In Death, the roguelike bow-shooter from Sólfar Studios, is now available on PSVR. After months of honing in Early Access on PC VR headsets, culminating in the ‘1.0’ launch of the game in October, PSVR players will soon get their hands on this well regarded VR dungeon crawler.
Update (November 27th, 2018): In Death is now live on the PlayStation Store. The original article announcing the game’s availability follows below:
Original Article (November 16th, 2018): In Death is a bow-shooter roguelike which takes the form of a procedurally generated surreal medieval map of increasing difficulty. Your task is to see how long you can survive against ghoulish foes who want nothing more than to extinguish your one and only life.
The game has been well received by PC VR players, earning a 91% positive rating on Steam, and a 4.4 out of 5 on Oculus. We scored the game and 8 out of 10 in our review when it launched out of Early Access.
As you battle your way through In Death, you’ll unlock new powerups for your bow, like special arrows, and you can spend gold gathered from slain enemies to upgrade your arsenal.
Image courtesy Sólfar Studios
Developer Sólfar Studios took to the official PlayStation Blog this week to announce the November 27th PSVR release date of In Death. While the game was built with a pair of motion controllers in mind (and will support PS Move), the studio has confirmed that they’ve developed a “novel” way to allow players to use the PS4 gamepad (and its motion tracking capabilities) to play the game. It sounds like its still up in the air if this will be an ideal way to play the game though, as the developers say they “really look forward to hearing how [PSVR players] think [the gamepad] plays compared to using the Move motion controllers.”
In Death will be priced at $30 on PSVR (the same as its PC counterparts), along with a 20% discount for PlayStation Plus members.
Owlchemy Labs, the studio behind breakout VR parody game Job Simulator (2016), announced that their upcoming sequel Vacation Simulator is coming to VR headsets in 2019, and not 2018 as previously planned.
Much like Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator puts you in a future where robots have taken over every aspect of life. Their understanding of human interaction is missing a few key details though, resulting in a hilarious revisionist history of how humans must have lived, worked, and now, gone on holiday.
The studio is remaining tight-lipped on the reasoning behind the delay, mentioning for the first time in a recent blogpost that the sequel is due out in early 2019.
Vacation Simulator is touted as more expansive game than Job Simulator, and aims to be a longer, more narrative-driven experience. We went hand-on at GDC 2018 in March, getting a chance to feel out some of the studio’s hard-won lessons on fun object interaction in practice.
That said, it’s clear the now Google-owned Owlchemy Labs is aiming to produce another VR hit when it launches on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PSVR early next year.
CREED: Rise to Glory (2018), the VR boxing game from Survios, is about to launch its first free content update soon, which is bringing two new characters to all supported platforms.
Coming November 27th, the free content update is bringing competitors Viktor Drago, son of Ivan “The Siberian Express” Drago, and Adonis Creed’s old Delphi Gym rival Danny Wheeler, portrayed in the films by real life professional boxer Andre Ward.
Image courtesy Survios
The content update is set to release a few days after CREED II debuts in theaters (November 21st), a story that again follows Adonis Creed on his quest to become the light heavyweight champ, this time facing off against Viktor Drago.
If you’ve seen Rocky IV (1985), you’ll probably familiar with Viktor’s father Ivan Drago (“I must break you.”), the Soviet boxer who killed Adonis’ father Apollo Creed during an exhibition bout.
Both new characters will be available in both PvP mode and freeplay mode, which lets you choose and go up against any fighter on the roster.
CREED: Rise to Glory supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PSVR, is available on Steam (Vive, Rift), the Oculus Store (Rift), and the PlayStation Store (PSVR), priced at $25.
While you wait, check out our in-depth review to find out why we gave a solid [7.7/10].
Tetris Effect is a modern day adaptation of the classic block-breaker Tetris that promises a number of new features to go along with a host of immersive 3D environments. Created by Rez Infinite (2001) studio Enhance Experience and Monstars, the game is now available on PS4, PS4 Pro and PSVR.
Tetris Effect touts over 30 different stages, each of them with their own music, sound effects, graphical style and background that all evolve and change as you play through them.
10 different modes should keep the block-stacking fresh, as you compete through a variety of tasks including clearing increasingly higher numbers of lines as fast as you can, earning as many ‘all clears’ and combos as you can before time runs out, and clearing as many of the dreaded ‘Dark Blocks’ as you can in Purify Mode.
