being an axl main is awesome. everyone hates you and routinely skips past playing you for the simple crime of forcing them to play a bit of neutral. you prevent them from running their twenty second lockdown pressure drills for a bit and it’s the end of the world; they’d much rather go up against the litany of other rushdown characters who can all do that or the guy that can eat your healthbar in three decisions.

the game is fine. as far as its pace is concerned, strive is essentially rocket tag, and that’s a fine thing to enjoy. it just comes at the obviously infamous cost of representing a departure from xrd (or prior entries but i won’t pretend to be knowledgeable in this arena). this has invited natural comparisons to street fighter (super turbo in particular) and samurai shodown, but i think the core system mechanics manage to carve their own niche within the high damage subgenre. for all the debate around simplification, it seems clear to me that arcsys’s goal was to create a fighting game that the majority of people familiar with the genre can learn simply through relevant match experience, avoiding the confines of the training room and bringing the title in line with an older arcade experience. again, totally fine thing to be. i do think i prefer xrd’s brand of bullshit but not because it’s inherently more cerebral or anything - matches just tend to feel more dynamic. it’s an instance where strives emphasis on creatively using meter’s hundreds of applicable permutations to open holes in opponents defense is somewhat negated by the lack of opportunities to tap in per round and by how viciously quick some of these rounds can close out.

i strongly dislike the menus, user interface, and lobby system, but this aside it’s curious to me that strive represents an artistic departure from the rest of the series as well and this aspect has mostly been swept under the rug by the community. i assume this is fine for most because it’s pretty and because we will never escape the fondness gamers have for the metal gear rising/anarchy reigns soundtrack. still, its very much an intentional continuation of xrds aesthetic sensibilities - understandable given that titles landmark reception - but it feels worth mentioning that we are at this point quite far removed from the grungy, muted, and punk tone of earlier entries. but giovannas hot so who can say whether this is bad or not

LIBERAL GUILTY GEAR....

Testament = THEY/THEMstament
Bridget = BridgeTRANSGENDER
Sol Badguy = Sol BadGAY
Goldlewis Dickinson = GoldLGBT Dickinson
I-No = I-No

Que jogo. Meu Deus do céu que jogo. Não esperava que fosse jogar Guilty Gear -Strive- tão cedo mas graças a Deus ele saiu no Xbox direto no Game fucking Pass e a vontade reprimida que tive desde 2021 quando o jogo foi lançado saiu de uma vez só. Vou ir direto ao ponto, o gameplay do jogo é perfeito. Tudo nele é incrívelmente satisfatório, cada golpe tem impacto, desde o soquinho mais básico até cada um dos movimentos especiais são uma delícia de acertar e parecem avassaladores, cada counter te faz se sentir o cara mais foda do mundo, cada bloqueio te faz se sentir uma muralha, tudo nesse jogo tem impacto, TUDO. E o que falar do visual? É uma verdadeira obra de arte, desde os gráficos, a direção de arte, os efeitos de partículas, as cores, os cenários, o design dos personagens, tudo é simplesmente incrível. E a trilha sonora simplesmente dispensa comentários. Strive tem um scale de dano altíssimo, os golpes tiram muita vida e rounds podem terminar em segundos, isso só torna o jogo mais viciante pois um set de três partidas no online podem levar menos de três minutos pra acabar e mesmo quando se perde a vontade de ''mais uma partida'' acaba sendo inevitável, sem firulas, sem pontinhos de ranked match, apenas entre num lobby, procure alguém e lute, repeat até cansar.

