damn, my sock is wet

I’ve seen a couple tweets, read in various comments and message boards about how characters in Heavy Rain are mispronouncing “origami” in a variety of ways. I’ve also noticed this while playing, particularly with the newscaster.

It’s one thing when some stress “ori-GAH-me” while others are peppy with “ori-GEH-me”, and it’s another when the entire cast mispronounces the word the same way every time. The former is realistic; the latter is lazy.

Point your friends to this word:

Acai

Ask them to pronounce it. Chances are you’ll get at least three variations.

tuck you

Even though I liked the first game, the only thing I remember about it is Drake’s sweater; it took quite a beating and still managed to have part of its hem caught on his belt. I also remember the Nazi submariner occupied by those men-creatures. Ooh, and I remember the final boss, Rico QTE.

Uncharted 2 is perhaps the only game where I can easily switch between – and enjoy, with satisfying rewards – the three approaches to combat. I can sneak around for stealth skills, squeeze the trigger or throw ow punchies. Like the rest of the game these transitions are fluid, with no added complexity to the button presses, and each approach has its benefits. With most game you’re provided a handful of ways to take down baddies yet the majority are superfluous so you end up performing the easiest one because it usually turns out to be the most efficient. In Uncharted 2 you can start off with stealth kills to lessen the baddie numbers, you can melee to conserve ammo, and you can go iron sights or fire blind. All of these are easy to perform, and each one pretty much has the same damage output; given you go for headshots, all the above approaches are one-hit kills.

The other half of Uncharted 2’s gameplay is just as entertaining. The jumps are easy to pull off, and missing one comes with barely noticeable load times and a respawn not too far away from the misstep.

gimme

The writing and performances – just as much fun as playing the game. The story is typical Baddie wants power, one man to save the day. But whatever. Execution is what’s important, and Uncharted 2 is a great escape. The banter between Drake and whoever happens to be the companion at the moment are enjoyable – like when you jump into the pool on the hotel roof. And not having the controls taken away from you during these moments are pluses. Not all conversations need to live in cutscenes.

Uncharted 2’s greatest strength is its pacing. The pattern is platforming-gunfight-platforming-gunfight. Both types of gameplay put you in interesting scenarios, mainly because the set pieces are fun to navigate and shoot through. A scene in particular: the first time you and Elena are alone. You have to jump on a post that consists of multiple signs pointing in different directions, and as you hang, baddies start pouring in from adjacent rooftops. Cover consists of the signs, where you have to constantly shuffle over and strafe to deal with the baddies coming from various directions. And this is also a great example of the game teaching you two different mechanics and combining them to give you a novel scenario; at this point you’ve already been platforming on signs, and obviously you already know how to fight. And it’s never repeated again, which makes the sequence stand out even more.

Another is a chase scene where you have to jump from truck to truck. In the hands of less proficient developers, you would be told which truck to jump on and when. For this game, your indicator is the truck on fire, and the truck you’re supposed to escape to, well, you better be looking in the right direction. It’s a frenetic sequence that doesn’t slow down to hold your hand.

And while the last boss was neither astounding or dull, at least the game ends on a humorous note – I can’t remember how the first game ended which most likely means it was either unimpressive or not offensive enough.

Actually, Uncharted 2’s last boss was a yawn-fest. The running sequence that follows – much more exciting. And it wasn’t even a QTE.

my eyeballs are gonna vomit

So apparently MW2 has the same hidden intel items scattered across the game, something I didn’t realize until after I completed the campaign.

The game is so frantic: the way the story is told through cutscenes that bombard you with all kinds of military and surveillance flash; the way someone is always screaming at you during the missions, to either hurry up or inform you of contacts in whatever direction; the way the person you’re supposed to Follow gets farther and farther away as you hide behind a mailbox because russians are pouring out of a suburban house. Never has a game that for the most part doesn’t have timed missions bullied me to keep pushing forward i-dont-care-how-many-explosions-just-went-off-you-better-be-killing-baddies-while-running-you-useless-cretin. A lot of the missions are so exhausting because I feel like I don’t have time simply to stop and admire the environment.

Plus, it doesn’t help that when you’re getting shot, the screen goes even more apeshit, with its violent shaking and blood splatters.

