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Vidya Game Reviews, The Redux; you know what to do
Topic Started: Dec 16 2013, 07:58 PM (1,562 Views)
Romanticide
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Cult Leader
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Seems like we agree on a lot of things, and on the ones we DON'T agree on (ohai ending, I see you over there), we at least understand where the other is coming from.

Really, I'd have less of a problem with the ending if not for a certain Caius scene. You know the one. It'd still be a cheesy ending outside of that, but I can live with cheesy. The story still would have issues, but again, I could live with those since there's nothing as blatantly bad as that ending scene.

But yeah, I agree with much of your review. I'll probably be coming back to this game sometime around... I want to say May/June. Want to get at that NG+ before I get a Wii U in what will be July or August.
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DucksFAN93
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I feel your frustration and I totally get it. But like I said on the chat, I prefer not to overthink or analyze things too much. It improves the enjoyment I get from the game. Yes, the Caius scene... Oh well. I'm actually going to play through the XIII series right now. But I have to say, the story was much better than the train wreck that was XIII-2... Which I never finished.
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Olinea
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No finesse
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Game: Monster Manor
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Genre: RPG

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Gaming is a social activity for me. I'd rather play a crappy game with friends than a good one alone - this is not to say I couldn't have fun on my own with single-player games, but I prefer knowing that there are other people involved in what I'm doing when I play. Back in October when my friend convinced me to pick up a 2DS (well, he gives me flak for it being a 2DS, but I love it still) a large part of why I decided to make that impulse purchase (which is not in my nature) was because so many people here had 3DSes and I felt like if I had only known 1-2 guys with the console I wouldn't get one.

One feature of the 3DS that I always found really intriguing was the Streetpass feature. For those not fully briefed on it, when two 3DSes pass by each other they exchange data - usually Miis, but it can vary based on any games you own that utilize the feature - and you can see the Miis of people who you passed by, and play games that come with the console. Puzzle Swap lets you get a puzzle piece from people you pass in order to complete panels of Nintendo games, and Find Mii is a Paper Mario-esque adventure game where you send your collected Miis to fight monsters.

Streetpass seemed like the coolest feature of the console to me because it's kind of a way of being able to play with people despite never having even seen or met them. And, sure enough, when a 5-minute walk through campus nets you the full ten passes you can store at once, I made liberal use of the feature. So much that I had completed Puzzle Swap and I'm pretty sure I've gotten all there is to get in Find Mii. Read a few reviews online and over winter break I picked up Monster Manor for a mere $5.00 to keep going with the Streetpass feature.

Monster Manor, in short, is an RPG based around fitting together puzzle pieces given to you by people you Streetpass. You play as a detective investigating a haunted house of 30 floors, but the staircases are all hidden. To find them, every time you streetpass someone, they'll be carrying one or more randomly generated puzzle pieces, which you can fit into the floor's layout to create or expand a new room, in search of the stairs to the next floor. The color of the piece is determined by the shirt color of the person passed, similar to Find Mii, and while different-colored pieces have no different properties, the way you place them has a big impact on how your game will go. Placing a piece next to one of a different color creates a new "room". Every time you open the door to a new room, there's a chance a monster will pop out and fight you (more on that in a bit). If you connect similar-colored pieces, you'll expand the size of the original room - if you manage to make a 2x2 square of the same color, you can find a treasure chest which can contain weapons, utility items, health upgrades, or gems to level up weapons. The more treasure chests you make at once, the better the rewards - so a good strategy to obtain high-end gear is to make an outline of one color, and then keep passing people until you get the perfect piece to complete one gigantic room.

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Placing this purple piece will make a new room, since it's not touching any more purple. Doing so may result in ending up face-to-face with a foe.

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The more times you've passed someone, the more pieces you can choose from, up to a cap of 5 where they'll offer a random 1-block, 2-block, 3-block, 4-block, and 5-block.

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Careful planning can let you make an enormous room at once for a chance at the best loot in the game.

