The Mass Effect 3 Ending And Why Indoctrination Isn't Big And DEFINITELY Isn't Clever.

Let's take the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle as read and jump straight into this, shall we?

The ending to Mass Effect 3 is bad. Objectively, it's bad and it's not a case of people "not getting it" - there is nothing to get. It's riddled with plot holes and from pretty much every technical aspect of writing it's at best a horribly flawed car crash.

Now, in an attempt to cope with this clusterfuck of an ending some have posited that the ending is a hallucination - which would be INCREDIBLY STUPID but could kind of make sense. It would be utterly ridiculous and a complete cop out for any number of reasons but it's an easy fix for the end - you get up, shake it off and go get a REAL ending.

The alternative to this is indoctrination theory - which is basically the same, except it requires Shepard to have been indoctrinated. Beyond the obvious Occam's Razor violation here is the exact same one that faces the end just being a hallucination. It's still STUPID and it still means Bioware shipped an unfinished game PURELY to dick with their fans. That's not genius. Hell, given the monumental furore - so great that even the NON-gaming press have taken notice - and 80% drop in sales, there's a lot of evidence that "there's no such thing as bad publicity" is wrong.

Not just that, for indoctrination to be true, you basically need to put on your confirmation bias blinkers. Yes, there are SOME things that suggest it but then they could just as easily be down to the lazy writing that pervades the game. Especially as the camp is split - either thinking Shepard is (somehow by means unexplained and certainly never shown in the game) being indoctrinated THROUGHOUT the duration of the game in a slow and insidious way (despite at no point showing ANY of the signs of indoctrination expounded in both the codex and ME1, ME2 AND ME3) OR even MORE ridiculous and utterly against canon - he just gets insta-indoctrinated at the end. Neither of these make a lick of sense and are the exact opposite of genius - if Bioware changes the ending to one of indoctrination it WON'T be genius, it WILL be a lazy last minute ass pull to save face.

And the notion that the ending somehow indoctrinated the PLAYER?! Well, I've yet to hear that one explained in a way that doesn't sound desperately like "I DON'T WANT THE ENDING TO SUCK! PLEASE LET IT BE GOOD!"

So yeah, don't drink the koolaid chaps - it's full of bleach.

Bioware and the tale of the ultimate trolling/April Fool's!

Mass Effect 3's release was for literally millions something orders of magnitude more anticipated than any summer blockbuster - hardly surprising given that many consider it the defining science fiction franchise of a generation.

Pretty much everyone squeed as they relentlessly played 20+ hours to get to see trans-galactic bad ass Commander Shepard round up a fighting force almost as enormous as his (or her) big brass balls while the Reapers invaded Earth and inevitably craved the moment 5 years in the making! The finale! The conclusion to the epic! The final showdown! One last epic battle to free the galaxy from the Reaper threat forever, maybe getting some answers along the way and then, finally! Seeing how all those decisions - good and bad, right and wrong - over the 100+ hours of gameplay all panned out. Who lived and who died and what happened to the galaxy for good or ill!

Of course, we all knew that was going to happen, right? Bioware had said repeatedly there would be several different endings! That our choices would have BIG consequences! The whole trilogy was ALL about that - so, it's not like they'd lie or anything, right?

And then people got to the ending! Except, something was wrong. It didn't make any sense. It was wrong. It felt rushed, contrived, stupid even! Surely, this couldn't be real! Surely, millions of this wasn't what they had spent five years anticipating?!

As one would expect in an age where communication is really only limited by how fast people can mash buttons on a keyboard through tears of bitter despair - people started to respond in their thousands and realised they were not alone. It wasn't that they didn't get it or that they hadn't done something right - they hadn't missed some crucial detail the ending was bad not just subjective but OBJECTIVELY!

Hell hath no fury like a gamer scorned, so a movement began - Retake Mass Effect and to show that the Internet is a force for good and not just cute kittens and porn, they even decided to use the opportunity that such a gathering of people presented to raise money for charity!

http://retakemasseffect.chipin.com/retake-mass-effect-childs-play

This has all snowballed now, going beyond even the gaming sites (many of whom are foaming with rage that people dare chastise the people that pay their wages) and reaching the likes of Forbes! It has taken on a life of its own, Bioware say they wanted to polarise fans - mission accomplished! They wanted the ending to be remembered - it's going to be hard to forget now but what's really happening?

