Cate West: The Vanishing Files (Part 2)

Let's talk about the bible.

Except not really. I kind of want to talk about the trend of pulling from mythology, Christian or otherwise, for other works of fiction. But there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you are a competent writer. And really, most people who completely rely on outside sources for their story... are not competent writers. That's why that they need to rely on existing sources. Now, I'm not going to say ALL people who do that are bad writers because that's simply not true. The amount of bad writers who base their stuff on mythology are probably equal to the percentage of bad writers who use completely original material. But that's not really the point. In fact, I started watching old episodes of Justice League midway through this paragraph, so I kind of forget what the point is.

But anyway, Cate West. Upon further thought, I realize this will probably be shorter than I'd like exactly as long as normal and not longer but... there really isn't much plot in the game to go on. Every little bit of the plot is like a stepping stone to more gameplay. Incredibly dumb stepping stones that make you feel like an idiot whenever you hop on them. And not just an idiot, but a bad person. That is the power of these stepping stones. But anyway, plot.

You're Cate West. You're a novelist in America... like, Rhode Island or something. General New England area. I'd like to point out that, since you are a novelist instead of an attorney, this actually makes you less qualified to investigate crime scenes than Phoenix Wright and that's just funny.


It really is.

I know the police sometimes employ psychics to solve murders, but to my knowledge not dozens of times in the same month or two and god dammit, they look for actual evidence, not just the psychic's word. Do you have any idea what kind of legal system that would be? It would be freaking madness. I'm honestly kind of fuzzy as to why they even brought her in. I think it had something to do with her father being killed years ago or something... and now that I think about it, I don't recall that plot thread ever being resolved. But yeah. Game starts off, you're Cate West and
YOUR PARENTS ARE DEAAAAAAAAAAAD!!

Or at least your dad is. I don't recall any mention of your mom. Your mom being Cate West's mom, but I think this review will go funnier if I just keep pretending that you are Cate West. Indulge me, I'm a funny man. Anyway, you're at your book signing and you meet this guy who kind of looks like Captain America without the costume. Blond hair, blue eyes, all American. Well, he would look like that if the art wasn't kind of meh.


Captain America apparently thinks he's Superman.

Anyway, there's this "fateful moment" kind of deal that has been done a million times before, will be done a million times again, and is nothing special. Your BFF Wesley (more like Star Trek Wesley than "As You Wish" Wesley), who is basically your equivalent of Larry Butz in degrees of lameness and uselessness, but not even close to as funny. He's basically a completely worthless human being, who is also the only thing that drives the plot of this game into full-blown-retarded. But I'll get to that later.

Anyway, there's a photo or some crap and you're like all "MY FATHER DIED HERE" or something and somehow convince Steve Rogers up there (that's Captain America's real name for the non-nerds.) to let you investigate while you dump Wesley and the book tour to find out about your dead parents. Like Phoenix Wright, every case is a murder case. Okay, apparently not. There's robberies and arson too. Which is nice, actually. Except there's no quirky/interesting characters. Or really, any characters. At all. I think there's some Asian girl that you're also BFFs with but I honestly can't recall and like hell am I playing through this again. If you can't tell, I'm using the term BFF as ironically as I can in text. Which isn't very. Also, this game is so obscure that there really isn't anywhere on the internet that I can find to refresh myself on the plot. No one cares about Cate West. With good damn reason. Damn good reason, even.

But apparently, in this world, people should care about Cate West. She can fucking solve a murder in the bay by finding a hackey-sack in the financial district. And somehow THIS IS EVIDENCE. Did the murderer have the hackey-sack? No. Did he ever see the hackey-sack? Again, no. Has the murderer ever been in the same room as the fucking hackey-sack. NO. FAR BE IT FROM ME TO QUESTION YOUR INFINITE PSYCHIC WISDOM, CATE WEST, BUT EVIDENCE SHOULD TIE THE CRIMINAL TO THE CRIME. *FUME FUME*

So you solve a bunch of murders and there's some strained and painful dialogue about how they have nothing to do with each other and the subjects are all talking about voices in their heads. The voices in their heads thing is important, so remember it for later. Apparently there's this mystery guy referred to only as W. He's dark and mysterious and murderous and the villain of the game, appearing perpetually in shadow even when he's in broad daylight. He'd be hilariously contrived if they put even the slightest bit of character into him. Just the slightest bit. But nope. He's just "mwahahaha evil"


Kind of like this, but you see that chocolate? That has more character than W.

