What games have you played that generally got undeservedly mediocre (or low) review scores, and what system were they on? Commercial success shouldn’t be a factor either way…
Off the top of my head (man, I need to start gaming again… I’ve forgotten so much!):
San Francisco Rush 2049 (DC)
Twisted Metal series (PS as far as I played them)
Magic & Mayhem (PC)
Jagged Alliance 2 (PC)
Starfighter 3000 (Saturn)
Spellcaster (Master System)
Powerstone 2 (DC)
Gun Valkyrie and Deus Ex: Invisible War (which many people hate because it didn’t live up to the first game, despite the fact that it was still good in it’s own right) were both underrated in my opinion.
I may be weird, but I think Breakdown for the Xbox was underrated. A lot of people said it wasn’t good, but I personally loved it. And two months after its release, it was already down to twenty bucks around where I live.
Jet Moto for psone, a lot of people didn’t like it just because it was hard. wtf? These are the same people that complain if something isn’t challenging. That’s pretty much the only one I can think of. I didn’t know that the Twisted Metal series got bad ratings and if San Francisco Rush 2049 got a bad rating then someone needs to die.
I think Silent Hill 4 is underrated by the fan population, actually. Articles and all that good stuff gave it fairly excellent ratings, but the fans were more or less disappointed with it. I’ll admit I liked Silent Hill 3 better, but SH4 was just as good in its own right, methinks. I just… have to get over Walter thinking Henry’s apartment room was his mother. I’m guessing, if I look deeper into the storyline, it won’t seem as oddly funny as it did when I played through it the first and second time.
I liked that too, but I think the reason that, among the fan community, it wasn’t very well accepted was that it just wasn’t Silent Hill. It had ghosts, no fog, it didn’t even take place in Silent Hill. I havn’t made much progress in the game… one reason being that I’ve been busy and I also like to play FPS and action rpgs (mainly hunter the reckoning 
) so I didn’t know about him thinking his apartment was his mother…at least its not as disturbing as - SPOILER FOR SH3 INCASE YOU STILL FOR SOME REASON HAVN’T BEATEN IT - when Claudia ate the fetus of Samael… that made me not really want to eat lunch that day.
Spoiler warning.
Silent Hill 4 was a refreshing detour from the generic winning formula we’ve come to love… until about halfway through the game when plot development grinds to a screeching halt and when the game starts recycling every single previous location. I enjoyed watching people try to break into Henry’s apartment, and failing to hear Henry’s cries for help as he’s trapped inside. I was disappointed when that all came to an abrupt end. If I were the super, I would have found a chainsaw and sawed down Henry’s door.
I’ve had this debate with Silent Hill fans and I still maintain that Henry Townsend is – to put it kindly – a zombified male model. He rarely shows any emotion and hardly seems at all curious about being trapped in someone’s personal vision of hell. In fact, the best part of the game was the first subway level when Henry frantically tries to save Cynthia, only to find her lying in a pool of her own blood. Hearing her screams over the speaker phone added a nice atmospheric touch to the proceedings too, to give players all the motivation they needed to come to the rescue. You’d think that little ordeal would have inspired our hero to hunt down Walter Sullivan; on the contrary, Henry goes numb inside. Perhaps he numbed himself to the pain of life (along with the joys of it) a long time ago? His failure to express himself and show anything even remotely resembling any real human emotion on a regular basis failed to endear me to his point of view.
Heather was far more personable by comparison; so much so, that we share her fear every step of the way. Heather is Silent Hill’s Tyler Durden in that she has a darker side always making her presence felt. Learning that Allessa was the one who was creating all the monsters by warping reality, and that in a way, Heather was trying to kill herself to prevent the birth of the cult’s god she carried, was a nice twist in the story I’ve come to expect from this series.
Where was the twist in Silent Hill 4? Where were the bleeding walls and covered up corpses? When I first read about how Henry was just a normal everyday guy who suddenly found himself trapped in his own apartment with a note on the door saying “Don’t go out”, I immediately thought that maybe, just maybe, he was being protected from the outside world, or the world was being protected from him, because I don’t know, he was actually a repressed deranged psychopath with an insatiable appetite for death.