A história do Guilty Gear é um show a parte, uma lore incrível que faz questão de contar tudo que ocorre naquele mundo, dando uma atenção e profundidade a seus personagens como poucos. História não é um ponto obrigatório em jogos de luta pois o gameplay é o que importa, não discordo disso, mas quando se tem uma lore riquissíma com personagens incríveis no roster acaba engrandecendo e muito o jogo, quando algum personagem que você curta acaba tendo uma história/passado/desenvolvimento bacana acaba sendo um plus a mais, ainda mais quando você acaba crescendo com alguma franquia e aqui não é diferente, todos os personagens tem motivações e sentimentos. O fato de eu jogar com o King do Tekken desde criança por exemplo, ou o Kyo do KOF, e continuar até hoje me faz ter uma conexão com o personagem. Felizmente muitas franquias dão atenção a sua história tendo personagens com arcos incríveis quem permeiam desde o início de suas franquias e quando você envelhece junto com certos jogos, acaba se tornando algo sensacional. Ver todo o mal caminho que o Kazuya trilhou desde o primeiro Tekken onde tudo começou com uma vingança e terminou com uma sede insáciavel por poder, toda a jornada do Ryu pra se tornar o ''melhor lutador do mundo'', ver todo o perrengue que o Kyo passou tendo que carregar o legado de sua linhagem, e claro, em ver como nosso Sol Badguy, ou melhor, Frederick acaba se soltando mais e se tornando um dos meus personagens favoritos de todos os tempos. Os personagens acabam crescendo assim como nós conforme os anos se passam e eu acho isso algo de valor inestimável em jogos de luta. E a história de Guilty Gear se encerra (até o próximo jogo) num modo história cinematográfico.

Strive é um game que vou passar um bom tempo jogando, não sei se é o melhor fighting game da história, afinal são muitos e muitas franquias que amo, mas ele tem todas as qualidades pra ser tratado como tal e se tornou um dos meus jogos favoritos de todos os tempos.

[Intro]
Armor-clad faith

[Verse 1]
Noise fills the burning sky
They struggle to testify
Justice brings more corpses
A disappointing verdict torches
They smile for their last stand
It cuts through something so bland
Every single breath you take is a countdown to your death

[Pre-Chorus]
Nirvana

[Chorus]
Discord presides in society
Your society
Vantage creeps into society
Your society

[Post-Chorus]
I'm a fool, I know nothing
I may sound like a silly clown
But I won't turn my back on life
One day, all will rot away
All I do is embrace the wounded soul
Armor-clad faith

[Verse 2]
Cruel Inequality
(Paves way for our future)
A black and grey system
Always dressed to impress
People drown in delusion
Without reaching for truth
Thorned shield in the hand the troops
March to oppress the youth

[Pre-Chorus]
Nirvana

[Chorus]
Discord presides in society
Your Society
Vantage creeps into society
Your society

[Post-Chorus]
I'm a fool, I know nothing
I take the role of a silly clown
But I won't turn my back on life
One day, all will rot away
All I do is embrace the wounded soul


[Chorus]
Discord presides in society
Your Society
Vantage creeps into society
Your society

[Post-Chorus]
I'm a fool, I know nothing
I take the role of a silly clown
But I won't turn my back on life
I'm a fool, maybe I'm worthless
But this world created my faith
So all I can do is stay hopeful and pray

It may be too early to call it, but from the beta alone I can say that this game is fantastic. The visuals, the music, the combat, the characters are all so on point. Every character I've played so far has been ridiculously fun, even though I have gravitated towards Giovanna the most. This has quickly gone from a game I was morbidly curious about to one of my most anticipated titles of the year. I will rerate and re-review it once I play the full version. The beta is open and free for anybody to try so get on that if you haven't already.

A game that's impossible to not find alluring, if you've ever had the optimism in your heart to believe that something this charismatic wouldn't eventually fall into the limelight it deserves. Deeply in love with a lineage that has never been able to capture the zeitgeist as much as it naturally should. It's also teetering on a mid-life crisis that I suspect has drained everyone involved with the series to some extent - it’s your Dad’s newfound obsession with motorcycles that wakes you up early in the morning from how fucking loud it is.

Guilty Gear has always had an infectious self-obsessiveness to it - the way you can sense its author let these characters and elaborate stories churn in their head for years, and the way its visuals bring said character's fermented personalities to life is incredible. Phrasing this very expensively produced game like it's a one-man passion project would be misguided, but it's hard not to feel excitement seeing someone's twenty year old notebook scribblings brought to life so lavished. Fleeting glimpses at a full spectrum of human experience within the cast as each hand-animated frame of emotion cascades in its character's faces. The soundtrack echoes a similar feeling; the in-character lyricism creates a bridge between the series' hieroglyphic storytelling and links it to the writer's spirit with excessive clarity and newfound sincerity. Bluntly think the composition is a lot worse than previous entries in the series; the songs barely even function as songs in-game due to often having intros that go on for as long as a full round. And yet, there's something oddly beautiful in how this soundtrack is largely comprised of 5-7 minute long theatrical anthems that you'll literally never hear the entirety of in a single match; the indulgent opportunity to write a musical about your OCs was chosen over creating a soundtrack that suits its source material...I get it. Twenty years of storytelling conclude with the stage curtains raised, resolution brought to a cast that had clearly been rotated in its creator's mind nonstop for longer than I've been alive. Real inspiring.