Did the airport scene in Modern Warfare offend me? Not at all. I’m not showing off. This kind of violence is hyper-real (am I using this term correctly?), but it’s also a mature video game, and an M-rated game is at best a PG-13 movie. Rape, child molestation – these are extremes that make me uncomfortable in any medium…

Take the movie Irreversible. SPOILERS AHEAD SO SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU NEED TO. Not only is Monica Bellucci’s character raped, her boyfriend and friend bash the skull of the person they believe is the rapist when actually the person they should be demolishing watches from the background. This is the most depressing and unbearable movie I’ve ever seen. It kills me every time I think about it – and it’s nothing but pretend.

What hit me the hardest in the No Russian mission was the part where, while the majority of the civilians are either running away or falling dead, there are a few that stand still, hands up, believing they will be spared.

Forgetting the controversy for a moment, the scene is simply well-executed; they way it starts off only with the sound of people suiting and gearing up in an elevator; the chorus line of police officers in riot gear. Even the game slowing you down to a crawl so you can absorb the chaos – or to make the situation more stylishly violent. yet this slowdown is also a good design decision because it prevents you from running through the level, running into the crowd and possibly interrupting scripts. Infinity Ward wants you to decide for yourself if you want to squeeze the trigger, and for them to tell you their story, they need to limit your playground. They simply don’t want you to play like an idiot for this particular mission.

Besides, the other highly structured solution would be to make the mission on rails. At that point you might as well turn it into a cutscene. And at that point you might as well cut the scene, at which point, we might as well continue with the mentality that all video games are kids toys.

Do I want to have an Irreversible video game experience? I wouldn’t want to play a game that took me through the movie’s plot but I wouldn’t outright damn a game that depresses me like Irreversible does. It’s like with books; I like to read books for fun, but I’m not adverse to a book that challenges me intellectually or emotionally. And I think video games can do the same; we each just have different thresholds.

Some things I don’t care for in Borderlands:

Backpack Upgrades – why is this an item I have to use? Why can’t it simply give me a message saying your inventory space has been increased as opposed to me having to go into my inventory and use the upgrade? Seems like an unnecessary step. I mean, unlocking weapon slots isn’t an item you use.

Unlocking Weapon Slots – why are half the weapon slots locked at the beginning? This doesn’t make any sense. What’s the purpose in restricting the number of weapons I can quickslot? Imagine if Fallout 3 restricted the number of weps you could assign to the d-pad. Having more weapon slots isn’t about making your character more powerful; it’s about giving the player convenience. Titan Quest had a similar issue, where after completing two quests you’re rewards with extra inventory space; the extra stash space I can forgive because you had to buy it. So essentially, put a price tag on extra space instead of handing it out as a quest reward.

Bruisers – heavy-type characters/units that force you to change the weight you put on your priorities; perhaps you want to unload everything into the heavy first or maybe you prefer to kill off the smaller opponents so you can deal with the tank in isolation. But the Bruisers in Borderlands don’t look like heavies. Well, they do in that they are bigger than everyone else, but all they wear are pants. I tire of games that have bullet sponge baddies, and it aggravates me more when their indication is simply thick bigness. Put some fucking tank plating on these motherfuckers or something. Just because you have more muscle doesn’t mean you’re bulletproof. This is just lazy design.

Untouchable Quest Items – this is just insanity. Send me off on fetch quests, I accept this as a game trope. But send me back to the same area over and over? Gimme a fucking break.

I’ve always wanted to play a Diablo-type game set in a gunpowder world.

The story of Borderlands – does it really matter? I’m sure the quest descriptions are fine, but that’s not engaging me; I see it simply as information, unimportant since it’s not the facts that take me to the objective. If this game had a minimap on the HUD, I wouldn’t know what the game looks like.

The whole bazillion weapons aspect doesn’t bother me. After all this is a randomized item-drop game, and with this kind of play, a large variety is best. That’s the whole point. You want gear that’s different than what your friends have. You go on the same adventures but you want different rewards; maybe to brag, maybe to define your char. I’m not playing this game for the story or well-structured single-player experience. I want progressively better gear to kill mobs.

And while the randomness of the drops is entertaining Pandora is not, mainly because the world is static. I can always count on those three bandits that hop the fence just outside Fyrestone; that locker opposite the skag arena always has weapons with requirements greater than my character level. Sure Diablo 2 had fixtures, but their maps always had a randomized layout and to a lesser degree different monsters; seeing the same tile sets never bothered me, probably because from a technical point it’s more efficient to play with the arrangement of the map than have a giant catalog of cycling tile sets.

