Manual Samuel isn't completely awful, but it sure tries its hardest.

That's the thing -- Manual Samuel is trying to piss you off. Like QWOP, the frustration inherent in its basic controls is "the point." But Manual Samuel takes it a step further: you're not just required to carefully time your walking to avoid falling down, you must also regularly press the blink button, and the breathe-in button, and the breathe-out button! And, whenever Samuel happens to slouch over, the straighten-spine button!

Some kudos must go to whoever figured out the button mappings that make all this possible, even if only barely so. On their own, the designs of this game's complex-but-accessible coordination challenges - from a drink-coffee minigame, to stick-shift driving - are somewhat impressive.

But having to move from one challenge to the next while continuing to breathe and blink is a real test of your patience, and when the game's timing requirements start to get tight, the endlessness of these micro-frustrations is just ... ugh. The feeling of futility, that just existing takes so much effort, is very demotivating.

There's no external motivation from the game's story or presentation, either. The plot is intentionally absurd and incoherent, the art and voice acting are low-quality, and the dialog's attempts at humor are kinda annoying. The "joke" of Death being a delinquent skateboarder wore out pretty quickly.

That Manual Samuel has working gameplay at all is slightly praiseworthy; but it isn't fun to play, and I don't care enough about Sam's story to see it through.

Better than: Pinstripe
Not as good as: Snake Pass
I can die happy: if I never hear the self-censored phrase "holy feces" again.

Progress: Chapter 7, fought some robots before giving up.

The core action gameplay of Strider (2014) is mostly solid, but a few fatal flaws make it more frustrating than its vacant story is worth.

First off: this is a bad example of a Metroidvania (more so than Headlander was). The world map is large and interconnected, but your path through it is almost entirely linear. Occasions to stray from the beaten path are rare -- there are optional upgrades for e.g. health, but not very many. Often, the game uses one-way obstacles - sometimes even re-locking an open door! - to prevent you from backtracking and force you toward the current objective.

I'd overlook the strict linearity if those objectives were narratively compelling, but they're nothing more than a series of techno-babble macguffins, serving the transparent purpose of taking you from one end of the map to the other. The story is bare as if to pay homage to the original NES game: it starts with zero explanation, there are almost no named characters (other than bosses), and even though I'm halfway through the game, I still don't know what the protagonist's motivation is.

Strider clearly doesn't care about storytelling, and wants you to enjoy the action for its own sake. And while its sword-slicing and -dicing is fun when it works, the game commits more than enough cardinal sins to dull its appeal:

• Checkpoint placement is both infrequent and unclear; death will often result in a surprising amount of re-treading.
• Cutscenes are unskippable, even (especially) the ones that precede boss fights, which you'll have to watch over and over again on every attempt.
• Bosses, and even some regular enemies, have an annoying tendency to effectively trap you with attacks that knock you back then fire again as soon as you're up; or bullet-hell-like attacks that feel like they come out of nowhere.
• And the controls just aren't quite tight enough to satisfy Strider's high-action ambitions. Specifically, running and ducking are both controlled by the left analog stick, and it's frustratingly easy to accidentally trigger the duck, immediately stopping in place.

Really, this feels like a decades-old no-frills action game with a nice coat of paint and some under-baked features tacked onto it. On balance, the action is "okay," but the rest of the game is simply not interesting enough to keep me going.

Better than: Forma.8
Not as good as: Gato Roboto
And in the "embarrassing technical issue" department: I had to play on my old PC, because my new build has too many CPU cores!?

Progress: the "Black Marketer" told me to destroy the "Gravitron" to access the "Temple."

Headlander is an imperfect game with some strong core mechanics and a fun gameplay loop -- which is about as much praise as I've given any game in the last 2-3 months.

It's an action-adventure game with an interconnected world map, i.e. a Metroidvania, although it isn't an excellent example of the genre; the campaign's critical path rarely involves revisiting a previous area. But it nails the sense of exploration that comes from filling-in a map grid, and the undirected freedom of scouring that grid for overlooked doors and missing upgrades.

Likewise, the upgrade mechanics weren't terribly compelling for their own sake; I used almost none of the extra abilities I unlocked, hell I couldn't even tell you how they were activated. (Headlander gets 50 DKP minus for showing PlayStation button icons in the UI while I was using an Xbox One controller.) But passive enhancements like health and charge time got me interested in the upgrade system, and my compulsion to "collect 'em all" filled in the rest.