Announced back at E3 earlier this year (on “Tetris Day” none the less), the game was named after the very real-world phenomenon where players continue to hallucinate ghostly imprints of Tetris blocks across their vision well after the console is turned off.
Tetris Effectis now live on the PlayStation Store, retailing for $40. The game is entirely VR-compatible, offering the full experience to PSVR players.
Check out the gameplay video below to get an idea of what sort of wild visuals await.
The hit VR rhythm game Beat Saber (2018) is coming to PSVR November 20th, which means the developer Beat Games has been working full time on fleshing out the features, modes, and available tracks in a push to make it ready for PSVR owners. But what about players on Rift and Vive?
Beat Games responds to PC VR players in a tweet yesterday to quell some of the fears that the updates to the PSVR version would remain exclusive to the platform, as stated in the initial PS blog announcement. New features include new modifiers, new sabers, and new practice mode that will let you slow down a level play or hop in at any point in a song.
According to Beat Games, everything coming to PSVR users will be heading to Rift and Vive sooner or later:
Dear Rift & Vive players, new sabers, modifiers and practice mode will be added to PC version much sooner in upcoming updates, while campaign and 5 new tracks will come to other platforms at a later date.
Beat Saber left quite an impression on VR users when it launched back in May, garnering the indie title more than $2 million in gross revenue in the first month. The block-slashing rhythm game seemed to hit all the right buttons with VR newcomers and experienced users alike.
While the PC version boasts an unofficial level creator that lets you plug in your own music and create your own custom levels, the game has been largely unchanged since it launched earlier this summer. Two of the much awaited features are still MIA, the official level editor, and the promised online multiplayer function.
In a June Steam update, Beat Games maintained work on the multiplayer would begin “after releasing Level Editor,” all of which was done alongside the job of preparing the game for PSVR.
Healthy conjecture: it’s likely the upcoming feature update for Vive and Rift players signals a further stint in Early Access, and that the addition of the level editor, multiplayer, and new tracks will come at the full consumer launch of the game.
In case you missed it, here’s a look at the latest trailer, created for its upcoming PSVR launch.
Beat Saber (2018), the hit VR rhythm game that launched this summer on PC VR headsets, is officially landing on PSVR November 20th, including more songs and features to keep you slicing and dicing those flying blocks to the beat.
The game, which took the VR community by storm when it launched back in May, is coming with five new “exclusive songs” from electronic dance music artists and talents from around the world, Beat Games says in a PS blogpost.
The game originally launched with 10 songs, although the game’s unofficial level editor allows PC players to plug in their own music and make their own levels.
Image courtesy Beat Games
The game’s first planned expansion pack on PSVR, which doesn’t have a specific release date yet, is said to include 10 more songs “very soon after the release.” Beat Games say they “want to [release] new music regularly.”
It’s uncertain what this means for players on Rift, Vive, and Windows VR playing through Steam and the Oculus Store, although the game is technically still in Early Access on PC, so it’s possible that when it makes its full-featured launch it will include many of the same updates (minus whatever exclusive songs are coming to PSVR).
A new ‘Practice Mode’ feature will also let PSVR users start from any part of the level or even slow the game to practice more difficult parts.
Here’s a list of the modes coming to Beat Saber for PSVR:
Party mode: Entertain your friends and family and have fun together! Everyone can join and start playing in seconds! Who is going to win today?
One saber mode: Use only one saber for playing but be aware – there is no time for slacking. You will feel like a real life swordsman.
No Arrows mode: The direction of your swing depends on you. How fast can you decide and make the best cut?
Global leaderboards: Climb the global leaderboards and compete with other players from all around the world.
While you wait for this insanely fun and stylish rhythm game to drop, check out our in-depth early access review to find out what makes it so addictive.
Rec Room, the social VR platform available for a multitude of devices, is getting another one of its famous co-op Quests starting November 15th, this time letting you team up with a crew of like-minded vampire hunters on a monster-smashing adventure.
The Castlevania-inspired Quest, dubbed ‘Crescendo of the Blood Moon’, takes you to a dreary castle where you battle it out weapons like shovels and old-timey blunderbuss guns against skeleton mobs and werewolves.
