering and nonsense words. I like “Judas” well enough, but the jibber-jabber that permeates the beginning and half the chorus annoys the crap out of me. You did this with “Bad Romance” already, and it hasn’t gotten any less annoying since then. Again, why all this filler? If you can’t write words to put there, just let your music carry itself. It’s good! Like I said, without lyrics I’d think this is a fantastic techno-pop album. All I see here is that either Gaga has no faith in the quality of the actual music, or she just can’t get enough of her own voice. Lazily slapping in all these nonsense vocals and needless repetition makes it seem like children’s music. If it weren’t so full of hookers and “blonde souths,” this would be a great album for the “under 3” demographic.
Speaking of which, Ms. Gaga seems to be writing explicit lyrics simply for shock value. “Government Hooker” is the best example for this. The song is barely about a hooker to begin with, with absolutely nothing in the song to justify the “government” part. Okay, she says “John F. Kennedy” once, but that would make the song “zombie hooker” or at worst, “corpse hooker.” And let’s be honest here, at that point it could just be rebranded to necrophiliac. Because dead people don’t pay for sex. And again, I think the word “hooker” counts for at least 80% of the total lyrics. Yeesh.
All little quibbles aside, I do still enjoy listening to Born This Way if I don’t stop to think about it. “Hair” and “Highway Unicorn” are my favourite tracks so far. Though “You and I” gets the runner-up prize. I can’t stand straight-up country music, but oddly enough I really like when other genres are influenced by country. Also: Brian May plays guitar on it. That makes it instantly awesome.
Oh yeah, and the cover is totally bad-ass. Even a little scary.
I’m very proud of myself. I began playing Darksiders last week, and finished it yesterday. I rarely finish games at all these days, nevermind in the span of a week. Being on vacation definitely helped me along, but I’m still pretty amazed. There’s still the little matter of finishing the game on “Apocalyptic” difficulty for those last two cheevos, but we’ll take that at a slower pace.
I’m pretty sure that since the game has been out for basically forever now, everything has already been said about Darksiders. I really don’t have much to add to the collective opinion that it’s a Legend of Zelda game with God of War combat sensibilities. Which is a good thing. I was dreadfully bored with God of War, but the combat system works well in a game with more interesting non-combat. The story takes itself way too seriously and is mostly uninteresting, but is a good enough reason to beat up a bunch of demons (and angels, occasionally) and trek through puzzle dungeons. Fortunately, said story was clearly never the point of the game and most cutscenes are skippable. Yay!
The one thing I did really like is that while most of the combat stuff is lifted wholesale from God of War, quicktime events are nonexistent. Yes, you get a little “B” pop-up to inform you when you can perform a finishing move, but that’s it. No stick twirling or button-matching to be found. Also, starting the game on hard with the super armor (a carry-over bonus from my completed file, I guess?) pretty much breaks the balance of the game. Not that I’m complaining. Having an advantage that lets me breeze through my second playthrough is always fun.
Also, I started Catherine yesterday afternoon, and proceeded to play it for seven hours straight. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed such a long gaming session since Twilight Princess. Not that it was my choice or anything. Catherine really hooked me. It was like a good book, where I just could not put it down, even though I tried. I’m pretty sure I’m on the cusp of finishing the story, but I know that I’ll be hitting this one again right away.
The game is mostly talkies and has plenty of cutscenes, but the story is so engrossing that I don’t mind at all. It’s not packed with silly fluff like Metal Gear Solid games. It’s a great tale about growing up, taking responsibility, and dealing with change. Or, perhaps, none of that if you play to the “bad” side. There’s a sort of morality meter there, which pings up and down as you make choices. The game asks you to choose the answer that applies best to you, rather than the one you think is correct. It’s not always easy to tell which answer will drive the meter which way, and so far I’ve been leaning only a little towards the side of “good.” The really cool thing is that if you’re connected to Live, it’ll show a pie graph of the answers other players chose on their first play. Not a real feature, per se, but a neat little widget no less.
Climbing up the block towers is getting considerably harder with each stage (duh), and apparently I’m not great at this kind of puzzle. I’m playing on Easy mode too, which makes it all the more embarrassing. But the boss levels are super fun! The puzzle difficulty is scaled down a bit, but you’ve always got a giant monster chomping at your heels, which keeps the tension high. I think they’re easily the best the game has to offer, though hopefully I get a bit better at the puzzle stages when I bump up to normal.
One of the things I really like about LEGO Rock Band is the story mode. It begins by your LEGO character seeing LEGO Queen perform on TV, and starting up a band because… well, the lack of dialogue makes the exact reason a little ambiguous, but I’m assuming that they decide the easiest way to meet Queen would be to be in a successful band.