Despite that, a haze of low morale permeates throughout the community. At launch, the game was praised for its netcode; you could actually play this one with your friends from a different continent, and the fans didn't have to patch it in themselves! But after proving the necessity of rollback to its contemporaries, it's beginning to fall behind. It's sad that I played this game for the first time nearly four years ago, and its lobbies still constantly break on me. Makes the Open Parks feel like walking through someone else's property without permission. Someone dubbed "hackerman" by the community routinely snipes streamers by destroying ping and crashing games - and it's really funny seeing developers also refer to them by that name - but frustratingly still unsolved. And at the core of all of the maelstrom of discussion is the game's modem of modernization: its "casualization".

It might seem obvious at first, but who are these simplifying changes for? The classic high low mix-up system enriches every fighting game with goals of mindfulness; becoming aware of your opponent's tendencies during long sessions is a deeply rewarding process. But when you're starting to learn fighting games, and haven't tapped into that awareness yet - especially if you're playing short sets with randoms, rather than with people you know - it can feel random and frustrating. This is where Strive's simplification becomes a problem: Small health bars and a lack of strong defensive systems result in very turn-based defensive play that is oppressive even at high level. Strive puts more emphasis on the moments you lose a single mix-up taking a chunk out of your health, and makes stages smaller and air-dashes weaker. The neutral in this one feels claustrophobic with so few layers of approach, and so much to lose from a wrong guess; this isn't fun for me, but it's especially not fun for anyone new. Strive is trying to untangle itself from a set of system mechanics that series elders routinely used to bully any new Xrd player, but it seems that they've built a game that still leans towards people who know how fighting games work. Now that the game has had a few years, I can tell there really is a niche for this: I know a lot of people who have been fighting game loosely for years, picked up Strive, and actually got good at it. The first opportunity they've ever had to feel truly successful at a game wrapped in the same packaging as the other anime fighters they've loved, but this time they arrived on-time to grow alongside everyone else. So, is Strive just an expensive video game therapy session, telling its players the obvious fact that you can get good at any fighting game if you just...play it. a lot. I think the answer to this comes down to personal preference...so, I guess I just gotta say how I feel.

I like Guilty Gear: Strive. I like it more than most of my friends who are critical of it, even! It just doesn't have my favourite parts of Guilty Gear - to play a game that is so endlessly in-depth that there are countless routes for improvement in every direction - but it captures the true core appeal for 90% of people, which is playing as the coolest cast of characters ever. I am not immune to this. I just miss when it truly embodied the term "anime fighter": dynamic poses hit in mid-air as both players push to break the game's speed limits. I wish Strive compartmentalized that feeling better, even if it was easier. Regardless, I still felt blessed to be able to share with a lot of my friends what's special about this series. Whenever I had the opportunity to teach someone the game, I'd keep doing really obvious tricks like roman cancelling moving specials into throws, and they'd be like "woah!!". It was cool to see the light in someone's eyes as they learned how to express themselves through a fighting game for the first time. An extreme sense of both passion and compromise runs through Strive's hulking mass - this sorta thing is still difficult to discuss, and its goals are impossible to obtain without crucial sacrifice. Strive both yearns and succeeds to bring people together, and it's hard not to get emotional seeing a series I've loved for a long time change people's lives. It's just a little too socially awkward to connect to every other person; a biomechanical beast wearing casual clothes.

I made it to the celestial floor so I am legally certified to say this game sucks and is the worst Guilty Gear ever. No swaggy combos and kookly ass characters. Jiyuna failed to save Guilty Gear.