So W is somehow responsible for all these murders despite not being the one who actually did them. We already have a psychic, so clearly we can't rule out "Magic," "Death Note" or "Alien Abduction". Hey, I do not throw away my cards until I am absolutely sure they are worthless.

But anyway, eventually you meet this old lady. Who, by virtue of being an old lady and getting more characterization than "Where are my pills?", is the coolest person in this game. She gives you clues or something and then her house burns down. Hooray! Cate is like "OH SHIT, IS SHE OKAY?" and the cops are like "WE CAN'T FIND HER." So they move on and never, ever mention her again.

Anyway, you solve all the murders and put the murderers in jail. Then W kidnaps Wesley and your Asian friend. Oh noes! You and Steve Rogers go to try and confront W and it turns out... W is Wesley! ... ... Yeah. Your best of friend of multiple years is actually a crazy killer guy. I know the W = Wesley thing is obvious when you put it right next to each other, but this seriously has no real build-up and comes completely out of left field, flying at your face and shattering your windshield. Yes, your face has a windshield. You're Cate fucking West, god dammit.

Anyway, he then shoots Steve Rogers. But Steve Rogers is fine, because he's Captain America god dammit.


Shut up, Stark.

And then Wesley explains the plot. Apparently you, Steve Rogers and him are all descendants of the three Magi, Melchior, Balthasar and Caspar. And they each have powers. You (Cate West) have Psychic Powers, Steve Rogers is invulnerable (good thing for a cop to have. You'd think he'd have realized this sooner), and Wesley can control people's minds. Yes, those voices in their head? Wesley. So he mind-controlled them into committing murders. He said he wanted to gather the children of the Magi together. And that's it. They arrest him.

That's fucking it.

They don't say WHY he wanted to gather them all together. What happens then? Does the world end, does Amenhotep rise from the dead, does Jesus come back and they all go out for beers? WHAT?! TELL ME, GAME. TELL ME! Also, they gathered. They were all in the same room. He didn't seem to have a ritual in mind. Although there must be, because they were all within 5 feet of each other in that book store and noting happened then. Unless Jesus bought a copy of Cate's book. Maybe for his Holy Coffee Table. But they don't fucking explain it. Also, you're no closer to solving the mystery of your murdered dad. HOORAY. DEAD PARENTS ARE COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO THE STORY!

Oh, and one more thing. Remember all those people who were mind slaves and controlled to do crimes? They never get mentioned again. Which means they're still fucking in jail. Cate West, you have wrongfully imprisoned like 20 people for various crimes. Their lives are ruined because of you. RUINED. OVER. WAY TO GO, YOU GLEAMING EMBLEM OF HEROISM. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

I hate you, Cate West. I hate you so much.

The Bouncer (Part 2)

So! Now we're into the game. I'm kind of tempted to do this in a "Let's Play!" fashion, but that would take too long. Plus, I have no way of getting screencaps (Seriously guys. PS2 Emulation. Help me out.).

The game starts out in a bar called Fate, which has three Bouncers employed. Why? Shut up. Let's go through them before anyone else, shall we? First up is Sion Barzhad, seen on the left.


Question: What the hell is it called when there is blatant product placement in a game, but the brand is fictional?

Sion is the de facto main character. You could play the game as any of the three, but he gets the box cover and his spikey hair is always poking itself into the plot. First, you may think the art style looks very familiar. This is because the character designer was Tetsuya Nomura, who also did work on the Kingdom Hearts series. Sora always looked like Sion's little brother to me.


Separated at birth?

He's a tough guy who wears ridiculously oversized silver jewlery and delivers his first lines of the game as though he were drunk, which never happens again. In fairness, I'm pretty sure a ninja attack would sober anyone up His story revolves around love, both a of girl who died when he was young and of Dominique Cross. She's the girl in yellow.

Sion totally has the hots for Dominique, who basically serves as the Princess Peach of this game. She gets kidnapped, you must save her. Also, she's jailbait. She's 14. Sion is 19. Yes, the entire point of the game is so that the main character can get his jailbait ass back. Process that. This never has attention called to it, by the way. It just says her age in the manual. Subtle, Squaresoft. Subtle.