An interesting new locomotion scheme is making its debut as well, a whip-teleportation that lets you climb the castle where you’ll no doubt encounter more terrible ghoulies. While the creepy new Quest was probably intended for release sometime around Halloween, replay value on Rec Room’s Quests are pretty high, so it’s better late than never.
The new ‘Crescendo of the Blood Moon’ Quest isn’t the first of the platform’s co-op adventures; Rec Room plays host to: Quest for the Golden Trophy, The Rise of Jumbotron, The Curse of the Crimson Cauldron, and Isle of Lost Skulls—all of them with their own unique themes and weapons to battle the many fearless NPCs just itching to send you packing back to the lobby.
Like its Quests, Rec Room’s in-game battle royale multiplayer Rec Royale is basically a full game unto itself, letting you go head-to-head against 15 other players in a large summer camp environment, replete with the iconic drop from a flying party gondola and plenty of weapons and ammo to loot.
Against Gravity’s Rec Room is a free social VR app that’s available on PSVR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows VR headsets, and traditional monitors, providing cross-play between all supported VR and console/PC platforms. Check out how to download it here.
Even though Transpose (2018) is a single-player puzzle game, you’ll have to master the art of cooperation to solve a staggering number of its four-dimensional head-scratchers. Transpose is punishing, frustrating at times, but ultimately a capable and refreshingly innovative entry into the VR puzzle genre.
Developer: Secret Location Available On: Steam (Vive, Rift), Oculus Store (Rift), PlayStation Store (PSVR), Reviewed On: Rift Release Date: November 6th, 2018
Gameplay
In Transpose, your task is deceivingly simple: enter the portal to each standalone puzzle room, put the block(s) in the block-shaped receptacle, and exit the portal to the overworld—rinse and repeat across the game’s three worlds. Predictably, this is easier said than done.
The game makes you think both spatially and chronologically as you record successive versions of yourself, called ‘Echoes’, that help to complete a small portion of the task at hand. This includes real-time motion capture, so you can accurately toss your future self an all-important block, catch it, and give your past self a high-five for doing such a great job.
Image courtesy Secret Location
To start a recording, you exit a room’s primary launch pad; multiple pads are strewn across the level’s topsy-turvy, M.C. Escher-style architecture so you can tactically start your next echo recording from somewhere else. This lets you, say, pull a lever to slide a barrier that then allows a future you to enter a room to take a block that you then throw to another version of you that takes that block and places it on a moving platform that takes it past a force field to take it to another version of you that has to throw it down a shaft to another you … you get the point. The echo mechanic provided a much more solid experience than I thought it would initially, and I walked away happily surprised at how good it worked.
Transpose is complex, difficult, and rewarding enough to keep working for hours on end. You’ll probably need more than eight hours to complete the game’s 30 levels, each of them more punishing than the last.
Image courtesy Secret Location
I found the difficulty level spiked noticeably around the end of the second world, which regularly required more than four echoes working in tandem to complete. The further your progress in the game, the more echoes you’ll have at your disposal, and the more you’ll be expected to use them, with the later levels sometimes needing up to eight of your well-timed, well-positioned echoes. You can both create and destroy echoes, but just make sure you’re not killing off a vital link in the chain of actions leading to victory.
In the video below, I accidentally deleted one of my echoes while trying to reset my starting position, making me have to re-catch a block that had already been caught in the past. Thankfully, the screw up didn’t set me back at all, as my past selves were timed well enough so I could grab both blocks in one fell swoop.
Even though some puzzles can be solved more cheaply than the developers probably intended, it’s nice that the game doesn’t arbitrarily stop you from finding an alternative solution or even brute-forcing a win, oftentimes accomplished by aiming a long-shot to the goal that might otherwise be reached with a few more iterative steps. That said, some levels do require you to make solid throws, which can be frustrating at times, as there’s no aim assist, and no way to retrieve a fallen cube without killing your current echo and restarting the recording from where you spawned last.
There’s no points, no penalties for using all of your allotted echoes, and no timer. It’s the game’s sheer complexity that you’ll have to butt your head up against. I would suggest spreading out gameplay to cover multiple days as you hack away at each puzzle, learning exactly what unique tactic you’ll need to muster. Despite the expected frustration of trying to solve a complex, well-built brainteaser, there was some minor frustrations that I’ll get to in the Immersion section below.