I didn't follow the story all that well; I think it had something to do with transhumanism? Most of the campaign didn't focus on its main plot, opting instead to surprise me with random, zany directions like -- hey it's a 1970s disco lounge in space! but now we're in a giant game of battle-chess. oh, and now there are NPCs who give sidequests? but who cares, we're going to a new world map, on the moon! However, that lack of focus didn't really feel like a negative, because I kept looking forward to whatever insane thing the game might throw at me next.

Critically, although Headlander's central combat mechanics had a bit of a learning curve - getting the "vacuum a robot's head off" balance just right took some practice - they ended up being fun throughout the game's 6-hour running length. This was, in no small part, thanks to the satisfying "pop" sound that robot heads made when they detached.

Headlander's overall style, its tubular soundtrack and retro-futuristic visual effects and mostly-humorous voice-overs, comes together really well. It never takes itself too seriously, which is perfect for its manic story direction and somewhat-unsophisticated ability upgrades.

You're a floating head who possesses robots with laser guns, and everything else is pretty much gravy on top of that.

Better than: Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, Stacking
Not as good as: Indivisible
Roughly on par with: Timespinner, plus-or-minus that game's seriousness vs. this game's lack thereof.

Progress: 100% map and upgrade completion.

After finally limping through Fallout 4 (and especially Nuka World), I felt like playing something completely different. Something with a gripping adventure story, simple mechanics, pleasant visuals, a short running-length; and to be safe, something I'd played before. My memory of Prince of Persia (2008) fit that bill perfectly -- but unfortunately, my memory didn't age very well.

A decade ago, I was in love with the game's "optional dialog sequences." Today, they feel more like cutscenes that you need to keep pressing a button for. Some of the dialog is vitally informative to Prince's and Elika's character building; so why is it optional? And the rest are throwaway lines that feel like a waste of my button-presses.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was released the year before PoP 2008, and the following ten years of Uncharted games more than proved Naughty Dog's concept of mixing banter with parkour in real-time. If this game was made just a year later, I'm sure they would have done the same; now, the optional cutscenes - which still interrupt gameplay - feel like a big step back. (And Nolan North's wry voice acting keeps inviting the comparison.)

The combat is stupid. I tolerated it back then, and I can barely put up with it today. Maybe, back in 2008, the movement and ability controls were like a breath of fresh air compared to Sands of Time and its sequels; but now, it's really nothing special. Now, I can't help but focus on the aggravating timing quirks - like when I successfully parry an enemy attack, but then it attacks again immediately, anyway - and how disruptive and time-wasting the "we're at the edge, better turn around!" animations become. Especially for the Warrior boss, who needs to be corralled to a specific spot and moves ... so ... slowly.

And while, in theory, gathering light seeds via explorational parkour is a highlight of the game; in my replay, I dreaded the backtracking involved in collecting more glowing bits. Maybe it's a consequence of the environment art no longer holding my interest -- I just didn't look forward to going off in new directions, or finding new obstacles to overcome. I only wanted to make progress in the story, and the light seed requirements to do so felt like a pretty artificial hurdle.

That story, by the way, isn't compelling on its own. But this was true back in 2008, too. And... can you believe that the PC version still doesn't have the Epilogue DLC that picks up after the main game's abrupt, borderline-cliffhanger ending? (Well, sure, I can believe it. But I feel like I shouldn't.)

The years haven't been kind to our prince. I'll admit that I still have a soft spot for the idea of wall-running and jumping through canyons to save ancient kingdoms from evil magic; but in retrospect, it's clear that a lot of this game's appeal was in its newness, and how pretty it looked. The mechanical sophistication and graphical horsepower of today's games make PoP look relatively sloppy.

I hope that, someday, someone figures out how to properly revive this series. A man can dream...

Better than: RiME
Not as good as: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (NGC, PC, PS2, PS3, XBOX), whose storytelling, at least, still holds up.
Oh hey, remember the demo for: Raji: An Ancient Epic? Not holding my breath, but, there's a chance!

Progress: Barely more light seeds than were absolutely required.