Diablo 2 had a flat map, pockets of baddies whose locations were randomized. In Borderlands, though the map is much larger and varied in elevation, you will always find the same pockets in the same areas. Farming consists mostly of opening chests. A baddie can drop anything; a weapons chest will always give you guns and ammo.

Diablo Diablo Diablo.

I’m also not fond of the vehicle. I do appreciate its purpose as a fast travel option – I don’t think a town portal scroll would work well since progression is not a straight line, one area to the next and no reason to look back. I just don’t like having to drive to a destination and then get out to fight. Which is strange since while I also got tired of Far Cry 2’s I didn’t mind the GTAs’. Perhaps it had something to do with the former being an FPS; perhaps it had something to do with the same issue as Borderlands, in that, there were always outposts on the roads that always had baddies, and while you could sometimes drive past them, it was always best to kill them. Nothing in GTA consistently blocked your path to the next mission other than traffic and the law, but nothing ever pulled you over without a reason.

Too bad. As an uncommon occurrence racial profiling could be entertaining.

And because I’ve started a playthrough with coop and everything is shared, I’ve been having to buy ammo from the vendors. When I have 0/1020 SMG rounds and can only buy in quantities of 72, that’s a lot of clicking that could be simplified to “click here to refill entire count.” I mean, come on – have you ever stopped short of buying all the ammo you could carry and say “that’s enough for me, I like being one clip light”?

I had fun the first time around. I just don’t see myself going through another playthrough because even though the loot will get better, killing the same type and number of baddies and navigating the static world are just tiresome.

You have 150 rounds total, and in the extreme case, this is the equivalent of carrying 149 clips. Ammo management is simply keeping the counter from reaching zero – but I guess that’s an oversimplification since any kind of management is maintaining a supply.

If games counted clips, that 150 round total means you have, let’s say for example, 5 clips (30 rounds each). If you put three in someone’s center mass and then reload, you just threw away 27 rounds.

Forced to keep track of both counts would make you think about how you approach each exchange because the number of bullets remaining in the clip after the first fight will drastically affect how you approach subsequent executions.

Imagine a game that took place within a gated summerhouse community. You play as a teenager on his way to dinner with his girlfriend at her parents’ house – their guest house is bigger than your house, seeing as how you are the son of the Head Security officer for the community that only numbers a dozen families. Your father is driving you to the house as the game’s opening credits roll. You are free to look outside the window, try and catch a glimpse of people in their homes. Some have their lights on, but you don’t see anybody. When you arrive at the house, a cutscene guides you to the front door. Just as you are about to knock, what sounds like a car backfire goes off somewhere in the distance. Your father tells you to have fun. He drives in the direction of the backfire.

You are now in first-person control of the teenager. You could ring the doorbell, but perhaps you realize the door is slightly ajar. Go on in – they are expecting you anyway. Go on in – it’s where you’ll find your girlfriend’s parents dying on a rug that used to be white.

It’s too late for the father. The mother, however, lives long enough to tell you what happened: a group of men broke into the house, the father told the daughter to run.

Where are they? Where is she? The mother can’t answer. She dies.

At this point you are free to do whatever you like. The game doesn’t give you mission objectives, doesn’t highlight objects or destinations. The game has already set up the premise and motives, and as the player, you should know what your goal is.

Will you play the coward and get out of the neighborhood?
Will you play the hero and find your girlfriend so that you can escape together?
Or will you play the other kind of hero and kill the bad guys?

”We all have the same sickness. And we all had the same item on our bucket list.“

Random is the key mechanic. Every time you start a new game, the neighborhood is randomly generated. So is the layout of the houses. The household items. Your girlfriend’s location. The number of bad guys, their preferred weapons. Scripted events, their rewards, and their outcomes.

The majority of the objects can be picked up and used. You can have an inventory if you pick up a bag, and you realize different bags have different properties like weight and capacity which effects your movement and effectiveness of sneaking and hiding.

The majority of the objects won’t have utility. The point is to inundate you with choices. The ability to pick up every single item is a way to remove highlighting the most effective or important items. If they shimmered or if you were only allowed to pick up items relevant to completing the game there would be no reason to explore the houses, and tension would be lacking.