Bioware has been EXTREMELY cagey since this all started - there has been nothing said beyond the fact that they're "listening". An equally vague mention that they're waiting for more people to finish and can't go into specifics. So what does it all mean?

Bioware certainly aren't infallible - the utterly dire hack job that was Dragon Age 2 proves that and everyone has whispered of a decline in quality since they were bought by EA. Furthermore, the ending is nigh identical to one from a script leaked last year. Could it be that they just horribly misjudged it all and ruined everything forever with a lazy hack ending that even Star Trek: Voyager writers would think was stupid? It's entirely possible - deadlines are unrelenting and time is money, there isn't always time to put everything in and evidenced by Dragon Age 2, it's clear Bioware will rush out a hacked together game of inferior quality.

The problem there is - most people agree that ME3 is great UNTIL the last ten minutes. Epic, cinematic, emotional and high stakes, everything that was expected - it definitely doesn't feel rushed or slap-dash, just the opposite. That said, it was NEVER going to be easy to come up with an ending to an epic that would be satisfactory. It's really that it feels that Bioware gave us the most brutal ending of all - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTHING!

No matter what choice you make all that happens is sonmeone shouting"NOOOOOOOOOOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! YOU SO STUPID!"

So, what exactly are the options?

1. Bioware are sitting on a truly awesome ending and are getting ready for the biggest April Fool's joke in history! Come April 1st they'll don their troll face masks and shout FOOLED YOU! Then release a patch that puts in an ending that the series deserves.

Analysis: Definitely proof that collectively the fanbase is still in the "bargaining" stage of grief. The hope against hope that Bioware are a pack of cunts who toyed with our emotions just for a joke. In the short term, it's likely that will get a LOT of negative reaction from the fanbase but if it's free, it's likely all would be forgiven and forgotten in a short while. As with any prank where you're the butt of the joke - you're angry for a while but you can look back at it as funny in the future.

Probability: Bearing in mind the script leak in November - although Bioware went on record as saying that was an old script and things had changed since then - this seems, unlikely. First of all - it's just a huge gamble and given the levels of hate and the actual FINANCIAL damage that has been done, it seems improbable that EA wouldn't have said "YEAH, IT WAS A JOKE!" because they only care about the bottom line.

Not only that, the behind the scene footage in the back patting circle jerk of "Final Hours" shows pretty much the exact form of the current ending. It would be an EXTREMELY elaborate deception and really - it seems stupid. The first time you do anything is always the most memorable, everything is fresh and new - for good or ill, it's human nature to form an impression based on a first impression. So, basically - people walk away with a bad taste in their mouth and the whole game is tainted. Hell, the whole FRANCHISE is tainted.

If they're holding out for the 1st of April they have balls a LOT bigger than Shepard.

2. Bioware have a truly awesome ending but they're planning on price gouging a game that already had Day 1 DLC by making people pay for a "proper" ending DLC.

Analysis: Games ain't cheap to make and companies have bills to pay. DLC price gouging is only going to get more common - especially as physical media becomes sidelined. Fixing a bad ending? That's shooting fish in a barrel.

Probability: Even lower than the first - the negative backlash is already costing Bioware good will that hasn't exactly recovered from DA2. While EA is greedy, they aren't stupid and even a child could see that they'd galvanise opposition and likely be a nice big "company holds fans to ransom" title across the Internet.

3. Bioware for whatever reason utterly fucked up and don't have a clue what to do.

Analysis: Again - Bioware aren't infallible. Deadlines, fatigue, burn out, corporate culture doesn't usually encourage original thought and sometimes people just go "meh, good enough!". It's really the only realistic explanation - Bioware's pleas for patience just a vain hope that maybe people would just simmer down and it would blow over and they could plan some kind of PR spin - with the usual bullshit words like "challenging", "bold", "visionary" or "ambiguous".

Probability: Sadly, close to 100%.

Well played Bioware - it took George Lucas hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of employees to alienate a huge chunk of his fanbase and poison a franchise, you guys did it with one lead writer's half-baked concept and 10 minutes of gameplay!