As a pure puzzle game with no real narrative to speak of, Transpose relies mostly on its atmosphere and the complexity of puzzles to keep you engaged. I think there could have been more room for an overarching narrative besides the game’s main task: solve puzzles to open up doors to new puzzles, although if you’re playing just to remove the plaque from your squishy brain, but not for a big mystery to uncover, then you’re probably in the right place with Transpose.
Image courtesy Secret Location
Visually speaking, the broad strokes are definitely there, but it lacks a graphical polish that might otherwise make Transpose even more visually engaging. Even on high settings, it feels like there’s just a little more room for higher-quality textures, and both lighting and particle effects to tie together the alien, high-tech setting of the game. All in all though, it’s a visually stimulating enough.
Unfortunately object interaction isn’t as rock solid as I would have liked. The blocks are much more bouncy, and levers and knobs feel a little wishy-washy in your hands than they should be for an object-focused game. It wasn’t a showstopper in the slightest, but it did take a while to get the hang of.
Loading screens are everywhere, but they’re at least filled with helpful tips, level names, and some somber Confucian-style proverbs that help fill the time between entering a portal and getting into the puzzle.
Transpose relies upon snap-turning, and makes use of both head-relative smooth locomotion and teleportation at times, the latter of which is vital in traversing the game’s many floating platforms. With an adjustable FOV limiters, all of this makes Transpose ultimately a very comfortable experience for most users.
There is however no seated option, so some instruments will require you to reach to your max if you’re playing from a chair. It can get physical at times, what with the throwing, catching, and stretching to grab a block right on the edge of a platform too, so you may want to stand for some levels if you’re able, although it’s not required.
Déraciné comes from FromSoftware, the studio best known in the West for its work on the Dark Souls franchise, though it’s also behind a lengtiether list of works including the Armored Core series. Déraciné is the studio’s VR debut, and it shows. While the game is technically functional, that’s just about the only thing it has going for it.
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment Developer: SIE JAPAN Studio, FromSoftware Available On: PlayStation VR (PS4, PS4 Pro) [Exclusive] Reviewed On: PS4 Pro Release Date: November 6th, 2018
Gameplay
Déraciné is effectively a point and click simulator that walks you through a completely scripted fantasy tale of some children who live in a boarding school. In the story, the player is a Faerie, which is an unseen ghost-like entity which exists in a realm where time stands still. What that means in practice is that the game world is generally frozen, and you’ll wander around the same boarding school most of the game but at different moments in time, occasionally finding characters frozen mid-action, clicking on them to hear their thoughts.
Déraciné is one of the finest examples yet of someone setting out to create a VR game before actually finding out what’s fun or interesting to do when you have a headset on your head and motion tracked controllers in your hands (Move controllers are required). It feels a lot like someone wrote a story and then handed it to some developers and said “make this into a VR game.”
The game’s interactions (which are effectively all of the gameplay) are woefully boring. As time is always standing still, there’s zero gameplay conflict. You will wander around each chapter looking for the frozen characters, walk up to them, find something on their person to touch (generally whatever is in their hand), and then you’ll either see a little yellow orb pop out of them (which you can touch to hear a few lines of dialogue) or occasionally the character will play a lazy animation to accompany the dialogue.
Image courtesy Sony
Alongside that, you’ll occasionally take an item from one of the characters and go place it somewhere else (a key, a lamp, a bracelet, etc) in order to progress along the entirely scripted sequence of events. In order to succeed you’ll need to make regular use of the immersion-breaking pop-up dialog boxes, as essential information about items that’s otherwise unknown to you will be hidden therein. A watch that you hold also allows you to pop up an objectives/hints list, which you will need to reference on a constant basis because the game tells you what to do even when most of the time you have no idea why you’re doing it.
Let me give you just one example of just how arbitrary the interactions and gameplay of Déraciné can be:
At one point in the game I’m wandering around the halls and come across one of the children who is carrying some boxes. I click one box and hear some dialogue. I click another box and out pops a little twisted piece of paper no larger than a Q-tip. I grab the piece of paper (because game says I can, not because any normal person would expect it to be important), and it automatically goes into my inventory. I pull it back out of my inventory and use the ‘inspect’ button to see what it is and a dialogue box pops up: ‘A twist of paper used to clean instruments… or sometimes to tickle noses.’