Of course, it's called Monster Manor for a reason. A few squares per floor will contain monsters to battle - if that's not enough, you can try to create a lot of small rooms to fight more. You can obtain guns from treasure chests or solving puzzle boxes given to you by people, and these are used to fight monsters. Combat is pretty straightforward; your gun runs on recharging batteries, which quickly regenerate over time. Shooting, charging, or defending with your gun drains a bit of battery which you'll need to watch and manage. Defeating enemies will give your gun a bit of "experience" to level it up, as well as gems which are your form of currency. You can take old guns you don't want or need, and by paying a certain number of gems, convert unwanted guns into experience for other guns.

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Fighting a low-level ghost. Shooting costs a bit of battery life, but it recharges over time. Make sure to save some battery in case you need to block an attack!

I think that covers the bulk of the gameplay, so let's get to my account of it:

Overall
For $5.00 the game delivers on expectations. There's a lot more decision-making than picking out puzzle pieces and ordering Miis to smash things with their swords - the way you place pieces, weapons you select, methods you battle with, etc. determine what you're getting. You brute force it without trying to strategize and get treasure chests, you get the harder experience. You plan it out too much and wait for a specific shape of a specific color, you'll be waiting for a while and it can get boring waiting for this one specific piece you need (granted, when you do find it, it feels good). I took the latter path and tried to make as many giant rooms in one go for huge numbers of treasure.

As of now I've layed down 848 pieces, and passed up... my guess is 200-300+ as well. So if you do absolutely want maximum value for your money, you need to use the Streetpass feature as liberally as you can. For better results it'd be preferable to pass the same people frequently so your shirt colors can be consistent and you can build larger rooms more quickly, and have a good selection of pieces to choose from when you pass the person. I had a lot of purple rooms due to 'passing' my housemate so frequently, and got a lot of chances to get the exact piece I needed.

Combat is not anything difficult, which is probably the only part of the game you could really consider 'difficult', so long as you are keeping your guns leveled. I'm frequently destroying enemies with a few shots before they can even strike. The game isn't supposed to be challenging, it's supposed to be a fun feature, and it certainly delivers on that front. You shouldn't need to stress about it. In all honesty, the hardest feature are puzzle boxes you sometimes receive from players, which reward you with items when completed - I've spent long periods of time figuring these out. It's a fun, lighthearted game for people who will pass often.



If you enjoy Streetpass and receive + check it regularly, and you're looking for something else to do with these Miis you collect while walking around, I'd definitely give Monster Manor a recommendation. For $5.00 you get a bit more of an involved experience with the feature. It's not going to challenge you as so many other games will, but there's a level of decision-making and progression that makes it entirely different from the other Streetpass games. It's probably not worth it for those who may check it once a week or so (well, you may have fun with it, but you won't progress at any sort of decent pace), but its value is tied to how many passes you're getting - so if you really enjoy the Streetpass feature, consider picking this up.
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MrMarill
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DAT STORY TIEM

Mario Kart 8
Wii U

Introduction
There are few series that have been running as long as Mario Kart with as few entries. With only one game per console, Mario Kart games are always something huge to look forward to along with the announcement of every Nintendo console. Despite being a simple party game, people have poured millions of hours into the game's few courses since the first game and Mario Kart 8 is no different. It doesn't bring many imaginative ideas but it perfects the formula at last... almost. The engine is smooth, the items feel balanced and all the tracks have a place in the game... except Toad's Turnpike. Snore. There are just a few hiccups along the way that hamper the experience just enough to be frustrating for all new reasons.

Gameplay
Racin'! You press go to go, the item button to cause saltiness and a trigger to inexplicably hop into one of the best drift systems in racing games. The drift system in Mario Kart is brilliant in its simplicity, allowing veterans to tackle every corner recklessly. There isn't much new to the Mario Kart formula besides the anti-gravity system.

What does this mean for Mario Kart? Well, not a huge pile. The idea of hitting things to gain speed is interesting but it's very rare you'll be in range of somebody to bash them after the first few seconds and tracks rarely have these sections at the start. The anti-gravity sections mainly cause an awe-inspiring spectacle or a cool looking effect but, at the end of the day, pretty much every single track could have basically the same effect with a straight line. The novelty wears off fairly quickly and I think that's disappointing.