Let's give Terra Nova a pass on it being a show that described ITSELF as "Lost meets Jurassic Park". OK, so the temporal whatjamacallit let's them live in dinosaur land and because one of the idiots from Star Trek: Voyager (Brannon Braga) is the showrunner, it's vaguely explained with some technobabble that may or may not become critically important at some later juncture...

But let's examine the idiocy of the show itself, beyond the premise. Now we have our people from 2149 living 85 million years in the past, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth... because dinosaurs are cool! Now, the problem of the week in episode 1x07 is that a meteor went BOOM and caused an EMP - amazingly, this is actually something that even relatively small meteors can do! It's happened a few times and has taken down power grids etc.

This seems to be relatively common knowledge as both Colonel Badass and Data (the brainbox daughter of the protagonist) almost immediately identify it. The first problem we encounter is that while the EMP is created by the meteor "exploding" in an air burst above the ground, the remains still hit the ground and cause a "sonic shock" (presumably, a regular shockwave wouldn't be science fictiony enough). Now, as the barrier for Terra Nova is just wooden bars with great big gaps - this means everyone has to hit the ground... a solid barrier would at least have mitigated that and prevented any dangerous high speed projectiles being hurled into people.

The second - and more obvious problem - is that LITERALLY EVERYTHING has a computer chip in it. EVEN THEIR GUNS! This is a period which had a considerably higher level of meteor activity and yet they didn't think about this? Oh but they might have back-ups, you say! They do! Phew, problem solved! Oh, wait - no. The EMP is capable of slagging ANY circuit in range - active or otherwise... oh, they're kind of fucked then... Oh! No, of course not - they've got a machine to make replacements! Thank goodness all of Terra Nova hasn't been reduced to a pre-electronic age! Wait, what's that? The machine that makes replacement chips itself requires one that was melted by the EMP?! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Hilariously - and for the purposes of dramatic convenience - there is one guy in the whole colony that can fix microchips that have melted. It's the evil Ozzie bartender! Quite how he's supposed to fix something that has presumably melted is never explained - these days, if a CPU breaks... it's pretty much done and these are chips from 150 years into the future (and hence presumably even smaller and more complex), it seems unlikely that even a trivial problem could be fixed - least of all by a guy in a bar with no tools.

But the whole situation is made even MORE ridiculous when we have Colonel Badass pronounce that their perimeter - which is apparently will with microchipped landmines... OK... - is down and that any number of beasties could charge through the barrier like it wasn't there... NO FUCKING KIDDING! If only you came from the future and could somehow make... some kind of METAL WALL! Seriously, what is WITH these people? They've brought through dozens, if not hundreds of lovely prefab buildings, enough weapons and vehicle to supply a small army and a state of the art medical facility and as revealed in this very episode, the sum total of ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE (oh, don't worry - THAT was shielded from the EMP!).

Yet, at some point during the planning of this second chance for humanity someone thought they'd just skimp on the walls and just have a bunch of logs a full grown man could fit through - or a dinosaur the size of a full grown man! Oops! In fact, Colonel Badass actually decides that as they're down to a useless barrier and harsh language, they need another line of defence - which turns out to be a big ditch that they fill with petrol or some such and ignite with flaming arrows (naturally when handed a compound bow, Timecop knows EXACTLY how to use it - because... well, because he's a main character damnit! Having one of the minor supporting characters who actually might have been trained to use a bow is stupid!). Hey, you know what would be sensible? Maybe if you hadn't waited until the last minute to dig a ditch to stop the hundreds of different species of 40 tonne beasties that run around all over this place!

Of course, the EVIL Sixers use the crippling stupidity of the Terra Novans to try and get the magical box of McGuffin because the Spineosaurus was just a distraction while the Sixers sneak in to get the McGuffin. They go on to exposition that this surgical strike was clearly the result of a mole - not just the fact the box was in a cupboard and in the most obvious location possible. Which rather begs the question - the mole clearly knew exactly where the McGuffin was - it was easy to get to and there was no one guarding it... it seems a regular occurrence for kids to sneak out of the colony, so you'd assume that as it's essentially just locked in a stationary cupboard the mole could just break in and sneak it out - no need for a potentially dangerous diversion or surgical strike.

Idiotic.