The story rolls out in traditional LEGO video game fashion, with hilarious cutscenes punctuating your band’s tour. Most of these cutscenes happen around rock power challenges. These are special gigs where somebody needs something and you use the power of rock to make it happen. In the first one you demolish a building. Later on you’ll summon a thunderstorm to save a farmer’s crops from drought. It’s the closest a Rock Band game will ever come to having boss battles.
These are cool. I love them and would not remove them for the world. I’m not finished the tour yet, so maybe they get even better later, but I can’t help but feel like maybe there could be cooler subject matter? Look at Brutal Legend, for example, where the power of rock is used to wage wars. LEGO Rock Band is technically channeling the power of power-pop, so it’s understandable that the most awesome thing they would do is fight off a giant octopus, but imagine if the game were something more along the lines of, let’s say Dethklok Rock Band.
It’s no secret that I’ve been wishing and hoping for a Dethklok-centric guitar game since Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, but it’ll never happen. EA will find a way to make a game that gives the player candy and blowjobs before they greenlight Dethklok Rock Band. Mainly because Dethklok is not mainstream enough, and why would EA release a game that’s pretty much guaranteed to move even fewer units than Green Day Rock Band? (Ooh, burn!)
One might also argue that between both The Dethalbum and The Dethalbum II there are only 33 Dethklok songs, and that’s not enough to justify a full disc release. There is tons of music on the show that were never released on either album though, and while some are just bits of songs, I’m sure Brendon Small has complete versions of all the tracks somewhere. And really, would it not be awesome if songs like “Hamburger Time,” “Takin’ It Easy,” and “Underwater Friends” were included? While we’re at it, why not include a couple Snakes N’ Barrels tracks? Or a venue dedicated to Dr. Rockso/Zazz Blammymatazz? The point is, the official material couldn’t fill a game, but there’s more than enough supplemental stuff there to pad it out. Not to mention that fans would eat it up. With a friggin’ spoon.
Circling back to my original point here, rock power challenges would be awesome in Dethklok Rock Band. You wouldn’t even need to read lyrics to come up with cool challenge scenarios; the titles are more than enough in most cases! “Volcano” and “Comet Song” would obviously have you summoning (or maybe repelling) the named disaster with the power of metal. “The Cyborg Slayers” speaks for itself, and “Awaken” will have the band bringing a giant troll to life. You don’t even have to be creative with this stuff, it’s awesome. The challenges in LEGO Rock Band really draw you into the whole scenario, and I think it would only get better with something as intense as causing a volcano to erupt through the power of death metal.
That intensity takes us back around to why the game would never be made: it would be way too damn difficult. In Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, “Bloodlines” is fairly easy, but “Laser Cannon Deth Sentence” is so difficult that I can’t even star power my way to the end. “Thunderhorse” was one of my favourite tracks to play on Guitar Hero 2, even though to this day I cannot 5-star it. The Van Halen and Metallica editions of Guitar Hero have pretty steep difficulty curves (in comparison to the numbered games), but Dethklok Rock Band would be many, many times harder. You’d be a fool to expect any less from a game that’s 90% death metal, of course, but I think it would still turn away potential buyers. Yes, people could step down their difficulty level if it were spoiling their fun, but I’m pretty adamant about not toning it down. If I can’t play a song on expert, I don’t go down to hard: I just don’t play that song. Best case scenario, I play it on expert bass instead of guitar.
The really sad thing about all this is that Konami was developing a Metalocalypse game. …Only it was an action game where you play as a Klokateer for some reason, and was quickly cancelled because they realized how stupid that was. I posit that a Metalocalypse action game could work, but nobody wants to play a Metalocalypse game where you don’t get to play as Dethklok. That’s like having a Super Mario Bros where you’re forced to play as Toad. Good as the game might be, you will inevitably say “fuck this, I’m not playing Goddanm Toad.” Likewise, I do not want to play a Metalocalypse game where I can’t play as Toki or Pickles. Can I say that enough times?
Time has not been kind to single-band plastic guitar games, or even just plastic guitar games in general, so any tiny window there was for a Dethklok Rock Band has long since closed, but I still think it would kick some serious ass. No, it wouldn’t be for everybody, but Metalocalypse has been pretty well-received for what it is, and even though there’s no way it would get close to million-seller, there is certainly a niche that would play it. Maybe we should get Atlus on the case? Somebody do that. I’d be pretty pumped if there were even a Dethklok DLC pack for Rock Band someday in the near future. It doesn’t even have to be a full album, I’ll take a 3-pack (“Awaken” “Black Fire Upon Us” and “Comet Song,” please). The fact that there isn’t even one Dethklok song available yet is sad, and I hope that one day it will be remedied, but I’ll likely have to buy Rock Band 3 when that happens. Hopefully it’s $5 on that day.
So Guitar Hero games are dirt cheap now. What better opportunity to pick up GH: Van Halen? I’m still angry because I should have gotten it for free, but $10 is a reasonable price to pay for a game I’ll get at least a few hours of enjoyment out of. Also I <3 Van Halen.
