Reilly2040's Blog

Things have been slowly spiralling out of control in Green Lantern for a couple of months now, with the New Guardians, and more and more of their entities turning up to complicate Hal’s life.  Throw in our mysterious cloaked Guardian to spice things up, and there’s a feeling that this storyline is finally building to something this month, as the Indigo Lanterns appear back on the scene, bringing with them some hints at their backstory.

For me, the Indigos were probably the strongest thing about this story.  While we still don’t have all the answers we’d like about them, we do get some tantalising hints as to their true nature via Black Hand, who is virtually a different person, now that his indigo ring has provided him with compassion.  This leads Hal to realise that most of the Indigo Lanterns must surely have a similar dark past, and wonder what would happen if they lost their rings.

The idea of the rings affecting their hosts has been looked at before, mainly with the Red Lanterns and Larfleeze, and with hints as to the effects of the Star Sapphire and how only Carol can resist them, and the idea that the Indigo Lanterns are some kind of ticking time bomb is an interesting twist.

We also have Barry turn up to talk to Hal about how the rest of the New Guardians are getting out of control.  This all culminates in our mysterious cloaked Guardian turning up and having Parallax posses the Flash.  Now, this is interesting in a couple of ways.  It shows that this Guardian appears to have some level of control over Parallax.  In previous appearances we’ve seen Parallax despises the Guardians, so what’s going on here.  Is Parallax working with the cloaked Guardian, or somehow under his/her control?  In which case, just how powerful are they?  Also, it marks the first time the figure has appeared openly to any of the main Green Lanterns, so hopefully we’re seeing this storyline pushing forwards, with Hal hopefully noticing the green energy chains.  This story has been moving a bit slowly for me, so I’m really hoping this is a sign that its now moving into high gear.

Less effective for me though, was Parallax possessing Barry.  Hal becoming Parallax was a massive deal.  Kyle becoming Parallax was a big shock.  In both cases it was something that could only happen following some major trauma that weakened the characters and made them susceptible to the possession.  However Parallax is easily able to take over Barry.  To me, this just devalues Parallax entirely, and again shows Geoff playing around with the nature of Parallax in order to suit the story.  We only recently had Hal once again being possessed by Parallax in order to battle the Spectre.  I would imagine it’ll be resolved pretty quickly in the next issue, but for me, Parallax is quickly losing any shock value it had back in Rebirth.

I did enjoy this issue, and the twists regarding the Indigo Lanterns really made them interesting.  However, as a whole the New Guardians storyline hasn’t really worked for me, but fortunately we should soon be heading into War of the Green Lanterns, and with most of the Entities now having turned up, I’m hoping this storyline is building to its climax, especially with the cloaked Guardian figure attacking Hal and company in public.

The second series of weekly Star Trek Online episodes reach their climax, as Section 31 decide that the best solution to the Devidian problem is for you to travel back to the 23rd century once again and destroy the comet there that’s emitting the radiation allowing the Devidians to phase through to our world.

Straight away, again we see the devs attempting to bring in new gameplay variations, when Drake announces the secret he’s been keeping.  A system with a star that’s suitable for a time-travel slingshot attempt (as seen in Star Trek IV).  In the game, this is given as a series of navigation points, highlights as rings you must fly through in order, on a timer in order to successfully complete the slingshot.   However to make things trickier, as you go through each ring, your ship picks up speed as it gets closer to the velocity needed for time travel.

As always, I’ll praise the devs for attempting to bring more variation into the game, but I think its also fair to say, this particular mechanic wasn’t entirely a success.  While its a great idea, and the use of the slingshot within the plot also a brilliant surprise, many players found hitting all five of the rings too difficult and frustrating.  I know myself, I had about five failed attempts at it, before I noticed some people discussing it on one of the chat channels (TTS – a test server related channel that’s frequented by the devs).   On that channel, someone else was having similar problems, and it was recommended that they switched to steering the ship using the mouse, by holding down both buttons at once, rather than the usual keyboard control.

I immediately thought I’d give it a go, and got through on my second attempt.   Switching to mouse control definitely makes it a bit easier, but its still a segment that left a lot of players frustrated.  Especially as its right at the start of the mission which they’ve been building towards for five weeks.  However the good news is the developers are aware of the issues, and are looking into a compromise mechanic to help people out (I believe some sort of autopilot assist that kicks in after so many failed attempts).