For over a decade, Duke Nukem Forever has been the punchline of many jokes throughout the gaming community - due in part to its unfortunate choice of name and for the rest of it, the fact it spent twelve years in development hell, repeatedly winning vapourware awards with scarcely anything to show for it didn't help... and then 3DRealms itself went tits up and everyone assume that the forever would become a literal one... but here we are and the Duke has finally returned.

One thing to note is that Starcraft 2 was in development for around the same amount of time as well and while it may seem unfair to compare an RTS and an FPS, there are certain obvious differences... Starcraft 2 FELT like it had been in development for that length of time and it felt like a game that had endlessly been tweaked and polished at every stage of production.

There was absolutely no need for Blizzard to do that, all they really needed was a game that was properly balanced for the obsessive competitive multiplayer market and they'd have coined it in... but they produced a single player game with elaborate cutscenes - a few of the typically gorgeous and amazing fully rendered CGI ones and dozens of ones that were in-game and still managed to look better than most fully rendered cutscenes in other games - which offered a variety of missions in the generally very bland world of RTSs, a few choices, plenty of laughs, an entire soundtrack JUST for the bar! Lots of little extras you could pick up, a whole entirely unnecessary mini-game of Starcraft themed shoot 'em up you could play just for laughs... and lots of character interactions that were entirely optional but all very enjoyable - not to mention a spoof of FOX news. In other words, it felt like the time take had been time well spent.

Why go on about an unrelated game of a different genre? Well, despite their comparable times in development the same cannot be said for Duke Nukem Forever. It's no secret that the development of Duke Nukem Forever was troubled and the final product clearly shows that. The word on the street is that Gearbox pretty much ended up with various bits and pieces of what 3DRealms had made in the past decade and then basically hacked them together to make the game that was just released... that certainly seems about right.

That isn't to say there's no enjoyment in the game - it immediately harkens back to the Duke Nukem 3D with Duke casually relieving himself in a urinal. It takes a while for the game to actually get going after the little opener - which turns out to be a Duke Nukem game, played by Duke (complete with snark about how it took 12 years to make, hohoho). After this, there's wandering around Duke's building which seems to comprise his penthouse, museum, a TV studio and casino... at pretty much every instance, people will gush at Duke and tell him how awesome he is and pretty much everything with a vagina will hit on you - which varies in amusement.

After that, it's straight into the action... which is... unremarkable. This isn't helped by the fact that for reasons best known to the developers, the game decided to limit itself to two weapons and replaced the health bar with a shield... oh, sorry "ego". What is with the aversion to health bars these days? Regardless, it invariably means that shooting involves you running out and then ducking for cover although the game offers you a few power-ups... beer makes you tougher (but makes the screen blurry), steroids increase the power of your melee attacks and you've got the ol' Holo-Duke to distract the enemy... given that you've got a recharging health bar and even on hard, the enemies aren't particularly challenging, these are really more novelty items. Although, the ability to execute enemies is quite useful - restoring your ego immediately.

Your ego can also be supplemented by a number of different items that you'll find around the level. These can be something as simple as looking at pictures of boobs, to bench pressing or getting a good score on Duke's own pinball machine. It's a nice touch but really, it's not that critical to pick these points up - it's just nice to have some interaction with the world... it kind of breaks up the shooter stages...

Not that the standard FPS sections really require any real break, they're pretty much dealt out in bite sized pieces. You run to area A, you fight a few waves of bad guys, you kill them all... and then you run to area B, where you fight a few waves of bad guys, kill them and move on... Rinse and repeat. About the only reason it's amusing is because of what Duke says but even then, as short as this game is you're probably going to get a bit bored of hearing about pork chop sandwiches - that or get hungry... or both.

Of course, there's more than just the mini-games there are two bits to distract from the run-of-the-mill shooter this game is. First off are the driving sections, there are actually two of them. One at the start of the game, where you're shrunken down and using an R/C car to drive around in and another where you're in a monster truck which apparently has the fuel capacity of a thimble. Again, there's nothing much to comment on here... they're pretty standard driving sections - you drive along the road until run out of gas, then fight some bad guys and then run back to your truck... It's neither good nor bad, it was simply... there.