I have no witty comment about this.

Next, we have Kou Leifoh (left), voiced by the ever-wonderful Stephen Blum. Kou was always an interesting character because his game path is radically different than Sion's and Volt's. If you play as either of them, he will always crack jokes, seem happy and carefree. If you play as him, he is actually some kind of crazy secret agent (who has like a million tattoos and works at a bar? Sure) and a lot of the events of the game only make even the tiniest bit of sense if you are seeing things from his perspective, like the random fighter jets who pop up to save your ass every now and then.

Then we have Volt (right). He is the stoic. The strong, silent type. Also, he has a cactuar on his jacket, which always made me laugh. His story is honestly pretty damn dull compared to Sion's and Kou's. There's nothing of note here besides a romantic subplot with the ever-slutty Echidna.


No relation. Knuckles is not a total ho.

So, Dominique gets kidnapped by ninjas. Yay. Volt recognizes these ninjas as Special Forces of the Mikado Corporation. There are a number of things wrong with that sentence. First off, if you can recognize who the ninjas work for by their outfits, they're not very good ninjas. Second, if a company has enough money to create their own band of ninjas... I really don't know how to continue that, actually. I really don't know what the effect of a corporation making their own elite ninja squad would be. But anyway, so they run off to the train station because Kou called his secret (and sexy) contact, Leann Cladwell, and she told him there was a train going to Mikado. So they run off to the train station, spot that crazy black panther thing, and then suddenly, ninjas! About a dozen of them! This happens so many times in the game that I'll honestly only mention it when it's particularly interesting, like if the ninjas are on fire.


I honestly could not find any other image for this.

Stuff happens. You may or may not blow up a train filled with rocket fuel. Anyway, you get to Mikado... which looks like some enormous mall tower with hovercraft patrols.
Yes. They have hovercrafts. Just big enough for fights to happen on. Conviiiiiiinient~

Then you crash the hovercraft because fucking hell, none of the bouncers know how to pilot a hovercraft. You crash in the woods, which are filled with cyborg dobermans with glowing red death eyes. Why? Bionoid technology. Also, there's more ninjas. Including this guy.


He has grabby hands. Wonder what he wants to grab.

This is Mugetsu. I love this crazy son of a bitch. He is probably my favorite character in the game because he is just so damn crazy. He's crazy because of Bionoid technology that lets him teleport and set himself on fire. Why? Because Bionoid technology makes you crazy, but crazy is only bundled with ninja, I guess. It's a package deal.

The forest they're fighting in is on top of the mall tower thing, by the way. Then they go to this big glass dome in the middle of the forest where a lady is playing a piano and then she turns into that shiny panther. Besides the shiny panther, there is the main villain of the game, Dauragon C. Mikado.


In retrospect, he reminds me of Liquid Snake. Probably because he's so damn British.

Dauragon (god that's awkard to type) is with Sion's old kung fu master. He then kills him. I'm really not sure why. Sion flips out, gets stopped by the panther and then Dauragon is like "Haha I am going to beat you with one arm chained behind my back." Then you fight him. And the panther. Then Dauragon loses, "It seems I have underestimated you" and then punches Sion so hard he falls over gasping for air. Oh, also. Dominique was unconcious on a bed in this room the whole time. Forgot about that. Then Daurahon snaps his fingers and BOOM! Trap door. The tiles fall out and they all fall what must be hundreds of feet. Then the tiles FLOAT BACK UP and fit back into place. Yeah.

Then, you have to choose who to pick. Sion, Volt or Kou. Flat out, Kou's is EASILY the most entertaining. Because he dresses up as a ninja and pretends to be one. Apparently, all of these ninjas speak in sign language. For the hell of it. They can talk, they just choose not to.

But whatever. Part three coming later.

I Hate/Love Halo - Part 2

I will be completely clear on something. I am very fuzzy on the plot of Halo 2. I recall the general gist of things and, if I wanted to, could almost certainly lay out a fairly accurate path of the events of the game. But I don't want to.

Because after I beat Halo 2 the first time, I sat through the credits to watch the final post-credits scene. Then I stared at the title screen for about 3 minutes. I then ejected the game, turned off my Xbox and put the game in the shiny plastic-metal case thing (I got the collector's edition. Go me.) and stared at it for a few seconds. I then pointed my finger and glared. "Never. Again." I then put it away and have not played it since.