I can’t decide whether it’s more impressive than the GH:Van Halen being $10, but LEGO Rock Band has also plummeted down to $5, so I grabbed that too. It’s just like Rock Band except with more collectible crap! Someone knew exactly what kind of game I want to play!
The downside here is that some jackhole at… Harmonix maybe?… decided that all the music had to be kid-friendly, so 90% of my DLC does not work when playing on the LEGO RB disc. It’s not the worst thing that could happen, but some of the songs they chose to not allow bend my mind. Out of the ten Queen songs I have, only four are playable. This is double weird because the crux of story mode is that your LEGO avatar has been inspired to start a band after seeing (LEGO) Queen perform. And “The Boys are Back in Town” isn’t allowed? It was good enough for Toy Story 2, but not LEGO Rock Band? Harmonix must have brought in the most bored, angry soccer-moms they could find to make the cuts. The one upside here is that it removes almost all of the ludicrously difficult songs, so random setlists aren’t so terrifying anymore.
The setlist on the disc isn’t exactly stellar either. It’s head and shoulders above the tripe they were pushing in Band Hero, but about half of it is still crap. Really, does anybody actually like Counting Crows? Looking at it in a more positive light though, a DLC pack of three songs would cost slightly more than this disc did. Yeah, the price will double if I choose to import the songs to Rock Band 2, but it’s still way more cost-effective in the long run.
I was very excited last week when I heard that the Catherine demo was available for my enjoyment. Alas, it was for Gold members only, so I was stuck waiting for it until… Tuesday I think? In any case, it’s available to the general public now, so I downloaded that.
Let me start by saying that I was interested in Catherine before it was cool. Because I’m super hip. The kids over at Talking Time were all abuzz about it when the first trailer was announced, because it seemed to be a Shin Megami Tensei spinoff of some sort. SMT, and the Persona games in particular, are a big thing over there, so a sexy spinoff was big news. Turns out it has little to do with SMT, and is not even branded as part of the series, but after playing it I can see that there are a few similarities.
Catherine is a puzzle game. Technically it is a falling block game, but not in the “match-three” way that falling block games are. In this one, you must climb a tower made of blocks before they fall out from under you. It’s a little more complicated than that, but such is the basic premise of the gameplay. Also, there is a story that plays out in between the tower-climbing. And this is where it parallels SMT, or Persona 3, at least. During the daytime, you walk around and talk to people, affecting your relationships with them as you go. And then at nighttime, it’s tower climb time. This is the same formula that P3 follows, except that in that game there is an RPG instead of puzzles during the night segments. Again, that’s a very basic summary, but it gets my point across.
After playing the demo, I’m not only interested in Catherine because the Talking Time crew told me to be, but mostly because if you ignore the fact that it is not technically a Persona game, it’s a Persona game I can play. I really would like to get into the series, but from what I’ve heard, they seem to have an issue with requiring perfection. Having to memorize enemy weaknesses and switch up your party all the time to take advantage of them is a little more than I want to deal with in a standard RPG. In a tactical RPG? Sure, that’s part of the genre’s charm. But coming off of Final Fantasy XIII, where your characters learn weaknesses and exploit them automatically, having to tweak your characters/party for each encounter? Too much work.
So Catherine here, the other reason I want to get into it is because the social element and story really interest me. Your social interactions appear to have an effect on how the story plays out, even if it just results in whether your character (Vincent) picks the blond (Catherine) or the brunette (Katherine) in the end, it looks like it’ll be a fun ride. Of course, me being me, I’d definitely do everything to rope Vince into marrying his longtime girlfriend. It’s nice to feel like you have that choice, anyway.
I do want to play the full game, but I’m wondering if it’ll be worth the entry price. $60 is an awful lot for someone with so little disposable income to pay for a game about climbing blocks. I’m sure that I’ll enjoy the daytime segments and the story more than enough to justify the price. It’s hard to say whether I’d play it more than once though. Maybe it’d make a good birthday gift? It is only a month and a half away… Then again, I did play Silent Hill: Shattered Memories several times, and that game was even less about gameplay than Catherine is. I suppose it’ll probably boil down to whether I have enough self-control to avoid buying it or not, though I know how guilty I’ll feel if I do. Huh. Listen to me ramble about finances. Not exactly the most entertaining thing to blog about. Point is, the demo is good, but not $60 good.
In a related story, I’m highly considering getting SMT: Devil Survivor Overclocked for 3DS next month. This one is a tactical RPG, so that’s perfect! I love tactical RPGs! Which reminds me, the PSP port of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together has been sitting on my floor unopened for at least a month now. Probably should put Dissidia down for a while and start hacking away at that.
(At this point, you’re likely trying to reason out exactly why I think I need to buy more video games.)