The other notable break in the game is about a third of the way through, where Duke - despite having the ability to shrug off bullets and grenades TO THE FACE - gets KO'd (eh, happens to the best of 'em) and enters a dream sequence which has... well, no bearing on anything. It's a chance to enjoy the strippers that Duke Nukem 3D was so infamous for and play a number of mini-games (notably, air hockey and a variation of whack-a-mole) while essentially doing a fetch-quest that gets Duke out of his coma... this part is really what contributes to the whole thing feeling like some kind of Frankenstein's monster of parts, sewn together to make one uneasy whole.

Yes, it has Duke Nukem being himself and there is plenty of the kind of humour that you'd expect - including copious references to other game franchises and games... but it's more than a little ironic that Duke proclaims "power armour is for pussies", when this game seems like a late to the party Halo clone in many respects. We've got the regenerating health/shield, limited to two weapons + grenades, a very linear style of map progression, the occasional somewhat awkward driving section (Duke even gets to jump out and flip his car, just as if it was a Warthog!) and of course, jumping puzzles... oh, wait - that's really more Half-Life's bag.

It's also incredibly short... which is in some ways a blessing, given that there were a pretty limited number of weapons and enemies, which made it all feel perhaps more repetitive. One of the loading screens tips - if you get to a stage of the game that makes you die a lot, you may want to get a book because the loading time aren't fast - suggests that different weapons do more or less damage to enemies... maybe they do but given the fact more than half of your enemies are "pig cops" and they mostly carry machine guns and shotguns, expect those to be your bread and butter.

Not to mention that all bosses require you to use explosives or a turret to kill them and those are naturally on hand with infinite ammo... which makes them ridiculously easy to kill, especially as the RPG can actually lock-on... Which surely makes the purpose of a boss battle somewhat ridiculous in itself? Oh and the game also bubbles over with such imagination that you get to fight two identical bosses twice. Oh, sorry - did I say identical? Well, they're exactly the same except that instead of just bringing their health down to zero once, you have to do it more than once.

It's really hard to know who this game is aimed at. It's obviously not for anyone looking for a serious FPS game but at the same time - because even the average Halo clone has set a higher bar than this... OK, so maybe nostalgia? Well, it does have Duke in it and the humour certainly hasn't matured in the past decade... but given the fact the single player campaign is so laughably short, even by the low standards of contemporary gaming - even if you love every joke and get every reference and find it hilarious... is that really worth the price of admission? Because this game almost certainly isn't going to have a big multiplayer community and it's hard to imagine people buying the game for the multiplayer because on the PC and consoles... there are just better games you could spend your money on for a multiplayer game.

In short, there's no real reason for anyone except the most die hard fans of the Duke to even consider handing over money for this game. If it wasn't for the titular character and his jokes, this game would be so forgettable you might not even be able to remember what you were playing as you played. As it is, to say that this is an inauspicious return to gaming for Duke Nukem would be a massive understatement. Perhaps if it comes out in a budget pack with some other games you want, then maybe it would be worth considering spending some money on - but really, it's just not that good.

The UK has a history of SCI-FI that is chequered.

In recent years about all there has been is Doctor Who and Primeval... which are respectively mostly good and rubbish.

But the BBC will keep trying... and so, OUTCASTS!

A show that is struggling to get as many cliches as possible!

It's post-apocalyptic, it's an off-world colony, they had a virus that killed only kids, that have clones, they blamed the clones for the virus that killed their kids, the clones weren't able to produce BUT NOW CAN and as we're all of two episodes in - you can imagine we'll get some pay off on the vague and mystical notion.

The horrible acting, dialogue and just general tedium does NOTHING to make this show good.

Did the BBC learn NOTHING from The Deep? This is just another car crash. It doesn't matter if you get the budget or the high profile actors if the script is rubbish - it's going to be a bad product.

Why, oh why must the business hate and belittle writers? THEY MAKE THE SHOW.

Perhaps there was nothing to ruin here.

Batman/Superman: Apocalypse - let's begin, shall we?

This follows right on the heels of the previous Batman/Superman animated feature - Public Enemies and in much the same way as that, it follows the comics in a general pattern of story... so, if you've read that - you'll know pretty much the entire story.

If you haven't - this picks up almost immediately after the end of Public Enemies, with the giant kryptonite mountain... sorry METEOR impacting into Gotham river. Batman turns up and finds a ship... and in that ship is SUPERGIRL! Except, it's comic book land so... y'know, a fight between Supergirl (only just learning to use her powers) and Batman begins.