Nuka World has some great level design: the theme park concept makes for some excellently-varied and borderline-fantastical environments. That's the good news about this Fallout 4 expansion -- the only good news. (Unless you really like raiders, I guess.)

Everything else about Nuka World is insubstantial.

The narrative framing of the expansion is that part of the park is occupied by raiders, and you, uh ... help them take the rest of it. There is a promising "hook" in how the former Overboss was overthrown by his lieutenants, but the backstory there is that said former Overboss was lazy and complacent. End of story! No intrigue or color here.

Each of the park's three raider factions is alleged to have a distinct personality and motivation, but other than the initial allegation, they're just raiders. The faction leaders do have some interesting dialog, for the 2-3 minutes you talk with each of them; but after that, none of the gangs demonstrate any defining characteristics.

The theme park is a great excuse for diverse dungeons - space-themed, jungle-themed, wild-west-themed, et al - and these environments had great potential to introduce unique characters, intriguing backstory, and immersive quests. But none of that actually happens. The safari park has a Tarzan-like NPC who gives you directions, in stilted English; the bottling plant has a convincingly-annoying tour guide voiceover with no plot relevance; various console logs describe pre-apocalyptic events but have no bearing on the present day.

Ultimately, the function of each park section is to supply you with a specific type of enemy to kill a lot of. In one park it's robots, in another it's ghouls, in another it's bugs. And, if that wasn't disappointing enough, almost all of these enemies are reskins of foes that you've already faced in the main game.

Aside from the nondescript raider factions, and the underwhelming parks, there's exactly one side-quest in this DLC. And it's ... okay. The hubologists' adventure is a fun diversion, but it's over fairly quickly.

If there's a strength, a "selling point," to Nuka World, it's that your allegiance with the raider factions can unlock conquering Commonwealth settlements -- replacing your settlers with raiders. But that's so stupid! Not just because it's such an unexpectedly narrow option, considering the comparatively-ambiguous moral choices in the main game, but also because it's so transparently inconsequential. Settlements were already an afterthought in the main game; why would I care if raiders took them instead?

Unlike Far Harbor, which had some legitimately interesting ideas but lazy and lackluster execution, Nuka World doesn't feel like it has any ideas at all. I mean, I'll give credit to the level designers for crafting thematically and visually interesting environments -- but everything else in this DLC feels completely phoned-in.

Better than: Fallout 4: Automatron
Not as good as: Fallout 4: Far Harbor
At this point: I'm so thoroughly sick of Fallout 4 that I'm glad to be done with it.

Fallout 4's Far Harbor expansion has some lofty ambitions, but poor execution ultimately reduces this DLC to "more of the same." And considering the base game has plenty of same-ness already, that's not much of a sales pitch.

It starts off strong, with the town of Far Harbor itself making a moody and atmospheric debut. The run-down harbor-town look and the eerie soundtrack make a strong first impression, promising an intriguing mystery with a unique, foggy aesthetic.

But that facade doesn't last long. The harbor folks' sidequests feel like they're copied from the same fill-in-the-blanks templates as the main game; so do the sidequests from the synth safehouse at Acadia. And while the Children of Atom have their own wildly-unique home base, and a fantastical introduction - Visions in the Fog is definitely one of the game's coolest scripted sequences - most of their quests fit squarely within the mold of what we've seen before.

Meanwhile, the main story quests pivot around a 3D computer hacking minigame (well, more like "reverse tower defense") that ventures well outside of Fallout 4's comfort zone. It's a really thrilling idea, and the fact that someone was able to implement this in-game is pretty damned impressive. But ... well, it uses the workshop construction interface, which was already clunky enough -- and the constraints put onto it for this "hacking" game just exacerbate that clunkiness. Between the painful UI, and pathfinding that leaves "indexer" probes stuck in the (flat!) terrain, this minigame comes distinctly across as a prototype.

There is some juicy backstory in these main quests, once you've solved those hacking puzzles and DiMA's history is revealed. But those story beats barely have time to land before the campaign devolves into... there are three factions, pick one and kill the others. Really, Bethesda? After the main game pretended that "everyone hates each other" was a high form of moral ambiguity, you're going to make me drink from the same well again?