The overall storyline simply failed to reach its full potential. We should have seen a greater emotional response from Henry in the very least. If that was me, I might have been tempted to crack under the pressure…
I’m currently in the process of playing through Shining the Holy Ark, which I’ve had for quite some time but never attempted to play through. While it is true that the game has received a number of great review scores (9.1 from GameSpot, for example), I still feel that it didn’t receive all the recognition it deserved and still deserves to this day (which is probably because it is on the Saturn, although it hasn’t exactly been extolled by the Saturn community). I thought that it was an excellent game that suffers from a small number of unfortunately horrible design decisions.
Shining the Holy Ark was the first person Shining game wasn’t it?
I can see that game not recieving the recognition it should need, most probably since it was swallowed by the acclaim of Shining Force III. I would almost put Albert Odyssey in that sam category but that seems a bit more known and enjoyed.
Welcome to the boards btw!
Adventure games in general are underrated.People have issues in giving A+'s to games with no shooting or big action sequences.
Btw welcome Colinski.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]Spoiler warning.
Silent Hill 4 was a refreshing detour from the generic winning formula we’ve come to love… until about halfway through the game when plot development grinds to a screeching halt and when the game starts recycling every single previous location. I enjoyed watching people try to break into Henry’s apartment, and failing to hear Henry’s cries for help as he’s trapped inside. I was disappointed when that all came to an abrupt end. If I were the super, I would have found a chainsaw and sawed down Henry’s door.
I’ve had this debate with Silent Hill fans and I still maintain that Henry Townsend is – to put it kindly – a zombified male model. He rarely shows any emotion and hardly seems at all curious about being trapped in someone’s personal vision of hell. In fact, the best part of the game was the first subway level when Henry frantically tries to save Cynthia, only to find her lying in a pool of her own blood. Hearing her screams over the speaker phone added a nice atmospheric touch to the proceedings too, to give players all the motivation they needed to come to the rescue. You’d think that little ordeal would have inspired our hero to hunt down Walter Sullivan; on the contrary, Henry goes numb inside. Perhaps he numbed himself to the pain of life (along with the joys of it) a long time ago? His failure to express himself and show anything even remotely resembling any real human emotion on a regular basis failed to endear me to his point of view.
Heather was far more personable by comparison; so much so, that we share her fear every step of the way. Heather is Silent Hill’s Tyler Durden in that she has a darker side always making her presence felt. Learning that Allessa was the one who was creating all the monsters by warping reality, and that in a way, Heather was trying to kill herself to prevent the birth of the cult’s god she carried, was a nice twist in the story I’ve come to expect from this series.
Where was the twist in Silent Hill 4? Where we the bleeding walls and covered up corpses? When I first read about how Henry was just a normal everyday guy who suddenly found himself trapped in his own apartment with a note on the door saying “Don’t go out”, I immediately thought that maybe, just maybe, he was being protected from the outside world, or the world was being protected from him, because I don’t know, he was actually a repressed deranged psychopath with an insatiable appetite for death.
The overall storyline simply failed to reach its full potential. We should have seen a greater emotional response from Henry in the very least. If that was me, I might have been tempted to crack under the pressure…[/quote]
I can agree with you there, but I’ve also found that most horror games seem to lack that realistic fear the main character might feel about their horrific surroundings. In Silent Hill 3, it’s true that Heather had much more depth in both her background and her personality, but I don’t remember her considering killing herself in there. Are you referring to the point in the game where she fought the bloody version of herself (AKA Alessa) in the amusement park? Or maybe when she swallowed the pendant to… uh… throw up “God”?
Moving on, though… I think the part that gave the biggest impression on Heather’s realistic reactions to Silent Hill’s Hellish environment was in the very beginning, right after she first met Douglas and wandered into that abandoned shop. I thought how she frantically picked up the handgun and shot at the… creature thing… was pretty realistic. I know I wouldn’t have perfect control over myself if I saw something like that.
When you asked for the twist in SH4, were you referring to the predictability of the game’s plot? I thought the plot was okay; I just couldn’t seem to find its main direction that… thinks of a right word … intriguing, I guess. Just the thought of a little demented kid running around killing people as sacrifices to an apartment room he considered his mother was strange to me. I guess I could’ve appreciated it more if they elaborated on the religious views of the cult Walter belonged to, or something.
Also, in regards to the super, I think he was strange anyway. He had an umbilical chord in his room that he confessed started smelling horrible. I wouldn’t expect him to find it logical to saw down a door after about two weeks of the person not coming out.