But in actuality it's okay. Fun to play with your friends and it's awesome how I can fight overseas friends with minimum lag (still there but is not as bad as every other Arc Sys delayed based netcode game). Speaking of the netplay, the matchmaking is horrible and hopefully they can patch it up soon. I know it's been beaten to death but failing to connect to 80% of the lobby is obnoxious. The game has an amazing tutorial section where the further you look into it it actually gives you matchup advice which should be a staple for every fighting game. Games can be either fast paced where you have no idea what is going on or slow neutral based slugfests. For a fighting game that was made to be very simple catering to the casual person, it has a lot of depth if you take the time to learn everything. If you were scared to get into Guilty Gear because it looked too hard this would be the perfect one for you to play. Just be warned that it still isn't pick up and play. If you're new to fighting games in general and still scared to play, just spend a few hours in tutorial mode and you'll be fine. I really am curious to see how the DLC characters pan out and the dreaded Arc Sys updates. Also Sol's f.S pressure sucks, just FD during it and press a button its not hard please stop falling for it it's the fakest thing ever. The biggest fault this game has is lacking heavily on defensive options and rewarding pretty much mashing play. Some people praise this game's mechanics but they are fine at best and terrible at worst. https://media.tenor.com/images/7bd52009e28a99ccdacf9777ced75c69/tenor.gif
Also 90% of the songs in this game are trash. I can't stop humming Millia's theme because I've heard it over 400 times now in game. Thank god I now chose the only song to play as Midnight Carnival.

It's not as good as AC+R. I don't think it's particularly close, even. The lobbies barely work, the combat system is a bit too simplified, the wallbreak system is dumb, and frankly, there isnt that much do actually do in the game.

But it is very, very fun. When you actually get the game going, all the little niggles and issues strive has get washed out by the sheer wave of positive energy that comes when the battles get going, when the music's loud and the presentation is absolutely glorious.

I know its easy to enjoy anything with friends, but doing sets with Friends in strive, and for that matter, AC+R is just special. There's something about the sheer positivity and dedication to rule of cool about the series, along with the awesome characters and music, that just makes for an absolute whale of a time, ensuing with laughs, trying to avoid singing along with Chipp's theme in the discord call, and going "ooo" as your friend dunks you in the corner with an awesome Zato combo.

Particularly in these grim times, Guilty Gear has been special for me. Maybe the only thing i've played where even for a little bit, the worries of the world truly just give way to the sheer personality and fun of it all. And whilst Strive may not be truly as good as AC+R - it still has it's energy. And that's all that really matters to me.

To anyone who i've played Guilty Gear with in the past few months - Thank you.

I find it kinda hard to put my own opinion on Strive in an interesting way. I’d say “it's an alright but janky not-anime-fighter” with some wack mechanics and occasionally cool kits. I see it as the kind of game that won’t be many people’s favorite due to how many compromises it makes in the attempt to be accessible and expansive at the same time, pulling mechanics from all across fighting game sub-genres to do a little bit of everything. It’s far more interesting for me to think about what it represents culturally and what the game is trying to do with the FGC.

When the game was first revealed as the unnamed new Guilty Gear, it’s creator said in an interview that the game was meant to be a “bridge that connects people”. I took it as a corny exaggeration that's just meant to communicate that “its an accessible fighter”, but a couple months from launch now, I see how much the devs really tried to make true on that message and how much the game, in spite of its rocky launch and somewhat negative perception, managed to succeed at it.

Since its launch, Strive has been the talk of town for the FGC in a way that extends beyond the fad of a new release. Look at major tournaments and you will find the players that are pros and legends from across different fighting games. I never thought I’d see the Zangief legend “SnakeEyez” go toe-to-toe with Guilty Gear vets and Marvel players, transferring all his SF grappler experience into Potemkin and taking advantage of the GG systems in ways I haven’t seen GG players do, but here we are. Within my personal circle I saw friends who had always been waiting for a fighting game to break into and this game finally became the one to get them to feel competent and comfortable with the genre, and people who never ventured outside their niche of Tekken or Street Fighter gaining a taste for new gameplay styles through this game. Daisuke wasn’t talking out of his ass after all.

It’s main virtue is having a combo of elements that makes it easy to introduce to most people without having to put asterisks, which somehow no FG has managed to do in the past decade. These are:

A. Look Pretty
B. Have Good Netcode
C. Be Easy To Pick Up
And
D. Have A Playerbase.

No fighter in the last decade has managed to get all of these right to achieve proper flagship status. If you have good netcode you’re probably an inaccessible anime fighter or something on fightcade, you also don’t have a playerbase. If you have a playerbase you’re probably Tekken, Street Fighter, or DBFZ, which all have their own set of problems that stop them from being a flagship for the community. Strive did have terrible SFV-esque server issues on launch and still suffers from its lobby system which I think is the only place where it fucked up in this department of approachability, but otherwise these elements make it an easy game to get someone into as it won't be difficult for them to learn, they will be able to play against you regardless of regional distance, and they will have an ample playerbase and an active community to work with.