“Um… ok,” I think to myself.
So I go about my way wandering around the halls looking for other characters and things I can click on. After not making any progress for a while, I check my objective list which says “Why not tickle the boy’s nose with a twist of paper?”
“Um… ok,” I think to myself.
So I walk back to the boy holding the instruments, get out the nose tickler, and try to tickle his nose. Nothing seems to be happening, so I try a few different ways. Eventually the boy makes a very subtle motion like he’s about to sneeze, but doesn’t. So I think maybe I’m just doing it wrong. I keep trying. At some point I hear a noise as I’m flicking this tiny piece of paper back and forth, and I feel some rumbling, so I think maybe the game is giving me a clue that I’ve almost got it.
After maybe five whole minutes of watching this boy look like he’s about to sneeze as I tickle his nose, I think maybe the game is bugged and not triggering the action correctly. I quit and reload the scene… walk back through to the point where I get the piece of paper and continue to hone my apparently inadequate nose tickling skills. I still get the almost-sneezing animation, but no technique seems to achieve a real sneeze.
I give up in frustration and leave to see what else I can do. I find another one of the children out on the grounds playing with a dog, and above her there’s two others on the roof leaning dangerously over the edge and around a corner trying to unlock a window that’s out of reach. In order to get to them I have to go back inside another building, and then happen to stumble across an open window that was never open before. I go out the window and walk along the roof over to the two boys trying to unlock the window. I click on them to hear their dialogue, which includes a seemingly random line “Oh god, what’s wrong with my nose?”
So I grab the piece of paper from my inventory and see a small highlighted version of it placed near the one boy’s nose. I place it there and let go (I’m not even asked to do a mock tickling motion). An animation plays out where the boy sneezes and almost drops his friend off the roof.
That’s what I was supposed to do the whole time—I was supposed to know that I should take a menial item like a piece of twisted paper from one character to a completely different part of the game to try to make these kids almost fall off the roof by way of sneezing.
These are the defining and memorable moments of Déraciné. The ones where you throw your hands up and say, “REALLY?!” The ones where you wonder, “why was that the answer?” Few things are worse, especially in VR, than inhabiting a character and not understanding why they (you) are doing what you’re doing, or sometimes, even what you’re supposed to do.
But this is the essence of Déraciné, born of an inane script where the player has zero agency, and often no understanding even of the intentions or reasoning employed by the character they inhabit.
Screenshot by Road to VR
To top off Déraciné’s, ‘gameplay’, there is never a pressing moment and no risk of failing or making a wrong choice. You could take your headset off at any point throughout the game without pausing it, and nothing even could go wrong.
On paper, that isn’t a bad thing by default; after all, there’s some pretty compelling VR works out there which are designed to be more story than game. But Déraciné is trying hard to be in the game end of the spectrum, but failing spectacularly.
It’s ultimate conceit is that even if they took out the inane interactions and just had you passively watch the events unfold without being part of it, the dull story is nearly as bad as the gameplay.
You know how they say ‘time flies when you’re having fun?’ The opposite must also be true, because Déraciné’s roughly four hours of playtime felt like double that because of how little it engages you.
Immersion & Comfort
Image courtesy Sony
The only compliment that Déraciné deserves is for its looks. The environments are fairly detailed, well lit, and consistently art directed. The characters in the game aren’t quite as well rendered, but are passable when still. The occasional animations aren’t terribly well done but at least don’t feel uncanney.
Screenshot by Road to VR
It’s when the characters start talking where things really start to grate on one’s patience. The voice acting is actually good, but the script and direction is terrible. From hearing their thoughts and dialogue, the children are entirely unbelievable as people (either as a child or an adult); it’s not clear why they want to do many of the things they do, or why they’re profoundly excited by the most menial tasks. That’s all made worse by the bumbling pace of delivery.
As you can imagine, not being able to understand the characters’ motivations or even their perception of the world around them, makes it difficult to care about them—a surefire way to make a story and character driven game fall flat.
In the world of Déraciné, Faeries apparently move using node-based teleportation (see the videos in the Gameplay section above for a look at how this works), occasionally seeing larger nodes around points of interest which means there’s something to interact with (be it a character or an item on a table). While the environment can often be quite richly detailed—a library full of books, a classroom full of plants and drawings, a kitchen with pots and pans—it’s all for naught as you rely entirely on the game to point you to the few select items that you’re allowed to interact with; the rest is pure set dressing.