(At least there's an option to let everyone live this time, but the dialog choices to get there aren't super-intuitive. If I'd followed my instincts, I'm pretty sure Acadia would've been wiped out, including the character I'd been sent to rescue in the first place.)

There are some other sidequests on the island of Far Harbor, but the only one I really remember was a robot-murder-mystery (!) at the Cliff's Edge Hotel. And I remember it because, as captivating as its setup was, the quest itself was disappointingly forced and abrupt. Again, an ambitious idea that just wasn't given the detail-work it needed to flourish.

Far Harbor presents some fascinating new ideas, but doesn't adequately deliver on any of them; at its best, it re-treads the same ground as the main game. Sure, there are a few interesting areas to explore and intriguing ambient stories to uncover (like the low-key background of Cranberry Island) -- but I already got my fill of that from the Commonwealth.

Better than: Fallout 4: Vault-Tec Workshop
Not as good as: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dawnguard
And considering I sided with the Railroad to save synths: Acadia, a synth refuge, was fairly underwhelming.

The Vault-Tec Workshop DLC is structurally simple: it adds an incomplete vault, which you can build out like any other workshop/settlement.

If you loved Fallout 4's base-building, then this is a big, open opportunity to flex your creative muscles. As for me, I kinda hated the workshop's janky UI and laborious inventory management already -- so a bigger sandbox does nothing for me. I was done building my Vault 88 pretty quickly, since I didn't use any floors, or walls, or doors; and I'm not at all ashamed about it being the shittiest vault in the Commonwealth.

I did, at least, glean some satisfaction from the small amount of questing accompanying the vault. At first, you have to clean out its rodent and ghoul and radscorpion problems; and the workshop creates some fun opportunities to fight monsters with defensive sentry guns. I enjoyed those moments more than I probably should have.

Then, when the vault is ready for settlers, your overseer will direct you to run behavioral experiments on them. These experiments are small, and completely scripted, but do show off a bit of Fallout's sense for dark humor.

Barring whatever you build in it, there really isn't much to this DLC. At least it's not as much of a pain in the ass as the Mechanist was.

Better than: Fallout 4: Automatron
Not as good as: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Hearthfire
I guess some people get really into the workshop thing: I'm just not one of them.

Automatron is about robots. You fight robots, you get a new companion who's a robot, and you build an upgrade station for robots! Robots, robots, robots.

Unfortunately that upgrade station represents a geometric progression of the inventory-management-hell problem I lamented in Fallout 4. There are so many damn upgrades, requiring such a crazy variety of salvaged parts and pieces -- the menu is bewildering to look at. I did like two upgrades and never bothered with it again.

(It doesn't help that I'd already picked my favorite companion by this point in the game, and it wasn't a robot. The robot upgrade station is effectively pointless if you don't have a robotic companion.)

This DLC also adds a quest-line to hunt down the Mechanist, whose robots have been roaming the Commonwealth and slaughtering its hapless settlers. You've got the handful of go-here-collect-that-kill-everyone quests that you'd expect, nothing I'd really call special or memorable, up until the final quest that takes you to the Mechanist's Lair -- a gruelingly-long dungeon that I was tired of before the halfway point, capped off with an exhausting wave-based gauntlet of robot fights.

Automatron's content isn't nearly compelling enough to justify how much work is required to enjoy it.

Better than: Borderlands 2: Mad Moxxi and the Wedding Day Massacre
Not as good as: Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt
And the ending, where the Mechanist is unmasked: what a disappointingly hackneyed twist.

After a month, and 100+ hours, of Fallout 4 ... well, it's okay, I guess.

I kid. Fallout 4 continues Bethesda's traditions of loading a ton of content into a robust open world, and of propping it up with a rich set of progression and customization mechanics. But it also continues their traditions of shoddy technical workmanship, and of investing in sometimes-baffling design ambitions while neglecting core game systems.

Although I've overall enjoyed my time with the game, the majority of this post will be a scathing critique of its flaws (as is tradition).

The game's opening hours are pretty "meh" -- not just because the introductory sequence is boring and slow, but - largely - because it prioritizes showing-off the new base-building features. And these features are ... rough. The interface feels like something a modder might have slapped together, or like a placeholder that's still waiting for a UI design pass.