This game hurt me on levels I did not know I was capable of being hurt. The plot was terrible, the gameplay was tedious and annoying, all the new weapons were TERRIBLE (which I find hilarious in retrospect, because the Spartans in First Strike briefly commented on the superior design of the new weapons), many of the old ones had been removed and the new enemies... the new enemies...

The Brutes were a sign of the end-times of Halo for me. In the original game, there were four basic Covenant enemies. Grunts, Jackals, Elites and Hunters. Grunts are these things that look like bipedal midget dogs wearing portable iron lungs on their backs. They breathe methane. They're hilarious and like to run around and scream. In the original Halo, they spoke English when yelling at humans. My interpretation is that their respirators also had translation devices in them, which the covenant established as having advanced real-time translation... stuff... in Fall of Reach. The Elites yelled in their alien tongue (which was actually just English, sped up and backwards, but it sounded cool) and the Jackals spoke in this high-pitched, bird squawk thing. The Hunters, to my recollection, made no noise besides semi-audible grunts. Now, this I liked. Because Aliens speaking English always irritates me without proper explanation, no matter how stupid. Dammit, I will accept a freaking babelfish, just TELL ME THERE IS ONE! It's like my one button when it comes to Science Fiction. It's that one thing that always pisses me off, which is why despite it being one of my favorite shows, I can never truly enjoy an episode of Stargate (the new one kind of looks like it will be BattleStargate Galactica, by the way. But that's neither here, nor there.)

Which brings me to Halo 2. Of course, ALL the aliens in Halo 2 speak perfect English, including the ones that clearly have nothing covering their mouth or automatically translating. But whatever. I can let little things slide. But you see, the Brutes are not a little thing. They are a big, hairy, smelly thing and they slowly integrate themselves into the Covenant over the course of the game, usurping the position of the Elites and by the end of the game, taking their place and causing an uprising among the Elites. The Elites then join the humans and fight the Prophets of the Covenant, who are basically big floating Space Popes that look sort of like those worms from that one episode of Futurama.


Kind of? A little?

Now this is all well and good. Except that this means that you don't fight Elites anymore. Now, this is a problem for the following reason: The Elites are GREAT enemies. They are tough, they're the right size, they're visually striking and distinctive in their armor (without their armor, they kind of look like big worm-puppy things)and they move in a cool way. They're such a good enemy that I DON'T WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH THEM! I want to shoot them and I want to feel cool doing it! In the novels, they're all depicted as being on-par with the Spartan IIs and fight hand to hand on a few occasions. They're awesome and they're good enemies. Good enemies are imposing and you feel good about taking them down. When you bring down a cool ba dguy, you feel even cooler. This first becomes a problem when you play as The Arbiter in Halo 2, who is an Elite. You fight alongside other Elites and for his early levels, you fight Elites wearing stupid-looking armor. It's hard to not shoot your allies in these levels, but it's made easier because the Heretic Elites look so ridiculous you really, really want to shoot them. Although honestly, playing as the Arbiter was lame and you didn't really like him that much in Halo 2. Which makes it incredibly weird, because when you can't play as him in any story-relevant way in Halo 3, he's suddenly awesome and you WANT to play as him. I'd call this "Raiden Syndrome," but I really don't think it happens enough in video games to warrant its own name.


This is awesome.

Now, the Brutes. Oh, the Brutes. The Brutes are giant gorillas. Not like giant gorillas, they ARE giant gorillas.


This is not.

Look at that. It's like Mighty Joe Young had sex with a Wookie and beat the child with a bat made of steroids. They don't feel alien, they feel like if there was a dark and edgy 90s version of Donkey Kong, with guns that shoot bullets instead of coconuts. I hate fighting them. I hate them. They are stupid. The only thing that they bring to the table is the gravity hammer in Halo 3, which is quite possibly one of the coolest weapons in video games. But enough good things, I'm still angry. They're just NOT good enemies. I hate fighting them. I LOATHE fighting them. They're stupid and I'm glad they're not in the original game. This is a problem I have with them though.