Take for example the instance of a baddie spotting you. His routine will be to charge at you either for capture or for the kill. They will always be stronger than you, which is why you never want to engage them up close with empty hands. The strategy is to slow them down so that you can run away or hide. Slowing them down involves throwing what items are nearby. Some items are more effective than others. You have to decide: throw a bunch plates at him because it’s nearby and are fast to release or risk him catching you, run into the living room and throw an ashtray because it has more weight than kitchen plates. You don’t play a super soldier, and so you should have the ability to grab whatever is nearby to escape the attacker. This isn’t a first person shooter so you aren’t going to find rooms whose only source of light shines on a weapon resting on a script trigger.

Or perhaps you will. Perhaps you will find a handgun underneath scattered papers in a tossed room. You can’t find a box of ammo, but it doesn’t matter since the gun is heavy with bullets. You feel powerful. You become brave, leave the shadows and charge into the street. There is a bad guy in a track suit emerging from a house. He screams and runs frantic at you, screwdriver in hand. You aim and pull the trigger. There is a click without an explosion. You have no idea why. You have no other means to defend yourself. The guy is upon you, stabbing you and laughing at you and screaming at you I bent the firing pin and tossed the gun onto the floor for you to find die now die.

Game over. Perhaps then you’ll only be sure of guns locked safe behind an untampered box.

”Finding your girlfriend wasn’t too much trouble – there are only so many closets. Killing your father wasn’t too much trouble either – there are only so many hits a person can take to the face. How far can you run on broken glass to save her life, track star?”

Object hunting is another gameplay component. You begin weaponless. You won’t find guns on the kitchen counter or the table in the foyer. This is a rich community, meaning there will most likely be a safe which may or may not contain a firearm – a better bet is a gun storage case, but they will always be locked so you either have to find the key or the passcode – or maybe it’s better to just move along since you don’t have time to methodically go through every room every drawer. Sometimes you have to make the best of the baseball bat you found in a kid’s room or a poker next to the fireplace. Go to any kitchen and you’ll find a knife. That is, if the bad guys haven’t taken them all.

Rummaging through drawers and closets is not a cutscene. Everything is in real time so you have to decide how much pressure is applied to opening a drawer. Do you max power toss it off its tracks and let it crash to the floor? In a hurry you might, and you just might make enough noise to alert a bad guy to your area. And even with a baseball bat, the advantage still lies with evil. You are, after all, just a teenager.

These bad guys: sometimes they will have a random weapon. The majority will be stronger than you. Being a track athlete you do have a speed advantage. They can’t control their breathing like you do, which is why running is sometimes the best option.

You will stalk through houses to find your girlfriend while avoiding the bad guys – some will be roaming the neighborhood, looking for people they may have missed. Maybe some will be hiding, intent to make their victims do all the work by tripping the wire.

With a careful play style you will most likely snake through backyards, sneak through houses as you look for her. Perhaps through the use of a headset you can determine your volume. Whisper her name and she will hear you; of course the range will be limited. Shout – she will hear you and run to you. So will nearby bad guys.

Once you do find her she will follow. You can continue to look for a weapon to fend off the bad guys or you can run to the exit. Maybe you sneak into a house, look for a weapon or keys to the car or boat. Since this room’s curtains have been pulled to the ground, you don’t want to look through the room with the lights on so that someone outside can see you. And so maybe, confident in your brilliance, you decide to turn off the lights.

Imagine a game whose story revolved around a starship trying to get back to home space.  It begins with Savior warping out of a battle that killed more than half its crew.  As Bryce said, there are only two Orbitals left that can function as the main offensive and defensive capabilities.  The surviving crew have been forced to take on multiple roles.  Home space is still a distance that spans galaxies populated by the enemy.  Morale is low.

At the start of the game, you select the genders of the three main characters – Alex, Bryce, and Caden.  The combinations are up to you.

Alex and Bryce are the veterans on Savior.  They went through basic together, have always managed to get assigned to the same postings.  People see Bryce as the shadow of Alex, who doesn’t see the relationship like that; they are best friends, wouldn’t want anyone else by their side.  Bryce wouldn’t want anyone else to shoot from behind the Shield Orbital, but Bryce does feel like the shadow despite the fact in being the Shield and deflecting and absorbing the light shows.