However, once you get past that part, you travel back in time, and you’re immediately treated to a sight we missed last week: Drozana Station’s exterior in its prime.  Having become fairly familiar with the run down state of the station over the last few weeks (including one of the sections almost hanging off), it was really nice to see this revamped exterior.  Its still a recognisable variation on Deep Space K7, but its still a fresh, new space station exterior we hadn’t really seen before in the game, and it helped reinforce the idea that you’d travelled back in time.

Of course, one thing I’ve missed is the other nice detail.  To help hide your presence and protect the timeline, Drake had your ship outfitted with a holo-emitter system, so that your ship appears as an old Klingon D7 cruiser (amusingly this also happens if you’re playing on the Klingon side, in one of the D7-like cruisers ).  Sadly, he also appears to have equipped you with the worst disguise possible, since you’re immediately attacked by a Federation constitution class ship for attacking a colony, and at the end of the mission, some Klingons appear, none too happy that your ship is from the House of Duras.  Its a great little visual trick though, disguising your ship like this, and while I’ve not really played with the holo-emitters you can get from playing Dabo much, they work well when integrated into the plot like this (similar to the flashlight temporary power from a few weeks ago).

Onboard the station, clearing out the attacking Devidians becomes the name of the game, and for the first time in several weeks, the mission becomes straight-forward combat.  Even in a segment where you’ve to break up a barfight, this is done by just stunning everyone involved, which I found a little jarring after all the alternative options offered in the last few quests (given the urgency of matters though, its understandable that you’d take the “stun them and sort it out later” approach).

With the Station cleared out, the immediate threat is not dealt with, as the rising Triolic radiation from the comet is endangering the crew.  There’s only one engineer that can help adjust the station’s shields to filter it out in time, so its a good thing Scotty’s there on shore leave

I was really positive on the appearance of Doctor McCoy in the previous mission, and so I was very pleased to see Scotty appear here (fingers crossed at somepoint we get to team up with Captain Kirk).   As with McCoy there’s been a nice attempt to make the character look and “sound” like Scotty, and as I said in the previous mission, bumping into these important characters really helps reinforce the feeling that this is Star Trek you’re running around in (I feel similarly about Lord of the Rings Online when you run around the Shire or see a Nazgul).   There’s a familiar type of puzzle in this section, where the woman who can supply the part you need is still in shock after the Devidian attack, so you need to help get the right drink to calm her down (of course, when it comes to drink, Scotty’s the man to talk too).  Talking to Scotty gives you hints about what she likes in a drink, and then you get the barman to mix it up for you.

Its a curious part to the mission.  To be honest, I enjoyed it, as I’ve enjoyed all these “read the information and figure out the answer” puzzles, but to suddenly find yourself mixing a drink seems like an odd break in the action after the fact (and indeed, on writing it down here, I can see how out of place it seems).  To be honest though, I think this plays into a larger thought on the mission I’ll get back to later.

With the drink mixed, the part obtained, and Scotty having worked his magic to save the station, its finally time to get to the route of the problem, and take out the comet itself.  And again, this is unfortunately a part of the mission that gathered some complaints from the players.

This is the sequence mentioned earlier whereby you get attacked by the Klingons (led by another familiar face, albeit a recurring ingame character this time, rather than someone from the TV show, but its still really nice to see the game building its own continuity like this).  Essentially they attack you, as you’re trying to get rid of the pesky comet, however you’re warned of the dangers of changing the timeline.  And as you shatter each stage of the comet, more ships warp in, so its really not long before you can find yourself utterly swamped.

As I learned by my second run through of the mission, there’s a particular strategy to this section.  First time through, I’d assumed the best thing was to completely avoid the Klingon ships as much as possible.  However, this just results in them killing you, a lot.  Instead, it turns out that you can disable the Klingons (however I still avoided engaging the lead ship to be safe).  Done this way, it actually leads to a fun, challenging encounter.  At each stage, you disable the 2 Klingon D7s that appear, while dodging the lead ship (I’d occassionally use Jam Sensors or the like to get it off my back for a few seconds without damaging it), then blow up the stage of the comet, leading to new fragments or shards appearing, along with another 2 D7s.  Rinse and repeat for each stage of the comet (undamaged, fragments and shards).  As an added wrinkle, the D7s will eventually get back online, so you still need to move quickly before they all reactivate, but you get enough time that you should be able to clear everything up and head Back To The Future (!) without it being a complete nightmare.  As I say, quite a fun combat, however whether the way the ingame text is worded or something, I’m not sure, but it wasn’t clear at all this was the way to do things on my first attempt, and it became a mess.    Its definitely another section (like the slingshot sequence) that perhaps needs a little tweaking (and is being looked at by the devs).