Another disappointing aspect for a lot of people was the new Battle system. Personally I never enjoyed Battles but the new Battle system was even less fun; you're thrown onto a track and you basically race around it facing different directions and trying to throw items as you pass people. This is completely and utterly ruined the second someone turns around and drives the other way and it's pretty hard to hit anyone. My only game of this was so boring that I never even considered revisiting it.

In general, the whole game feels like Mario Kart 7 but polished. No items make you drop your own except Lightning and even falling off makes you come back almost immediately with your item intact. Stuff like the infamous blue shell is also rarer and has much less knockback. All that said, though, items are still very frustrating due to the addition of one - the double coin. The coin system is great and I love it - although I think losing two coins per hit would be better than three - but this item is almost worthless most of the time. I mean it's decent when you're getting going but every track is designed to give you ten coins if you drive correctly anyway and this item is usually given to the top four racers. It's beyond frustrating to be holding first place, get a double coin and then get smashed with a red shell. In previous Mario Kart games, you could hold items behind you and hold two items at a time but this is no longer the case - holding items does not consume them. This can make holding first and second very difficult as you get given coins to fight against red shells or you can't keep one item as defence, one item as attack. A particularly annoying change is that the danger alert you get for red shells or blue shells happen if they're anywhere behind you, not just if they're locked in for you. I've used a number of bananas and green shells to block red shells that weren't coming for me only to get nailed a few seconds later.

It's not all bad, though. You can see characters holding the item up in one hand no matter what they get so you can plan around this accordingly and, in general, super powerful items are rarer. It's common to go an entire Grand Prix without meeting a single blue shell or bullet bill.


Presentation
I'm sure everyone knows at this point that Mario Kart 8 is utterly gorgeous. This is strange to me much like how Sonic Generations' attention to detail was in that, well, you're going to be racing and focusing on just the track. I only noticed steam engines in Bowser Castle or the helicopter in Mario Kart Stadium on my fifth or sixth races but I loved them all the same. The small details make the whole experience feel very compact, everything from the Mii characters following the stages being picked online to the train on N64 Rainbow Road chucking you coins as you go. The whole game feels very alive and so very Nintendo.

Another aspect that makes the game feel so compact is the music. I feel like the music is designed to tie in with where the player is on the track - Cloudtop Cruise, based on Super Mario Galaxy 2, plays the main theme of said game at the last jump generally on 50cc and 100cc and swaps into a rock version of the song when you jump into a thundercloud. Dolphin Shoals plays basically the same melody throughout the whole track but changes based on where you are before resetting at the lap marker. Mount Wario and N64 Rainbow Road - arguably the best tracks in the game - have really great, diving music that really hypes you up coming into the last corners. I know I was on the edge of my seat playing with friends due to this and that's something that I haven't felt when gaming for a long time.


Multiplayer
While online has become a bigger and bigger focus for Mario Kart coming over the years, I feel that nothing comes close to the feeling of playing locally with similarly skilled friends. Mario Kart, in general, has quite a low skill ceiling so a lot of games can be back and forth even when people haven't been playing for very long and this is fantastic for local multiplayer. The weekend I got the game I must have played over fifteen hours with friends just going through all the Grand Prix tracks and unlocking stuff as I did so. I longed for more content after I got everything and that's something that's sadly missing, so I turned to online.

However, the new skill over luck balancing falls down for online. In a rather strange turnaround, I find myself longing for broken items again - to an extend, mind - due to the low skill ceiling presenting itself as a problem. It is very, VERY common to see entire races decide in the first wave of items and then have everybody drive almost identically for the rest of the race. The top four will be decided very early on and then those places will generally just swap as red shells are fired or occasionally one player will just get annihilated by general Mario Kart bullshit strings we all know and love. Of course, there is still a huge element of skill in the races that's possibly more apparent than it was before but it makes the streaks of luck more rare and, as a result, the person who gets them is in a hugely fortunate position.


Conclusion
Mario Kart 8 is something of a mixed bag. On one hand, it's a huge improvement over other games in the series in pretty much every aspect and sometimes when I'm playing with friends I feel like I'm playing a masterpiece, a game with a ton of thought put into it... and then something illogical that just seemed to slip the minds of the developers rears its ugly head and I might get one green shell in eleventh while tenth gets a bullet bill, I finally unlock the Golden Wheels to discover its stats are utterly worthless or a bizarre glitch occurs like the one I had today where my item wheel rolled for the entire duration of a race. While this is almost undoubtedly the most fun I've had playing a game in a very long time, I only get that experience when I'm with other people and that might just be because the flaws are being masked up by the laughter.