In First Strike and Halo 2, it is implied that Brutes have never been seen before in the war against the Covenant. They are new players. Eric Nylund makes a note of this by introducing them near the end of First Strike, the Master Chief implying he has never fought them and Cortana saying there is no prior record of them. This makes sense because in Fall of Reach, they list off and show holograms of all known Covenant species to the Spartans, including the Engineers, which never made it into the final version of any of the games (besides Halo Wars, apparently) because they were non-combatants. Which makes me sad because I like them. They're cute.


Oh, the fun we could've had.

I want to make that clear. There are multiple instances that have made it clear that, before the events of Halo 1, Brutes had never been seen by humans and had not been encountered until shortly before Halo 2. Never. So, in Contact Harvest, which is Humanity's first contact with the Covenant, there are Brutes. Not Elites, Brutes.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, BUNGIE? WHAT THE FUCK?!

Why do you have such problems sticking to your own damn canon? It's YOUR CANON! It's a good one! Stop changing it! Oh, I also discovered while searching Halopedia for images that Brutes are ALSO in Halo Wars, which is set before the events of the first Halo.

GOD DAMMIT, BUNGIE! What the hell is wrong with you? This is my BIGGEST PROBLEM with you. Seriously.

You have writers capable of crafting a fine story. This much is clear. You do this with great frequency in the novels you put out. They craft a great world. Why do you insist on fucking that up? Are you incapable of weaving this story into your games? I think you are. Because of this great, layered plot with events across galaxies, organizations, species, what have you, none of this comes across in your games. I don't get this at all.

I'm actually pretty sure at this point, by the time the time the graphics engines of the games are done and its time to start working on the story, all the writers are too busy playing Capture the Flag and Slayer to do anything. I mean, god dammit, Red vs. Blue has a better plot than Halo 2 and 3. And the ONLY Part of Halo 3 I enjoyed was that little Easter Egg with the Red vs. Blue guys on the second level.

That being said, I'm going to buy Halo 3: ODST when it comes out. And pretty soon, I'll probably buy Halo Wars too. Why? Well, besides the fact that I clearly have no sense of pattern recognition, I still have hope. I will always have hope. I will hope and wish that you can tell your story in a half-way competent way. After playing Half-Life 2 and Bioshock, I now have VERY high regard for storytelling in video games. Games are capable of GREAT things and it pisses me off when people squander that. And I hate you for it, Bungie.

[Prototype] Review - Part 2

As cool as suddenly being Guyver was, I was not willing to risk my TV. I already noticed the burn as a random mini-map shaped circle drifted in the corner while I watched NCIS on my DVR. On that note (yes, NCIS is relevant to this. I'm getting to it.), I feel like I should point out something amusing in this game. For those of you who may have played Assassin's Creed, you may remember that there was a button to press if you wished to wade through a crowd more efficiently. You would hold it and Altaïr would push people aside. However, if you stayed in place while holding the button, preferably in a very thin walkway, anyone coming close to Altair would find his hand against their chest, keeping them away. It was mildly amusing and likely a programming oversight. I immediately thought of this early on in Prototype, after discovering something I found hilarious.

Holding the R2 Button (I have the PS3 version), you will run fast. You will leap and bound over obstacles and shove people out of your way with shoulder charges. But if you merely walk down a path, slowly, when people come to close to you, Alex will lift his hand high and deliver a mighty smack to the back of their head. This is not a light tap. This is a hard smack, that knocks them aside. The exact motion instantly brought to mind the kind of smack Agent Gibbs (played by the ever-awesome Mark Harmon) delivers at least once per episode in NCIS, almost like it was modeled specifically after that, which is what makes NCIS relevant to this. And of course, since this is New York, they will curse you off and continue on their way. This was clearly intentional and I cannot fathom why. Alex thus far has been painted as a somewhat sympathetic, if murderous and psychotic, character. So why make him such a massive prick for no reason? Because it's fun. Because these developers like to see humans suffer. That is the only explanation for this game.

I say this because, unlike inFamous, Prototype does not give you a moral choice. There is no Knights of the Old Republic Light Side/Dark Side choice in this game. You are a prick and you are going to have to deal with this. You follow the Path of the Closed Fist and you rip peoples' spines out with it. This is not really a bad thing, but just something I feel I should mention, because it's rather important and further expands on why this game fails at storytelling.