The other way in which Strive tries to bridge people is in its mechanics, and that’s where the game gets a little contentious. It prioritizes presenting a large variety of scenarios and archetypes in easy to understand ways, using high damage for strong feedback. Knowledge and execution walls are made much smaller and this comes at the price of much of what people liked about the older games. Stuff like every character being designed to only need to learn one easy BnB to execute their gameplan, and slowdown on counter hits to let anyone hit confirm, go a long way to allowing anyone to get to competency fairly quickly, but those who wanted their lab playground won’t get it here.

Changes are made to make its neutral and offense more Street Fighter like while keeping a distinctly Guilty Gear defense. A slower airdash encourages more grounded play without eliminating air footsies, the redesigned gatling system seeks to emulate SF’s risk/reward structure while keeping anime delay cancel pressure, and initially the game seemed to take cues from SFV in the lack of chip kills before that was patched out. The changes to its character kits lead to a lot less high/low or left/right and a lot more hit/throw which is a far simpler mixup to understand, execute, and defend against. Despite that, defense still focuses on up-back air blocking, using FD and meter correctly,
The experimental ways in which it tries to bridge SF and GG’s gameplay styles lead to a lot of jank. The unintuitive nature of its new gatling system receives flak for good reason, its airdash feels much worse than anything you played before, and the design philosophy seems a bit all over the place with how some hitboxes and kits are designed, leading to large power disparities like Sol vs Ky which feels like a barely toned down Guilty Gear character fighting a mediocre Street Fighter character.
The game’s throw is probably the most problematic result to me, with SFV-esque high reward and range but anime-style fast startup that beats normals. Usually fast/strong throws are incredibly short ranged but Strive is the only game I know that doesn’t do this, and combined with its character kits and the fact that throws put you in counter state on whiff, lead the game to a highly volatile throw-based meta that focuses on static 50/50s far too often. I find it hard to look at the game’s current state without feeling that it needed another pass of mechanical polish before launch.


Some changes are, however, more generally enjoyed: universal wake up timings, character weights that don't affect combos as drastically, and mapping multiple mechanics to the Roman Cancel input to have them activate depending on context instead of using unique inputs for context sensitive moves like in previous games (e.g Dead Angle).

RC mechanics are, in general, where the game almost succeeds at having its cake and eating it too. The creators claimed that they wanted to make things easier to understand yet “retain the depth” somehow, and there are some really admirable attempts where nuance is added in inventive ways that make things easier while also deeper.
The new Red-RC allows players to convert off of any attack with ease and use the staple mechanic for its intended purpose without grinding conversions from every possible situation. A new drift system that gives RCs new neutral, mixup, and combo possibilities, and the ability to cancel the slowdown to RCs allows players to have both Xrd RCs and +R style fast RCs.

These new systems are highly praised for a good reason, but a common criticism of it is that game locks too much of its depth behind a metered mechanic (in a game where you can only hold two stocks of meter at most too), meaning that the times you can be creative and crazy in the way old Guilty Gear used to be are limited to but a few instances per game. However, this criticism is probably seen as a success by the devs when thinking about it from their “bridge” point of view. The game lets you play with more classic neutral and mixup structures, but the RC system gives you a lens into more complex movements akin to crazier anime fighters. It allows you to taste the potential depth without having it take over the game and turn it into something too unorthodox and based around RC gimmicks.

This general philosophy is why I think that even when this game is all patched and polished up, it likely won’t stick as anyone’s favorite fighter, as it constantly refuses to indulge in a strong niche. I like my specialized games that revel in their niche, and overall have never been a big fan of Guilty Gear’s lab-heavy execution wall and oki focused gameplans, so I thought I personally wouldn’t get much out of Strive.
However, they succeeded at appealing to me with the design of Zato. I think he is one of the few cases in this game of a character that actually managed to retain his depth while also becoming easier, and they did not do this through removing mechanics, but instead opted to add new ones on top of the existing template.
Clap cancels and redesigned summon moves allow Zato insane possibilities he didn’t even dream of before, while simultaneously making him easier to pick up. But they did not, as most predicted before release, opt to remove his old mechanic, and thus allowed you to layer his classic Negative Edge mechanic on top of the additions, giving the character a really satisfying learning curve. He avoids most of the issues I would have with Strive, and instead souped up and more powerful compared to his previous iterations without requiring the massive labtime requirement that old Zato used to have.