Mario Kart 8 a fun game, an extremely fun game. It's just missing the depth and wackiness that kept me coming back to Mario Karts in the past to play alone, to perfect my scores, to earn the best results on every Grand Prix, to get the highest online rating. The online rating system is simplified and based off how many games you've played, three star ratings have never been easier to get and it's so very strange as these are things that I have been requesting of the series for years now. Nintendo opened their ears to the public's suggestions and painted a fantastic piece of art over the place of a child's first drawings - it can be appreciated and loved for what it is now, but the charm that used to be there and loved for what it was is having trouble poking through, and when it does, it just feels out of place.
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DucksFAN93
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Game: Rise of the Argonauts
Genre: Action, RPG
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC

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REVIEW: Rise of the Argonauts follows the story of Jason and his search for the Golden Fleece to save his wife. It all sound epic, but just how does this epic action RPG fare against the odds?

Mixing elements from several different genres, Rise of the Argonauts attempts to provide a unique spin on the genre. To begin the game, Jason of Iolcus is about to be wed to his lovely fiance Alceme. All of a sudden, a group of mysterious assassins crash the party, killing Alceme and leaving many more questions than answers. Quickly, Jason realizes that it is the work of a mysterious organization known as the Blacktongues, but what they want is up in the air? After re-focusing and re-tooling, Jason gets blessings from his Patron gods, he is off on a grand adventure to revive his wife. It is all a well-woven set up for what turns out to be an intriguing and unique tale with many twists and turns. That said, some of the twists you'll see coming, but they are still interesting nonetheless. Though the game suffers from a bit of odd pacing (It is too slow at times with storytelling), the story is finely written and definitely hooks you in with its characters and overarching story line.

During your journey, you'll take Jason to three different islands, each with different surroundings and locales to explore. There is the arena land of Mycanae, the jungles of Saria, and the swamps of Kythra. My personal favorite of these is Kythra, as it provides an excellent balance of combat and dialogue. This actually brings us to the meat and bones of the game; its two biggest elements. Dialogue and combat are split 50/50 in your 15 hour adventure. In the dialogue, you must make decisions based upon with god you desire to gain influence with. You may answer with Ares (aggressive), Apollo (merciful), Hermes (thoughtful), or Athena (using wisdom and balance). Though the difference your choices make in how to respond makes little to no impact on the outcome of the story, you may miss certain quests or side plots if you choose "wrong." That said, there are plenty of different outcomes on these quests if you respond in a particular way; not only is this interesting it adds intrigue and replay value to see how these same quests play out if you answer differently. I aligned my choices mostly with Athena and was well-pleased with my results, but I am tempted to replay and choose Ares just for kicks.

Combat makes up the other half of this game, obviously. It plays like a standard action game, but with some nice depth added in for flare. You have your standard heavy attack and light attack and shield bash, but depending on your combination, you may very well impale, decapitate or slice in half enemy warriors. The "executions" slow down time to show the gory style. This is cool at first, but the effect wears off; it never stoops to irritating, just something you can do without. I wish there was a toggle for it, however. What is awesome about the combat is that you may bring your mace, spear and sword into combat all at once, with the opportunity to switch in between attacks on the fly. Complementing the empowering physical combat are god powers that Jason may call on in battle. These powers are up-gradable yet feel expendable. Combat is over too quickly to really feel like you needed the powers, yet they are fearsome if not totally unnecessary. One power lets you hurl lightning spears repeatedly, while another one opens the door to Tartarus and sucks all nearby enemies inside the powerful vortex. It is great stuff, I just wish it was actually necessary.

Aiding Jason in battle are the "Argonauts", fearsome warriors in Greek lore such as Achilles, Atalanta, Hercules and Pan. They are mostly just distracting fodder and don't supply much help in battle. On the highest difficulty setting you will mostly just be reviving them; the AI is pretty much mentally challenged. If they aren't dying, you will probably get frustrated with them for taking your kills, since combat can be sparse at times...no, seriously. On the other hand, it is interesting to get to know these companions, and their back stories are almost always interesting, with perhaps one or two exceptions (I'm looking at you King Lycomedes).