If there’s one thing though that’s a bit off about the mission, its the structure.  And it never really dawned on me until I read someone commenting on it in the forums and I agree with them completely.  It feels like things are happening in the wrong order, when you look at the narrative of the mission.  You warp in, deal with all the stuff on the station, and only then do you tackle the route of the problem itself, the comet.    It perhaps would’ve made more sense to remove the encounter with the Federation ship, and instead start with the Klingons and the Comet itself, so you come out of time warp, and immediately nip that problem in the bud.  Then once it was destroyed, it would’ve been simple for your bridge officers to alert you to the lingering Devidians and dangerous radiation levels on the station, and have you beam aboard to deal with them.

The only issue with that though, is the Klingon/Comet encounter does make for a big finale to the mission.  So I do understand the devs presenting the mission this way.  The “mix a drink” section still sticks out, however I don’t want to take away from that section too much, as I did find it quite fun, with the background of the drink providing an amusing spin on a familiar type of puzzle.

As the final mission of the series though, the rewards are plentiful and a lot of fun.  The exclusive reward, that’ll vanish from the mission after a set amount of time is a nifty Devidian staff that you can use to drain life from your enemies as the Devidians have spent 5 weeks doing to you.  As a neat bonus, when used in conjunction with the pattern enhancer reward, it turns into a snake, just like the one in the TV show.

The other rewards though, its fair to say are the ones people have been hoping for.  Classic Trek weapons

After seeing them in action in the previous mission (where the security teams could cut you to shreds with them), everyone had their fingers crossed that the classic Trek Type 2 phaser would be part of the series reward.  As a surprise though, its not the reward that’ll vanish, and will be a permanent reward for completing the series.  graphically, its spot on, looking just like the TV show, complete with blue phaser effects.   The sound effects as well, are captured well from the TV show.  Being a weekly reward, like the other items (such as the classic ship phasers, proton gun and breen weapons) it levels along with you, so its a great weapon to keep handy throughout the game (indeed, having recently been working on my Science Officer, I’m finding the various weekly mission rewards a massive help in the game).

If you’re of the Klingon persuasion, or just a big fun of disruptors, what’s great is they actually give you the choice of weapons as well, so you can forego the type 2 phaser in favour of a disruptor pistol with equivalent stats.

However, the classic treats don’t stop there.  As also included is the original classic Trek phaser rifle, again carefully modelled on what was in the TV show and instantly recognisable.

So overall, I’d definitely say this was another successful set of weekly missions and I still love the excitement they bring to the game.  On one hand however, I would say they were let down slightly by some of the bugs in Everything Old Is New Again, and the problems with some of the gameplay elements in Night of the Comet (although once you know the tricks, its a fun mission).  However, to be fair to the Devidian series, it also came across as the more experimental of the two series, with more attempt to broaden the types of puzzles and action we might encounter, which is definitely to be applauded and encouraged.  What Lies Beneath remains one of the strongest missions in the whole game, and those issues I have mentioned with the other missions are already on the dev’s radar and either fixed, or in the process of being fixed, so any new players will be able to enjoy them hassle-free

And so, the first proper trailer for the new Green Lantern film is out

I think I’d best describe my reaction as “cautiously hopeful”.  In honest, I think a lot of the CGI isn’t entirely working for me, but then, like all trailers, this will be based on unfinished effects, so I’d expect them to be sharpened up a bit prior to release, but at the moment I think aspects look a little cartoony.

As trailers go, it introduces everything well.  Hal’s quickly established as the hotshot fighter pilot, before things switch to the more outlandish intergalactic worlds of the Green Lanterns.  Ryan Reynolds still stands out as a great piece of casting, and I think if they manage to hit the “Iron Man meets Star Wars” vibe dead on, it could work very well.