Screenshot by Road to VR
The node-based movement and snap turning is comfortable at least, and generally node’s are placed frequently enough that it doesn’t feel terribly restrictive, but it’s not very fun or immersive to rapidly node-hop from one side of the boarding school to the other to get to some objective. Nothing short of rethinking the game’s fundamental design would fix this though (even smooth locomotion wouldn’t make the chore of running around more fun). Furthermore, when you do enter into ‘interaction mode’ your snap turning changes from rotating you in place to rotating you around a circular interaction area which is clunky at best and immersion breaking at worst.
When you move from one of the game’s scenes to the next, you’ll be greeted not only with a loading screen, but also a plain old game menu asking if you want to quit or continue to the next chapter. This even happens right between the story’s few key moments and ensures, along with the essential pop-up dialogue-boxes, that the world never feels very solid or constant around you.
Enhance today announced that their upcoming PSVR-compatible Tetris game Tetris Effect will have over 10 extra gameplay modes than previously revealed. A free trial demo of Tetris Effect will also be available the weekend before the game’s November 9th release.
Starting November 1st and going until November 5th, PS4 users will be able to download a free trial demo of Tetris Effect. It’s a limited-time offer, meaning the demo will deactivate on the 5th.
Like the full game, you’ll be able to play the game in 2D (including 4K resolution and HDR support on PS4 Pro) and also in VR via the PSVR headset.
Image courtesy Enhance
The demo offers three stages out of the total 27 available in the ‘Journey Mode’ campaign, and two out of 10 ‘Effect Modes’ available – Marathon Mode and Mystery Mode.
Published by Enhance, and developed by Monstars Inc and Resonair, Tetris Effect is slated to release on the PlayStation Store November 9th, 2018 for $40.
Here’s a list and short explanation of all modes coming to the game:
JOURNEY MODE
This is the main campaign and the heart of Tetris Effect. After choosing from one of three difficulties (Beginner, Normal, Expert), players journey through a series of stages, each with their own theme, graphics, music, sound effects, etc. all of which sync to the gameplay.
EFFECT MODES
These are all the other modes in the game – a collection of varying setups and rules designed to evoke different moods the player might be in (or want to be in), as well as varying skill levels.
1. EFFECT MODE CATEGORY: CLASSIC
MARATHON MODE– Get the best score you can within a 150-Line limit.
ULTRA MODE – Get the best score you can within three minutes.
SPRINT MODE – Clear 40 lines as fast as you can.
MASTER MODE – Insanely fast Tetris. Not for the faint of heart.
2. EFFECT MODE CATEGORY: RELAX
CHILL MARATHON MODE – A more relaxed version of Marathon with no Game Over. If the Tetriminos reach the top of the Matrix (play field), they are removed from the board, leaving it empty again.
QUICK PLAY MODE – Play through any single stage you choose with no Game Over.
PLAYLIST MODE: SEA – Submerge yourself in four aquatic stages with a new, continuous track of specially designed relaxing ambient music.
PLAYLIST MODE: WIND – Glide through four windy stages with a new, continuous track of specially designed relaxing ambient music.
PLAYLIST MODE: WORLD – Explore four diverse stages with a new, continuous track of specially designed relaxing ambient music.
3. EFFECT MODE CATEGORY: FOCUS
ALL CLEAR MODE – Earn as many All Clears as you can before time runs out. Each All Clear will return some time back to the clock.
COMBO MODE – Earn as many Combos as you can before time runs out. Each successful Combo run will return some time back to the clock.
TARGET MODE – Clear as many Target Blocks as you can before time runs out. Each set of Target Blocks cleared will return some time back to the clock.
4. EFFECT MODE CATEGORY: ADVENTUROUS
COUNTDOWN MODE – Use automatically-falling I-Tetriminos to score line clears and bonus points.
PURIFY MODE – Clear as many Dark Blocks as you can within three minutes. You can clear Dark Blocks by clearing the line that they are on, and / or by scoring multiple line clears, combos, etc.
MYSTERY MODE – Try to survive a Marathon session as random effects (some good, most bad) keep popping up.