Alex Mercer is, without a doubt, an asshole. My definition of an asshole is a rather specific one when it comes to fictional characters. Almost every person who you would, in real life, call an asshole, I would simply call a jerk. For a fictional character to be an asshole in my eyes, they have to be something really fucking special. The epitome of my definition of an asshole in fiction comes in the form of Wesley Gibson from Mark Millar's opus, Wanted. I mean the comic book specifically, by the way. Wesley in the movie wanted is merely a pussy. But enough of that. For those of you familiar with the comic, you should instantly know what I mean. For those unfamiliar, let me explain. This breed of asshole does not give a shit about anything. He will usually maul, maim, steal, kill and a slew of other horrid things just for shits and giggles. Sometimes, not even that. This kind of person will punctuate the sentence "Fuck you" with a bullet, delivered between the eyes of whoever is unfortunate enough to be an irritant.

My realization of Alex's asshole status came when I accidentally grabbed a pedestrian on the street. Since the military was nearby, and I did not want to attract attention, I tried to put him down and walk away. And something occurred to me.

There was no way for me to get him out of my grip without killing him.

This might sound odd, but hear me out. Circle is the button to grab. Circle is also the button to throw, after you have grabbed. Throwing pedestrians will, 100% of the time in Prototype, result in them being a bloody streak on the pavement. Triangle is "consume" which would have Alex maim and brutalize the poor old man (I had grabbed probably the ONLY old man character model in probably the entire city, by the way) before absorbing him into my being. And none of the other buttons would allow me to release him. This was a strange, elucidating moment for me. As a gamer, I tend to respect the humble NPCs. The bystanders. I try to help them when I can, or at least change direction if I'm going to run over them. In Assassin's Creed, I did not shank and gut the humble pilgrims for fun. I did not dive and tackle the random, crazy women begging me for money. As annoying as they were, they were still human in their world. They were people. This twisted logic usually means that in games with a moral choice, I will invariably choose the path of good. I blame my parents.

But this was something new and different. I realized that no matter what I did, it was out of my hands. This man was going to die. I held his neck in the palm of my hand, but I could do nothing but tighten my grip, like a man's thumb caught in a wire crimper, fated to be crushed harder and harder to the point of oblivion before it could be released. This man was already dead. So I ran up the nearest building, dragging him alongside me and when I reached the top I hurled him as hard as I could. He flew off, flailing in the air until he finally collided with the ground with a satisfying splat. And with that splat, I was free.

Prototype is officially the game that made me stop caring about Civilians. Oh what a horrid thing you have wrought this day, Activision. I hate you for it, but I love you. With this single act of hurling an old man off of Penn Station, so began my merciless reign of terror over New York City. I found myself letting go, shredding civilians to pieces with wild abandon. They no longer mattered to me in missions. Which is good, because when you're driving a tank, it's almost impossible NOT to run the little fuckers over, crushing them into a gooey sanguine frappe. It was liberating and horrifying.

And I have to believe that this is the feeling is what Activision was going for.

Well, if I want to give them credit for something good, anyway. What I mean is, I think they didn't want you to care about the average civilian turning into weird zombie things. Who cares about them? This is about ALEX FUCKING MERCER because the world revolves around his pain. Is he even in pain? I'm not entirely sure. He never really seems to be in pain from his superpowers. I'm not even sure why he really wants revenge. I mean, he's basically cursed with AWESOME, although not being human (he certainly looks human, when he wants to) is sort of a problem. Also, I really must wonder why all the pictures from him in the past have him looking clean cut and happy while he apparently "died" in the shadiest clothes I have ever seen.

At this point in time, I feel like I'm getting off my message. Wait, did I have a message? I think I did. Right, whatever. At the point of Prototype I am at, I am still enjoying the gameplay deeply, but the storytelling is horrific and when it injects itself into the gameplay, the result is frustration and fail. But I can honestly say I enjoy it, despite how its story arouses my ire like an ingrown nail on fire. I will likely write a follow-up to this review when I actually finish the game, which may be more forgiving and less rage-filled. Or maybe I will wish a pox upon all involved in the development of this game. Who can say?

Was Prototype worth the US$60 I spent on it? Probably not. But I did preorder it, so I got a neat little rage-filled Alex Mercer figure. And in the end, isn't that all we can really ask for?

... well, maybe it's all I'll ask for. I'm easily pleased.

...

Oh and also, why the hell are there no street signs? It's New York, god damnit, I want to know where I am.