My only reservation is that I don’t quite get that “Oh wow, this is going to rock!” vibe that the early Iron Man trailers gave me.  Although admittedly, that could easily be because I’m more invested in Green Lantern than I was in Iron Man at the time, so as a fanboy, I’m going to be harder to please, but I just don’t get that same “they’ve nailed it” feeling.  I still think the intergalactic craziness will make this a harder sell to the general audience than Iron Man’s (and Batman’s) more grounded adventures.

That said, there’s obviously a lot of attention to detail going into things here.  The brief glimpses of Oa and various familiar Lanterns (Tomar Re, Kilowog, Sinestro) look great, and the cast as a whole looks well put together.  And I loved the quick shot of Hal knocking down those guys with the green fist.  Hopefully we’ll see a lot of great ring constructs in the film.

So, after locating a time portal to the 23rd century on Drozana Station in the previous mission, Everything Old is New Again finds you and your crew stepping through the portal in an attempt to discover what the Devidians are up to.

Immediately on activating the portal, you’re treated to the interior of Drozana Station in its prime.  No longer the 200 year old, decaying wreck, its now a pristine, newly-built station , and the sudden shift in decor to recognisable 23rd  design is a great fanboy treat.

What follows is another, well-designed mission.  Being from the future, your primary worry has to be to not muck up the timeline too much.  You discover that the station is under a medical quarantine following a mysterious illness that’s draining the neural energy of the station’s occupants (suggesting the Devidians are present in this time zone as well, something later confirmed).   There’s a nice little logic puzzle where you have to overload the computer systems in the room you start in, to break the lockdown and get out in to the main station.

Once out, stealth becomes the name of the game, as you need to try and avoid security patrols while trying to put together the items you need to scan the area for the Devidians and work out a way home.  There’s a nice line of dialogue about setting phasers to heavy stun, something we don’t usually get in the game, but made perfect sense to introduce here.   Another great addition is how some groups will allow you to use diplomacy to try and bluff your way around, rather than relying in stealth, or the aforementioned stun setting.  The stealth aspect is nicely done too, allowing you to duck past the security teams as they check other rooms, or you’ve got the option to try and lock them in one of them.  These kinds of options just really add to the “role playing” aspect of the game, allowing you to make choices as to how you want to tackle a problem.

Once you make it past security, its then onto the second main part of the mission, as you encounter a familiar face.  Heading the medical efforts on the station is Doctor Leonard McCoy, and you quickly find yourself drafted into helping him develop a treatment for the Devidian-affected crew.  This again, is a nice little puzzle where you must scan infected crew members, and use the results to provide the calibration needed to heal them.

Once that’s done, its a straight run to the finish, as you retrieve the final part you need and trigger the time portal, stopping only to get some drugs to protect you from the radiation from McCoy and zap some Devidians that appear.

In terms of mission construction, there’s some really interesting and varied ideas brought into the game here.  I think this is the first time a mission’s had a stealth aspect (including an accolade if you successfully get past the 23rd century security teams without having to stun them) so that was a welcome new gameplay mechanic that I think was pretty successful idea.  The combination of the stealth and puzzles nicely fills the mission out, and means that it feels like you’ve done a lot, despite the lack of combat (unless you decided to just shoot the security teams).

The inclusion of McCoy in the mission also worked really well.  We’ve seen semi-familiar faces in the game before in the form of MacKenzie Calhoun (from the New Frontier books) and various grown up versions of Voyager characters like Naomi Wildman, Icheb and Miral Paris (who of course is a big player in one of the storylines).  However this is one of the few instances where a main character from the franchise has appeared.  The designers had obviously gone to a fair amount of effort to make the character in game a reasonable likeness of DeForest Kelley, and the dialogue seemed spot on to me, so definitely a great moment in the game.  Hopefully we’ll see more familiar faces pop up as new content gets added, as it really adds to the missions, although I appreciate with the game being set in 2409 it makes it a bit trickier without more time travel being used.

However sadly it wasn’t all plain sailing with this mission, and despite the well-constructed mission, with lots of different gameplay mechanics, this was also the first weekly where I felt a few bugs bite which detracted from the experience.  On my first run through, during the stealth segment, I’d attempted to hide in a room while the security team walked past.  This had two side effects, with the team’s patrol route interrupted, they just waited outside the door rather than moving on.  Then one member of the security team randomly respawned within the room, immediately attacking me and costing me the accolade.