Naturally, he eventually just gets some kryptonite out and we cut to some time later. Kara is at the FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE with Bats and Supes... Batman is naturally suspicious about a hot girl with super powers, claiming to be related to Superman and all that kind of stuff... Anyway, Superman trusts her and they take her to Metropolis... whilst trying to fit in, Batman and Wonder Woman essentially spring a trap that shows Supergirl isn't ready and she goes off to the Wonder Woman's magical lesbian island of Amazons for Spring Break for some hot girl on girl action... y'know catfights.

As one might guess, this is all going fine until Dark Seid turns up, abducts Supergirl and brainwashes her.

Supes, Batman, Wonder Woman and Big Barda get together to save her... Batman might be the world's greatest detective but going to Apokolips seems... fairly insane... but as this shows, being THE GOD DAMN BATMAN or his Bat Armour... or... SOMETHING allows him to be thrown against pillars and damage them and still be... well, alive. Most people who get thrown against a solid stone surface with any force would just collapse and die. Batman is fine though.

Anyway, Batman - being THE GOD DAMN BATMAN - basically beats Dark Seid saying "Oh, yeah - armed a bunch of world destroying bombs and if you don't let Supergirl go - BOOM! I'M THE GOD DAMN BATMAN!"

So, everyone goes home and all is well - OR IS IT?! Superman and Supergirl get jumped at the Kent's farm by Dark Seid... who points out that he just said he wouldn't mess with Supergirl... So, I guess he's lawful evil? Amusingly, Supes gets KO'd very early on and Supergirl does most of the punching. Predictably, evil is vanquished and good triumphs!

If you liked Superman/Batman: Public Enemies - this is pretty much more of the same. The story is neither complicated nor deep but it's very tight - that's presumably a function of the limited length of these features - and as far as action goes, it delivers. The quality of animation is impressive... one curious thing is that Granny Goodness not only LOOKS quite mannish... she sounds like a man. That's a minor quibble though, most of character design is great and the voice acting is all pretty good though.

Overall, probably the best DC animated effort thus far.

Being the massive cultural phenemenon it is, changes in the actor of the eponymous Doctor of Doctor Who are inevitably burdened with people shaking heads and saying doom. So, when Matt Smith was announced - there was a great deal of clucking about him being a mere 27, the youngest Doctor ever.

Needless to say, the first episode Eleventh Hour has silenced many critics because Matt Smith and new head writer/executive producer Stephen Moffat kicked the living daylights out of everything that fanfic writing loser RTD ever did. He's energetic but not like a child sans ritalin (Tennant) and expressive but not gurning (Eccleston) and while it's just the first episode, there is no sense he's going to spend his whole time moaning about how he killed all the Timelords or how he's "so sorry" about absolutely EVERYTHING.

The episode starts right where The End Of Time left off, with the new Doctor, trying to stop the TARDIS crashing into Big Ben... amazingly, instead of crashing into slum council estate to a Billy Piper wannabe, we get him going into a village. A village that is not London... OR CARDIFF. Admittedly, the series has gradually moved away from the extreme constrictions of the first RTD season but this seems a a good fresh start and the Doctor running through a village is distinctly old school Who...

There's no pointless referencing of pop culture, gratuitous injection of homosexuality and no horrible cheesiness that makes you cringe... not to mention that technobabble and ridiculous fixes for problem are nowhere to be seen. In fact, the Doctor himself observes that he saves the day with no TARDIS and no sonic screwdriver. Which is a nice touch - a far more innovative solution to the problem presented than the Doctor simply babbling wildly while jumping around like a jack in the box with ADHD.

There's a great deal more subtlety to both the Doctor and his new companion, Amelia Pond. They are much more understate... the show does not feel as if it is going to lapse into slapstick or schmaltz and the second episode had a chance for both. It's the kind of subtlety that you'd never see in an RTD script and generally struggled to emerge under his auspices and the Doctor has yet to be venerated as some incredible and infallible person - one of the primary flaws of RTD's writing of the Doctor was that in all of three seconds, everyone would think he was the best thing since sliced bread... things with Amelia have been a little different as the Doctor kind of dicked her around a bit... and she's apparently running away from her wedding.

So, thinks are looking interesting.