And, don’t forget about Joseph and how he locked himself in that apartment room before Henry even moved in. Maybe they just figured Henry was doing that. Besides that, throughout the series, there’s never been any real explaination as to why or even WHERE Silent Hill actually is. Throughout all the games, the locations, design, and even cities (assuming the city Henry’s apartment was located in altered when the apartment did) changes a lot. Though, I’m a personal believer in the theory of Silent Hill being every person’s personal Hell, and that’s why there’s no solid explaination for any of it. So, in taking that belief into account, it would probably be plausible to say what was happening to Henry was his own way of slipping into his personal Hell–Silent Hill. I can’t really say how that could affect people like Eileen (whose purpose in the story was kind of obscure to me). It’s still an imperfect theory, but it provides a little basis for the game’s focus, I think.
Okay, now I feel like I’m just babbling. Sorry about that. I tend to type longwinded responses to these sorts of things.
Thanks for all the welcomes everyone. My copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga is scheduled to arrive in the mail tomorrow, so I felt that I should register here. I hope to become fairly active here, as I want to better understand the Panzer Dragoon games.
One issue about Shining the Holy Ark is that it received a lot of good reviews and a number of bad ones with not a lot of scores in between. Before I purchased it, I remembered reading some complaints about it and things like that, and upon playing through it I’m really enjoying it. I own Dragon Force and Shining Force III as well as the two Shining Force games for Genesis, and I don’t see why Shining the Holy Ark isn’t mentioned in the same sentence as them and PDS as one of the best games on the system.
And everything short of Zelda in the adventure genre is almost always underrated, probably because a lot of good games are dismissed as subpar Zelda clones. I think more variety is needed, although there are a lot of other great adventure games.
It seems to me that most popular games are overrated. The Zelda series, imo, is mediocre at best. Halo & Doom 3, just shooters with pretty pictures. Final Fantasy, still trying to understand how any of them got popular(that statement excludes IX and XI lol). Dead or Alive, big boobs will attract any pervert… which is nestled into the videogame demographic. I think the reason a lot of these popular games get popular is because some guy who apparently has never played anything in that genre before gives it a high score. So what happens next is people decide to follow what he says. Next its the ‘big’ thing and everyone is just saying that it’s cool to fit in. I’m not saying that Halo or the others arent fun, but , as I’ve made the point many times before on this site, they are way overrated.
and welcome btw.
[quote=“Der Metzgermeister”]It seems to me that most popular games are overrated. The Zelda series, imo, is mediocre at best. Halo & Doom 3, just shooters with pretty pictures. Final Fantasy, still trying to understand how any of them got popular(that statement excludes IX and XI lol). Dead or Alive, big boobs will attract any pervert… which is nestled into the videogame demographic. I think the reason a lot of these popular games get popular is because some guy who apparently has never played anything in that genre before gives it a high score. So what happens next is people decide to follow what he says. Next its the ‘big’ thing and everyone is just saying that it’s cool to fit in. I’m not saying that Halo or the others arent fun, but , as I’ve made the point many times before on this site, they are way overrated.
and welcome btw.[/quote]
Thanks.
Heh, that part about Dead or Alive makes me laugh because it’s true. I am often annoyed when shopping at game stores and seeing ten-year-old kids purchasing Grand Theft Auto with their dads with them permitting them to buy the game. Most of the major games are overrated, however I disagree about the Zelda franchise. Anyway, that’s why I lost interest in the gaming hobby altogether about five years ago. I took a good year or so off, and it was actually the classic 16-bit games that got me back into it. I collect Sega products now. I try to avoid the mainstream games, especially games like Halo, which I thought was slow paced and simply terrible, although the only shooting games I play are rail shooters like Panzer Dragoon and Star Fox anyway. Anyway, I do agree for the most part.
Dead or Alive shouldn’t be judged by it’s look.I told myself “this is game is worth…avoiding” the first time I saw them thingies bouncing at my friend’s house.I thought “how can a game featuring these be deep in terms of gameplay?”
But it was.DOA despite it’s look is one of the best series of fighters I’ve seen.Aside from VF it’s pretty much the king of 3D fighters IMO.
Welcome Colinski. You should have several great days ahead of you. A bit off topic, but which Panzer Dragoon games have you played already? PDS, is, in my opinion, the best of the lot.