Fortunately, a second bug struck when I completed the mission, as the mission didn’t properly complete on my return to the future, and instead I had to run through it again.  Admittedly though, this worked to my advantage, as it let me re-do the stealth segment and get the accolade.

On my second run through, I then again encountered a bug with the second security team, who are supposed to be in a group in a room you have to work your way past.  Instead, they would spawn further up the corridor, run into the room, and immediately beam out and run back in again.  This constant cycle made it impossible to get past them without sacrificing the accolade by stunning them.

However, these bugs are already being addressed.  The mission not completing (while this worked to my advantage) has already been patched, and I expect any other lingering problems to be picked up as well.  It was just a bit of a shame that they slightly soured my first experience of the mission.

However, bugs and glitches aside, there’s a lot to praise in this episode.  The 23rd Century setting was well realised and  feels fresh in the game.  The greater mixture of gameplay styles, combat, stealth and puzzles, and allowing the player to decide how to approach the issue of the security patrols added some depth and real  role playing to the mission.  The inclusion of Bones was a great treat and hopefully a sign that the devs will try to bring more recognisable characters into the game as things go forward, where they can.

Combined with the previous mission, there’s a real sense that the developers are trying to push the envelope of what they accomplish within the game, whether its through the detailed level design of last week, or introducing new gameplay styles this week, its nice to see the game being pushed forward rather than just relying on the same kind of content and level design that we’ve seen before.

Things have been a little quiet on my blog lately, but I’ve been hard at work on various reviews for Outpost Skaro, so I thought I’d just include a batch of links, for anyone who’s interested

Doctor Who
Big Finish 140 – A Death in the Family

Chuck
Chuck Versus The Suitcase
Chuck Versus The Cubic Z
Chuck Versus The Coup D’Etat

Nikita
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 5

Tron Night

Leverage
The Maltese Falcon Job

Oops, playing catchup a little here, since I never got the chance to blog about the last few week’s missions in the new Devidian series in Star Trek Online.

Spin the Wheel was pretty short, but none-the-less a good setup episode, that set the scene nicely for what came next.   After being directed to Drozana Station to check in on a Section 31 informant, you find yourself having to fix the power grid for the station manager to get information on where to find her, and then you must play some Dabo to avoid raising suspicion when making contact.

As I say, on the surface, very short.  And was sure to disappoint some players with its complete lack of combat, but as I’ve said before I enjoy the change of pace they provide, and I feel this mission was an important stage, not necessarily for the storyline, but for introducing the setting of Drozana Station.

Existing in the Neutral Zone, it acts as a neutral trading station where both Federation and Klingon characters can stop off to access the Exchange, pick up some supplies, and play some Dabo.  And for the purpose of this storyline, its also a central point of activity for the Devidians.   For Klingon players, I imagine Drozana Station is a familiar haunt, however as a Federation player I must admit I’d never had the cause to visit there before, especially with Deep Space K7 so close by.  Drozana Station, by this mission is established as a 200+ year old station that’s not kept in particularly great state of repair, with many systems patched together.  This all becomes important in the next mission.

So, a short mission, but I think an important one.   The power grid puzzle was fun and, like the station, it also introduces the Dabo mini-game to those players who may not have been aware of it.  A nice way of advertising some of the non-mission content in the game I thought, as well as making use of existing game assets to help them meet the weekly deadline, which must be tough going sometimes.

However, with Drozana Station now introduced to the players, the next mission, What Lies Beneath, sees you heading back to it to investigate the Devidian’s appearances.  Specifically to search the lower maintenance decks for sign of where they might be gathering.

Now, to truly appreciate what Cryptic did here, you must remember this mission was released over Halloween weekend.  As you descend in the maintenance elevator, you get stopped on another deck part way down, and that’s where the fun really begins, as there’s more than Devidians hiding in the lower decks.

Atmosphere is key to this mission.  The idea of a centuries old station, kept in pretty poor repair is captured brilliantly.  The lighting is low and flickers constantly.  There are cables and debris scattered all over the place.  The setting is perfect as the spooky old space station, and its augmented nicely by the temporary torchlight drone you pick up (a great little power that).  The tension then is ratcheted up a notch when a maintenance technician is killed, and the comm channels fill up with the killer’s messages to you.