We are comfortable with games that use every button on the controller, even games that turn the directional pad into eight separate buttons.  Left analog usually controls movement, right analog the camera.  Sometimes shoulders are for attacking, and face buttons are augmentations for the primary; jumping, using, switching, reloading.  If face buttons are primary, shoulders are most likely not used or are clones.  If the camera is static, the right analog sits the game out.

We are comfortable with all these buttons and their combinations because for the most part the multitude of buttons is for a single character.  You rarely control two characters with a full range of functions that demand your attention at all times.

Imagine an overhead shooter that has you using the shoulders and dual analogs to control the two Orbitals that halo Savior.  Alex is the attack Orbital, uses mass drivers to single target or missiles for multi-kills.  Bryce pilots the defense Orbital, can deflect or absorb incoming shots.  The enemy comes in two forms; large starships which in turn launch smaller single fighters.  The latter will be the Attack Orbital’s main aggressor.  The former will continue to release fighters until its supply runs out, all the while firing its main cannons at Savior.  The Shield Orbital will have to absorb these shots so it can power up Savior’s main cannon and return fire – Alex can attack starships yet Savior can one-hit kill them.  When gauges are full, Alex has to laser sight the enemy starship.  While this is happening, Bryce will have to protect both Alex and Savior since Alex can be interrupted by the smaller fighters.  Orbitals are the sword and shield, which means the enemy’s main target is the body.

The Captain of the Savior – Caden – is a recent transfer, capable of commanding a starship despite the older Alex and Bryce.  The crew respect Caden; an approachable personality, concern for the ship and its crew apparent.  Since Alex and Bryce are the veterans of the ship, Caden will always ask for their opinion and assessments.  Since the situation has them spending a lot of time together, Alex and Caden begin to find comfort in each other.  As for Bryce, silence is the course of action because jealousy will only make matters worse.  Alex has no idea about Bryce’s feelings.

The game sometimes asks you to make a choice.  Outside of missions, the three characters will brief around the star map, plotting jumps and strategies.  Sometimes there will be disagreements between Alex and Caden about the routes, and at these indecisive moments, they turn to Bryce as the tie-breaker.  As the player, you have to decide: take the safer, longer routes or shorter more dangerous ones.  Another way to look at it: do you decide based not on the variables but on the person?

You also control Savior; not as robust as the Orbitals, but you still have to manage it.  Each mission for the most part has you starting at one end of the map.  You have to clear a path to the other end where the jump point lies.  Basically, you control Savior from the helm; two face buttons for acceleration/deceleration, and two for strafing.  Savior will always point toward the jump point; strafing is used for avoiding starship debris and other obstacles like mine fields.  The limited mobility is for the player’s sanity since there are two others ships to control.

There are instance when you can disengage the Orbitals from Savior and attach them to enemy starships while you set Savior on autopilot towards the jump point.  Controlling the Orbitals is the same, with the exception of the Shield’s shift to deflecting a starship’s flak fire.

As the story progresses, as Savior gets closer to home space, Alex and Caden spend more time with each other.  In the hold of the starship they share stories and scars, enjoy the privacy of the Captain’s quarters lit only by the computer display on the desk.  The porthole is shuttered because to see stars is to be reminded that one of them is outside where darkness and light are fatal.

Bryce doesn’t have the courage to tell Alex the feelings inside.  Perhaps Bryce fears it’s too late.  There were plenty of opportunities over the years to confide, to share an intimate moment that went beyond friendship.

The last mission is the jump point that will take Savior out of enemy space.  The map is filled with starships and mine fields to push you onto a specified path.  It will be a tough mission, but nothing you can’t handle.  Think of it this way: the increase in starships simply means you’re out there killing for just a bit longer.

Yet when you are three-quarters of the way to the jump point, something happens.  The number of enemies is overwhelming.  A scripted event triggers, putting Savior and the Orbitals in the line of fire.  From Bryce’s position at 6, Savior is 11 and Alex 2.  A pair of starship cannons fire upon Savior while a swarm of fighters have Alex locked on.  The game needs your decision: do you swing clockwise to intercept the fire or counterclockwise to save Alex?

The variables: save the starship and you can jump home or save Alex and die far from home.  Perhaps this time the choice is clear.  It’s all about rationality, and there is every reason to go counter.

Light shines upon Savior.  It’s nothing compared to the brightness after.