I imagine many people had that experience I had with Zato with some other character that they always wanted to play but never could get through because of the lab-time barrier required in the past games. And while I think the way Zato did this is great, most characters aren't flexible enough for this kind of design. Millia stands as a stark example to me, a character who’s difficult multi-layered disc mixup has been made easy to execute and heavily directed by adding a forced jump after her disc, which comes at the cost of anyone who thought “what if I didn’t wanted to do a left/right mixup after disc?”, gutting much of the character’s interplayer variety.

That aside, much of my positive outlook on this game comes from what it did to the community and the potential it has as the devs continue to foster its growth and polish its mechanics. If you are already comfortable within your niche of fighting games and are having a good time playing with your group of friends without the want for a larger playerbase, there is probably not much for you in Strive, and I think I would almost be the same.

But I do like the playerbase, I do like having this game that I can use to introduce people to the genre, or to get existing FG friends to get a taste of new gameplay styles they never considered before. Even if I don’t think it’s a very good FG for my tastes, and would usually groan at ceaseless simplification of the genre, I highly respect what this game strived to achieve (heh) and I am very glad it exists.

Guilty Gear Strive was one of my more anticipated games of the year ever since it was revealed at EVO 2019, but as the Open Betas rolled out and we began to see the change in design philosophy that Strive was pushing, I began to temper my expectations somewhat. The traditional gatling system was gone, the damage was through the roof, and the focus shifted to a more neutral-heavy gameplay style, which was enough to give some long-time fans cause for concern. How would these changes pan out, and at the end of the day, would it still feel like Guilty Gear? But having put a decent amount of time into it over the past weeks, I can safely say that my worries were unfounded, and that this is the most fun I've had with a game all year!

It's certainly a different game from Xrd or Accent Core+R, but it still feels like Guilty Gear through and through. The stronger emphasis on the universal mechanics and the lower bar of entry in terms of skill level makes the game much more accessible to pick up and play, and it's gotten friends of mine who've never touched a fighting game in their life to pick it up and not only have fun, but be somewhat competent as well!

I've been running it on my shitty laptop at potato specs so the beautiful visuals aren't something I can really appreciate, but even running the game at it's bare essentials, I'm just having a good time in matches online, climbing up and down the Ranking Tower (mostly down), and playing friendlies with my buds. It's a new kind of Guilty Gear, and it's one I'm okay with, even if it is an admittedly drastic departure from it's predecessors.

I have my own problems with the game however. For one, it feels somewhat unfinished. While it's nothing game-breaking, there are no combo trials, there's a lack of new music (the character select theme is just an instrumental of the main theme, and there's no more unique themes for match-ups like Sol vs Ky, or Mirror Matches), and it feels somewhat lacking in single player content. The lobbies are also pretty abysmal, and even with a wired ethernet connection, I'm constantly disconnecting or being booted from the servers.

I may not be a professional player, or a hardcore fighting game historian, but all I know is that I'm having a good time, and there's a good chance you'll probably have one too.

I tried SO HARD to like this game, but i can't.
I feel NOTHING playing this, absolutely nothing. I lose? Whatever. I win? Whatever.
It just feels... off. I have more fun getting my ass kicked in +R than i do winning in this game.

I gave it many chances during my 60 hour playtime, i reached floor 9, i tried every character in the game but i doesn't click, it just feels like shit to me. I give up.

Am now using this review to update people on how I'm doing with the game:

This rating is pretty subject to change, since this is my first traditional fighter and in addition the first one I'm dedicating myself to. Hard to place my thoughts due to still being a newbie, but I'm loving this!

Update (like 2 weeks before august 31st or so): I like brisket <3 I'm coming back to this game

Update (August 31st 2022): I'm finally getting kinda okay, still beginner level of course but I definitely have a handle on how to play now! I've also picked up Happy Chaos alongside Bridget, and they're my current co-mains.

Update (September 29th): I started playing Ky, love this dude. Getting a lot better with him in particular!