And what impact those messages have.  Voice overs are something not heavily employed by the game.  Outside of the tutorial they’re pretty rare, consisting mainly of Leonard Nimoy introducing new sectors and congratulating you on levelling up.  The STF I played also featured a little audio for the main villain, but throughout the majority of the game, voice overs are absent.  It just means that when they do appear, it really adds to the experience, and that was certainly the case here.  As the voice overs are so rare, you’re not expecting them, so when this haunting, menacing voice suddenly came through the speakers, it was a “jump out of your seat” moment.

The mission also starts to set the scene for the following week’s mission.  By the time you find the Devidian’s “nest”, you’ve encountered various Starfleet personnel in 23rd century (Classic Trek) uniforms, so the appearance of a time portal isn’t much of a surprise.  Next stop, the 23rd century.

A great pair of missions when taken together.  There’s some fun puzzles, and the atmosphere in What Lies Beneath really does make the mission.   There’s a lot of love and attention gone into this mission to make it, honestly, one of the best in the entire game.  These missions also demonstrate an element of trade off.  The shorter Spin the Wheel probably allowed the development team the time required to come up with all the textures and environmental effects necessary to make What Lies Beneath as good as it was.   I mentioned this before during the Breen missions, but these weeklies really do show off a strong new direction for the game, and I hope, as new weekly series are planned, we get even more great missions with the kind of immersion and detail as we’re seeing here.

The word coming out of recent conventions is that 2011 will be “The Year of Green Lantern”. So basically the same as the last few years for DC

This all revolves around the Green Lantern event they’ve been teasing. War of the Green Lanterns. Its been hinted at in Emerald Warriors that Guy is doing something that the others may not be too happy about as part of the secret pact between him, Ganthet and Atrocitus. This is going to kick off next year and see the four Earth Lanterns pitted against one another.

From a dramatic perspective I guess it makes sense. DC have been playing the “Four Musketeers” line since Rebirth, so splitting that group is an obvious direction to explore.

It does however give me some concerns. Firstly, while pitting them against each other makes sense dramatically, I suspect it’d work better if we’d seen Hal, Guy etc as more of a team. But they’ve not really worked together since the Sinestro Corps War. Hal’s been almost completely isolated and John’s been almost non-existant until recently. So from that point of view it feels like only Kyle and Guy have had enough of a relationship over the last few years for this to properly carry weight.

However there’s also the issue of fandom. Lord knows, ever since Emerald Twilight Green Lantern fandom has been consumed by Hal versus Kyle arguments. So if the idea is to split the group and have the Earth Lanterns on opposing sides you either risk adding fuel to that fire, or (and I suspect this may be more likely) Hal and Kyle will remain on the same side throughout this story.

That in itself would raise questions though. Certainly Kyle’s always been faithful to the Corps, spending a fair amount of time during his run looking up to them and he’s been based on Oa since the Ion series ended. But then, he’s been Guy’s partner for the last few years, has been in the middle of the Guardian’s bad decisions since Sinestro Corps Wars and was close friends with Ganthet, so in that case I’m intrigued by what events could set Kyle against them (as Guy’s been saying). Although granted, since Guy’s talking about killing Sodam Yat (even though we know he ultimately won’t), that wouldn’t win him any favours.

Hal on the other hand? He’s made a career out of defying the Corps and the Guardians. His whole thing is that he’s about the best Green Lantern you can get while also being a loose cannon. Also, like Kyle, he’s also got plenty of reasons to trust Ganthet over the other Guardians, so again the question becomes: What are Ganthet and Guy up to that’s so bad the others would side against them? And what will John’s reaction be? I have to assume he would end up siding with Hal and Kyle if neither of them are likely to side with Guy.

This has the potential to be a pretty interesting storyline, but I’m really not sure how its going to work placing the Earth Lanterns up against one another.  I suspect despite the title, we’ll see very little of the Earth Lanterns fighting amongst one another as it strikes me as something that could just end up alienating parts of the audience, unless there’s something else going on.

That being said, with the main Green Lantern title feeling a bit consumed by every other type of Lantern these days, it’ll be nice to see the Corps itself becoming the focus of attention again across all the books.  I’m also hoping the format will be more like the Sinestro Corps War, with maybe a special to kick things off, before crossing over between the books for a couple of months.  That format worked pretty well for me.