[quote=“Pandora”]I can agree with you there, but I’ve also found that most horror games seem to lack that realistic fear the main character might feel about their horrific surroundings. In Silent Hill 3, it’s true that Heather had much more depth in both her background and her personality, but I don’t remember her considering killing herself in there. Are you referring to the point in the game where she fought the bloody version of herself (AKA Alessa) in the amusement park? Or maybe when she swallowed the pendant to… uh… throw up “God”?
Moving on, though… I think the part that gave the biggest impression on Heather’s realistic reactions to Silent Hill’s Hellish environment was in the very beginning, right after she first met Douglas and wandered into that abandoned shop. I thought how she frantically picked up the handgun and shot at the… creature thing… was pretty realistic. I know I wouldn’t have perfect control over myself if I saw something like that.
When you asked for the twist in SH4, were you referring to the predictability of the game’s plot? I thought the plot was okay; I just couldn’t seem to find its main direction that… thinks of a right word … intriguing, I guess. Just the thought of a little demented kid running around killing people as sacrifices to an apartment room he considered his mother was strange to me. I guess I could’ve appreciated it more if they elaborated on the religious views of the cult Walter belonged to, or something.
Also, in regards to the super, I think he was strange anyway. He had an umbilical chord in his room that he confessed started smelling horrible. I wouldn’t expect him to find it logical to saw down a door after about two weeks of the person not coming out.
And, don’t forget about Joseph and how he locked himself in that apartment room before Henry even moved in. Maybe they just figured Henry was doing that. Besides that, throughout the series, there’s never been any real explaination as to why or even WHERE Silent Hill actually is. Throughout all the games, the locations, design, and even cities (assuming the city Henry’s apartment was located in altered when the apartment did) changes a lot. Though, I’m a personal believer in the theory of Silent Hill being every person’s personal Hell, and that’s why there’s no solid explaination for any of it. So, in taking that belief into account, it would probably be plausible to say what was happening to Henry was his own way of slipping into his personal Hell–Silent Hill. I can’t really say how that could affect people like Eileen (whose purpose in the story was kind of obscure to me). It’s still an imperfect theory, but it provides a little basis for the game’s focus, I think.
Okay, now I feel like I’m just babbling. Sorry about that. I tend to type longwinded responses to these sorts of things.[/quote]
The later parts of Silent Hill 4 struggled to keep up with the fast pace set by the first half IMO. The gaps in plot development were too far apart in the later half, the bosses were uninspired, and the story needed a better twist as to why Henry was trapped in room 302 to liven up the proceedings. The game ended up being a rehashed story of a deluded mass murderer with the power to isolate victims in hellish pocket dimensions going through the motions…
Henry had all the charm of a robot. He’s like Ryo from Shemnue, showing very little real emotion even when placed in the most disturbing of ordeals. Compare him to someone like prince Arthas from Warcraft 3 who was pushed to the brink of insanity when he was forced to slay his own people while they were caught in the process of being turned into zombies, and you’d expect Henry’s encounters with a psychopathic serial killer to elicit some kind of reaction. Where was the righteous indignation? Heather doesn’t hide her anxiety when faced with “someone’s nightmarish delusions come to life”, like Henry does, assuming he feels anything at all.
But anyway, when Heather fought Allesa on the carousel, she was basically fighting herself. That was Allesa saying, “if others can’t do the job right, do it yourself”. Both Allesa from Silent Hill, and her reincarnation, Heather in Silent Hill 3, carried the cult’s evil demonic god inside of them (what the cultists referred to as “God”), which gave them the ability to bend reality to their will. In Silent Hill 3, Allesa simply didn’t want Heather to give birth to this God, so did everything in her power (including but not limited to spawning monsters) to bring Heather’s life to a premature end. Valtiel is constantly stalking Heather because he’s watching over the god she carries. That whole birthing of “God” storyline and Heather coming to grips with her darker half made for an interesting ride to say the least.
I’m not sure what to make of the town of Silent Hill itself; it seems to have taken on a life of its own. I know in one of Konami’s official Silent Hill 2 guidebooks, it states somewhere that people “whose hearts are full of darkness” are drawn to the town. That explains why James Sunderland was drawn there. Considering the town seems to personify a person’s own inner personal demons, setting the cult’s god loose on the world would probably bring about a veritable hell on Earth.