The input bindings for "workshop mode" are a to-don't list of user experience gaffes. Holding the "V" key enters the mode, while pressing it changes the camera perspective instead; except when you're too far away from a workshop, in which case holding the key does the same thing as pressing it. Once in workshop mode, some keys like Tab and Escape get re-bound to navigate building menus (replacing their typical uses of Pip-boy and Pause menus, respectively) - oh, and there are fuckloads of building options, making it impossible to find anything specific without an online guide - but, when you're looking at an already-placed structure, then the Tab key is overloaded to send it into storage.

That's right -- you can't use Tab to go backward in the workshop menu until you move the camera such that you're no longer looking at a placed structure or item. If it were me, I'd call that a bug.

This is but one example of the over-overloaded base-building interface mess, and the payoff at the end of this learning curve isn't really worthwhile. Placing structures "neatly" is a fiddly exercise in frustration, so making anything aesthetically-satisfying is an inordinate amount of work. The overwhelming majority of building options have no gameplay effect whatsoever; I never placed any furniture except beds, and storage containers. Managing raw material inventory between multiple settlements is a ridiculous chore, even with the Supply Lines skill, which is locked behind an optional perk! And if you do decide to care about your settlers and their depressing living conditions, you'd better be prepared to frequently drop what you're doing and fast-travel to a settlement that's come "under attack."

Hearthfire's purely dialog-selection-based construction options were more satisfying than this under-baked, underwhelming feature set. And while I appreciate the premise of "rebuilding" the wasteland, Fallout 4's workshops are a poor execution of that idea; it doesn't feel like I'm restoring the Commonwealth as much as it feels like I'm playing a shitty hacked-together version of The Sims.

Base-building also highlights how underdeveloped this game's inventory-management tools are. And I mean ... trying to organize your stuff in Skyrim was already pretty goddamn awful, but some of that felt like "my fault" for my pack-rat, virtual-hoarder playstyle. Bafflingly, Fallout 4 introduces no mechanical or design changes to solve this problem; instead, it incentivizes hoarding by making settlement upgrades cost "junk." Oh, and not just settlement upgrades -- weapon and armor crafting also requires junk, including a few resources that are consistently hard-to-find (looking at you, adhesive).

So to invest in the game's crafting systems, you'll need to meticulously explore and loot dungeons for crafting materials, consume a significant amount of your precious carrying capacity with literal junk, and make frequent pit-stops back to base for unloading said junk. This routine makes the Strong Back level 4 perk the most valuable character upgrade in the game.

It also emphasizes how bad Fallout 4's loading times are. And no, I don't mean that you need a fast install disk; I mean that you need a fast install disk and a fan-made mod to fix the game. It would appear that Fallout 4 ties various engine systems to its frame rate, and assumes that only a certain portion of each "tick" can be used for asset loading; hence, when it locks the frame rate at 60 fps, the game unintentionally hobbles itself during loading screens. The non-loading portions of each "tick" take zero time, but it still needs to wait for the next frame before more assets can be loaded.

A thorough engine fix would be job-ifying asset loading and other systemic tasks (like physics and AI), so that the whole frame could be filled with asset-loading work when other systems aren't needed. An "okay" fix would merely disable load-time restrictions during loading transitions. The quick, hacky fix would be to just turn off V-Sync during loading; that's what the fan-made mod does, and it's something that I'd estimate a halfway-decent systems developer should be able to do in the real engine in like... ten minutes.

More than four years after its release, Fallout 4 still hasn't fixed this, and its loading times are an order of magnitude higher on solid state disks than they should be because of the frame rate. It's astonishing.

The game's tech isn't exactly bulletproof in other areas, either. I might generously offer that the number of crashes-to-desktop I encountered in Fallout 4 was at least not more than the number of crashes I remember hitting in Skyrim.

So the UI is dogshit and the engine is held together with wet tape. "It's a Bethesda game, what'd you expect?" I can hear you asking in a spiteful Boston accent. (Oh yeah, and despite the voice actors' accents, I can still identify many of them from their previous characters in Whiterun and Windhelm -- again, classic Bethesda.) Well, as baffled as I am by the UI, and as incensed as I am by the engine tech, it's Fallout 4's lackluster narrative quests that disappointed me the most.