With no starship, you are forced to disengage and attach to other starships, destroying as many as you can.  Perhaps you are good enough to destroy every single enemy on the map.  It’s a losing game since you have no starship to take you through the jump.

Then again, Bryce gets to die beside Alex.

Perhaps you chose her for the setup, which is merely an excuse for her outfit. The classroom. The office. The living room of your best friend’s mother. Don’t underestimate what will soon be taken off.

She walks into the office, dressed as an executive in a gray jacket and matching skirt, nylons, and high heels whose color matches the choker, the one accessory besides her mannerisms that seem out of place.

Without seduction she starts unbuttoning her blouse, hiking up her skirt. She teases you by arching her feet, the sexiest curve on a woman. She takes off her glasses, decides to keep her hair tied back. The jacket comes off. Breasts hang out of her bra, but her blouse is still on because she’s holding onto the desk, begging to be penetrated from behind.

She takes a pounding though it’s rough on her terms since she is the one dictating the pace. She swings her legs over to get into a mounting position. Blouse and bra come off. Calf muscles tighten up. Sweat is trickling down her body. Her bucking is loosening strands of hair from its clip. She is wearing herself out, is swept up and dropped onto her back. Legs are spread and held high; glamorous in its own way. Whimpers and moans. One hundred and ninety-five pounds slamming into her. She can take it.

Her breathing is rapid. There is a sheen on her skin; her chest and lower back. Her hair clip is broken. She doesn’t need to push her hair back because sweat is clinging it to her face. She has been pushed and shoved and penetrated. She is slack, can barely keep her head up. And when the dance is done, she can drop down onto her knees and find comfort in a scene well-executed.

And so the adventure begins. A common line among games trying to pull you into its gunpowder or sword and sorcery epic. You usually start as level 1, equipped with gear whose adjectives are unimpressive; there is no weight behind leather, no strength behind iron. Sometimes your origin is humble, sometimes you have proven yourself to the little world you live in.

You set out on your journey to save the world. You meet the spectrum of characters. Experience is gained with every kill. Generic equipment is sold to make room for special gear with added effects; complete an optional side quest and you just might be awarded the most powerful weapon/armor in the game. Your stats and skills will increase. There is a ceiling to your levels. When you are three-quarters of the way there, not even the final boss can touch you.

Imagine a third-person action-adventure game that lets you take control of a character on a quest to save the world. Maybe she has a humble childhood, uneventful teenage years, and when she becomes an adult, a world event shockwaves through her little existence and destroys her comforts. She knows where the detonation occurred, always has it in her sights. Her alpha has been established. The omega is something she would have never imagined.

And so the adventure begins. The premise is nothing special since it can describe quite a number of games. There may be themes, but like books, themes are usually not the hook. Whatever the pull, there is no denying the game has been designed to immerse you into an epic journey with an equally outlandish destination. The game will offer you monsters to kill, dungeons to raid, pursuers to escape from, allies that will become your family, and a love interest that will embrace you in the final shot. The difference in this game is in your character’s changing appearance.

The majority of games don’t have to establish you, the player, as the almost godlike character that will cut through an obscene amount of monster mobs to reach the last boss. You may overpower the aggressors, but the only thing about you that is truly invincible is your clothing. No matter how many times you are hit by objects of varying size and velocity, your appearance will always be pristine. There are game that have battle-damage yet is nothing more than damage from that battle – something that will heal when the stage is complete.

The kind of damage this game aspires to is fatigue. The game doesn’t aim for real-time clothing damage. Like how a character’s outfit is a reflection of their personality, the damages on the clothing reflect the physical and mental state of the character at a given point in the story; like a character’s trajectory only this plots change in appearance. It’s reasonable to have her start in clothing that is in relatively good condition. And she will go through wardrobe changes, but when she reaches the final boss, she will not be untouched.

You have put her through an adventure that has lasted fifteen of your hours. She has killed countless baddies and probably has been hit twice that. Her weapon and armor are beaten, much like her skin. You can see it. The change in appearance, the expression on her face matching her body language. Her shoulders are slouch, she can barely keep her head up. Perhaps the clip holding up her hair has broken. She doesn’t need to push her hair back because sweat is clinging it to her face. She has been pushed and shoved and penetrated yet she still has fight in her because she has to unleash herself onto one more person. And when the dance is done, she can drop down onto her knees and take comfort that it’s over.