Now I can see what you were getting at a little more clearly. I can agree with you there for the most part.
I laughed when you mentioned Ryo. I can’t say I know of Arthas since I’ve never played any Warcraft games, but I can understand what you’re getting at from the description. I still say it’s a common thing for most protagonists of horror games not to express what fans would call “realistic emotions”. In most Resident Evil games, I found this to be true. In the Fatal Frame series (called “Project X” in Japan), I found that to be true. I just think it’s some reoccuring trait in the horror genre. But, I do agree that Henry’s that way. I just can’t find TOO much fault with Konami since I’ve seen plenty of other developing companies do it too.
Hm, never thought of it that way. I also didn’t consider the thought of Alessa and Heather being two separate people, so I never considered the idea that they both had that god in them. SH3 ties directly into the storyline of SH1, and Heather found that notebook/letter from Harry (her “father”). I don’t remember it word-for-word, but it did give pretty huge hints indicating that Heather was that baby handed to Harry at the end of SH1 (depending on which ending you got). And, I’m not sure if it was directly in the game or if it was just some obscure theory I picked up from somewhere; but wasn’t that baby a combination of both Cheryl and Alessa? That’s why I never thought of them as two separate people even though they once were.
Sorry if you think I completely misunderstood what you said, but from what I got; are you implying that Alessa–even before she died–was always carrying the cult’s God?
I heard about that too–the “hearts full of darkness” thing. I think that’s why a lot of people came to the conclusion that it’s an environment created by a person’s own psychological Hell. I heard one person’s idea of how it’s a sort of place where people’s transgressions come back to haunt them. In the case of James–like you said–it’d be his dead wife whom he murdered. Also, it could offer some explanation as to why other people wouldn’t be bothered by Silent Hill’s surroundings. Laura, for example, questioned James when he even brought up the monsters running around town. She acted as if she’d never seen them, and by the way she ran around freely; I’m guessing they didn’t affect her either.
That didn’t quite click with me. I can understand what you’re saying, but if the idea is that Silent Hill is a place that alters according to each person’s transgressions or psychological state, then… Gah. confuses self Alright, I think I should clear this up a little bit.
My personal theory is that Silent Hill doesn’t actually exist. Taking into account how the scenery and entire town seems to change throughout the series, I could either draw the conclusion that each person ended up in a different part of Silent Hill (or a different town altogether), or that the place doesn’t physically exist to begin with. I’m also taking the maps into consideration. In comparing the main map of the town from SH1 to the map in SH2, it’s obvious the entire place is different. I guess it’d be easy to say they’re just in different areas of the same town, but I just drew the conclusion that the place doesn’t exist to begin with, and that it warps and appears the way it does depending on the “inner demons” of the person inside the town. This is also considering the different demons and monsters that appear to each different person. And, in Laura’s case, there seemed to not even BE any monsters.
With that said, it kind of makes the whole cult ideals seem oddly placed to me. I just assumed the idea of bringing “paradise” to Earth by wiping out everything and started over was just something placed in the SH world to somehow have something to do with Heather’s “inner demons”. Just like how James’s whole ordeal with his wife was just his way of dealing with his sins, I figured Heather’s entire ordeal was a way of dealing with both her (Alessa and Cheryl’s) and her father’s sins (since Harry got pulled into it one or another).
If I assume that the town physically exists, then your point makes sense. Eh… I hope we’re not spamming. (and I hope I made sense throughout most–if not all–of this. I don’t think I’m very eloquent in a debate.)
Well, I didn’t say that DOA was a bad game but it is overrated. I had fun with it but it got old fast and I didn’t find anything innovative like what everyone else did. Kicking people out of a glass building was pretty neat though :). Killer Instinct actually sits as my favorite fighting game
And Halo wasn’t terrible, it was just overrated. It deserved a 7-8/10. And it was a little slow paced for me, but it was slow paced because these are people running (even though master chief is a cyborg). You have to admit, humans aren’t the fastest creatures on earth. Even so, the multiplayer (with enough people) can get pretty hectic, especially in smaller areas with 12+ players.