When I remember my Skyrim playthroughs, I fondly recall helping defend the College of Winterhold from magic sprites; being targeted by, infiltrating, and effectively cleansing the Dark Brotherhood; turning the Theives' Guild into a first-world power; and fighting the Stormcloaks' war for them by slaughtering those jackass Imperials. The strong personalities of each faction made their sidequests compelling, and it was especially satisfying to lead (or conquer) as many of them as possible, more so than following the comparatively-simple path of the main dragon-yelling story quests.

It's not surprising that Bethesda saw this reaction to the main quests, and asked itself: how can side-factions become more involved in the central story? But the answer they've proposed in Fallout 4 doesn't seem right. Much of each faction's identity is rooted in hating the other factions -- and while it's cool that endgame missions have you destroying a faction's rivals, this necessarily excludes you from experiencing the other factions' endgame missions and content.

These mutually-exclusive quests can also make for a confusing, and highly error-prone, path to the endgame. Each group plots against the others, but sometimes you can slyly play multiple sides, while at other times simply acceping a quest causes another faction to instantly cut ties with you. Faction relations were especially arcane in my allegiance with the Railroad, which requires that you maintain deep cover within the Institute; so betraying the Institute at the "wrong" moment fails the questlines from both factions.

And even when focusing on anyone one faction, it's like... they don't have very much character to them.

• The Minutemen want to "help" the Commonwealth rebuild, but doesn't really do anything to accomplish that, and their quests feel more like tutorials than world-building.
• The Railroad wants to "help" synths by freeing them from the Institute, but until you show up, is practically impotent; after their introductory follow-the-clues quest, nothing they do is all that interesting.
• The Brotherhood of Steel wants to "help" humans retake the wasteland, but their goals devolve into a flat stereotype of blind racism, albeit a well-armed one.
• The Institute wants to "help" the future of humanity, and at least feels distinct from the other factions in how aloof and detached they are; but that aloofness also means that they never satisfyingly explore the ethical questions around synths' free will, the plight of surface-dwellers, or even their habit of kidnapping people to use as test subjects.

I came away from each faction's NPCs feeling like their goals were basic, lacking nuance; and their quests gradually morphed those goals into "defeat the other factions." Which may be a fascinating moral-grey-area point about xenophobia and personal freedom, but... it's not very creative.

Alright. Phew! I think that more-or-less covers my airing of grievances toward Fallout 4.

And it's shitty of me to abridge the positive side of this post, I know; but the fact is, most of the things that Fallout 4 got right are things that Skyrim also got right. Building up your character is mostly satisfying, once you've figured out some survival and combat strategies that work. Reading in-game lore is usually a treat, especially when terminal entries build a multi-faceted story around pre-war characters or events.

Like in Skyrim, some of Fallout 4's best moments have subtle and surprising beginnings -- like the treasure hunt at Jamaica Plain, which might be the most memorable quest of my whole playthrough. Environmental, ambient storytelling is one of Bethesda's greatest strengths, and Fallout 4 proves that they haven't lost their knack for it.

It does, though, call into question what I can expect from the next Elder Scrolls game's key narratives. And if they cram this disastrous inventory UI down my throat again... well, maybe someone will fix it in a mod.

Look: Fallout 4 isn't a bad game. I don't regret spending a hundred hours in it, and I definitely got a significant amount of solid entertainment out of those hours. But the next time a Bethesda game makes me choose which milquetoast faction to ally myself with, I might just pick "none."

Better than: Assassin's Creed Revelations
Not as good as: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, naturally The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
And despite all my whining: I'm still looking forward to discovering new stories in the Far Harbor and Nuka World DLCs.

Progress: Helped the Railroad nuke the Institute.

I waited too long to try Baldur's Gate.

Even in its slightly-more-current Enhanced Edition, this definitely feels like a 20-year-old game. The character creator is onerous, the tutorials are clunky, the UI is a tad byzantine, and the world just ... doesn't seem interesting. I'd have been willing to tolerate the former problems, but the game's opening minutes weren't compelling enough -- all mechanical dialogs and banal fetch-quests.

I get that the setting and characters might become more engaging later on, but I'm not interested in spending hours slaying rats and twiddling with character pages just to get there. My expectations for immersive-world RPGs have been spoiled by more modern games like Witcher 3 and Skyrim.

Progress: Didn't make it out of the starting town.