I personally like Ryo, but most people agree that he needs a serious attitude adjustment. I remember someone complaining about how he treats all the women who hit on him (i.e. with near utter indifference)… let’s just say that if the roles were reversed and Ryo was a woman, ignoring the affections of men, it would garner a level of respect from women who prize their independence. I hate those kinds of double standards. I’d like to see how Ryo would handle the demons spawned by Silent Hill though. I can picture it now…
Anyway, I think in the light of the serious theme of Silent Hill 4, Henry needed to be more… human. He had more in common with an inanimate object than anything else which made empathizing with him all but impossible. Maybe that was intentional, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
[quote=“Pandora”]I also didn’t consider the thought of Alessa and Heather being two separate people, so I never considered the idea that they both had that god in them. SH3 ties directly into the storyline of SH1, and Heather found that notebook/letter from Harry (her “father”). I don’t remember it word-for-word, but it did give pretty huge hints indicating that Heather was that baby handed to Harry at the end of SH1 (depending on which ending you got). And, I’m not sure if it was directly in the game or if it was just some obscure theory I picked up from somewhere; but wasn’t that baby a combination of both Cheryl and Alessa? That’s why I never thought of them as two separate people even though they once were.
Sorry if you think I completely misunderstood what you said, but from what I got; are you implying that Alessa–even before she died–was always carrying the cult’s God?[/quote]
Allessa was the vessel through which the cult’s god would be born. That’s why she had to be ritually burned.
Cheryl was Allessa. Cheryl was a part of Allessa that split from her during her ordeal, and returned to Allessa the moment Harry took Cheryl (back) to Silent Hill. In the normal Silent Hill 3 ending Douglas asks Heather if he can call her by her real name: Cheryl. So basically, Cheryl and Allessa were different aspects of the same person. Heather is actually supposed to be one of the cult’s saints who gives birth to herself (the name eludes me at the moment). Allessa endured more pain than anyone ever should, and though she became stronger for it, that strength came at too high a price IMO. Heather probably inherited her strong willpower subconsciously from Allessa.
There’s still some debate as to whether or not Laura was real (she could have represented “Mary’s innocence”). I’m not sure what to believe. She was simply out of place in Silent Hill because she simply didn’t belong there.
[quote=“Pandora”]My personal theory is that Silent Hill doesn’t actually exist. Taking into account how the scenery and entire town seems to change throughout the series, I could either draw the conclusion that each person ended up in a different part of Silent Hill (or a different town altogether), or that the place doesn’t physically exist to begin with. I’m also taking the maps into consideration. In comparing the main map of the town from SH1 to the map in SH2, it’s obvious the entire place is different. I guess it’d be easy to say they’re just in different areas of the same town, but I just drew the conclusion that the place doesn’t exist to begin with, and that it warps and appears the way it does depending on the “inner demons” of the person inside the town. This is also considering the different demons and monsters that appear to each different person. And, in Laura’s case, there seemed to not even BE any monsters.
With that said, it kind of makes the whole cult ideals seem oddly placed to me. I just assumed the idea of bringing “paradise” to Earth by wiping out everything and started over was just something placed in the SH world to somehow have something to do with Heather’s “inner demons”. Just like how James’s whole ordeal with his wife was just his way of dealing with his sins, I figured Heather’s entire ordeal was a way of dealing with both her (Alessa and Cheryl’s) and her father’s sins (since Harry got pulled into it one or another).
If I assume that the town physically exists, then your point makes sense. Eh… I hope we’re not spamming. (and I hope I made sense throughout most–if not all–of this. I don’t think I’m very eloquent in a debate.)[/quote]
That’s an interesting theory. As always, I’m open to different ideas if they have a solid enough foundation. If the town did physically exist, it makes you wonder where its residents went (I’m curious to know how the upcoming film will handle this aspect). Perhaps Silent Hill 5 will answer a few more questions… if Komani ever make it. The hotel James visits near the end of Silent Hill 2 is exactly the way he remembers it, but when he remembers the full weight of the guilt he’s been carrying, the hotel warps back into what it became: a burnt down, leaking wreck (as depicted in the painting found in the prison). So in that respect, the town was a personal reflection of Jame’s thoughts and feelings.
Perhaps Silent Hill borders whatever hell the cult’s god comes from. That would explain why the town manifests feelings like repressed guilt in Jame’s case.
And don’t worry about going off on a tangent; that doesn’t exactly constitute spamming in my book unless every point you make is pointless per se.