The leveling system is completely streamlined into the "Aspects" menu. By completing quests, killing enemies, and exploring the world you earn deeds to dedicate to one of the four patron gods mentioned previously. Each skill tree has 25 aspects and there are hardly any duplicates as each god's ability tree offers differing play styles. By completing every deed in the game, it is possible to max two god's aspects. Dialogue choices also gain influence with your god of choice, so choosing wisely will allow you to maximize your aspects. It is a deep and involving skill system, yet offers little incentive. On my play through I went for achievements and some of the achievements require you to maximize your influence with each god. That said I cheated and waited until I had enough deeds to dedicate to completely max out one god; I then re-loaded and repeated the process. I was able to do this halfway through the game. What does this mean? I never leveled up Jason even halfway through the game on the hardest difficulty. The game is too easy is the bottom line. Also, the leveling is superficial as you really can complete the whole game without ever assigning aspects to Jason.

One cool quest tracker is the "Stars" menu. This shows you over a dozen constellations full of deeds for you to do; once you do all the deeds to connect the stars, it lights up and provides nothing but the feeling of accomplishment. It is an awesome incentive to do as many deeds as you can; to see the stars light up in your quest log.

I do have some nitpicks, however. Why the heck do I have to access three menus to see my map? Why are the quest markers so poorly done, and why are some of the quests logged while others are not? And who the heck designed Jason's running animation while traversing stairs: side note, it is hilarious to watch.

On the presentation side of things, the game looks decent, the jungles of Saria pop to mind well, and most important NPCs look good. Jason obviously gets plenty of detail (including his abs) and your party members look sharp as well. As for the environments, some look great (Saria, Tartarus, Kythra) while others look muddy and unpleasant (Mycenae). The voice acting is superb, which is completely necessary considering how much time you will spend in dialogue. I wish the characters looked less stiff when in dialogue, but in combat the animations are solid despite laughable knock down animations (Just watch that satyr go airborne following a mace strike).

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed my play of Rise of the Argonauts. Following the nicely paced 15 hour quest I was sad to see it end. It does not overstay its welcome (you know what I mean by this). The story is good, the combat is good too if not a little sparse and superfluous. I would highly recommend picking this up for $6, it would be a great quest to see to its conclusion. It is too bad there'll never be a sequel to such a solid game.
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CALJR_8760
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So after borrowing The Last of Us from a friend I've beat it and just has to say it is completely mindblowing. The game's way to reel players in was by making a changeup to the zombie genre, a genre which has more than enough titles, by having the zombies based off a real life fungus that actually creates zombie like ants. While ultimately that still leaves it just being another zombie game, it is a nice way changing things up and getting people's attention. What makes this game truly stand out though is the story. As I said, there are plenty of zombie games, but for the most part, the stories are usually bare bones or just completely ridiculous (cough Resident Evil cough). This game not only has a better story than any other zombie game, but also any zombie movie or show (although The Walking Dead at times can be argued may do a better job, a certain Season 4 episode I'd argue told a very well story even on it's own). The story follows a man who has to assist a girl across country. I won't give away more than that although I'm sure most people already know a lot because of how famous the game is, but the game has a lot of emotion and the dynamic between the two characters is perfect and it has a natural progression that is one of the best bonding I've ever witnessed in any form of media. There are plenty of surprises along the way, many of which you would not expect in most entertainment media, but especially not in video games which often get severely criticized when mature content is brought in. For a non-spoiler example, if there's a part in which you can't save Ellie, the girl you're traveling with, she'll be shot right in front of you. It's not often that children or young teens are killed in TV or movies, let alone games, especially not when they actually show it happen. That's definitely not the worse of it, but it's the best example I can give without spoiling some of the most tense scenes of the game.

It's not just the story though, the gameplay is great and fun, but even more so, Naughty Dog provides breathtaking visuals, which work so well with the game considering the land has started to return to its natural order. This makes it where the sequences in which you're not sneaking or shooting so much more fullfilling, especially since you're traveling with a girl who has never seen outside the city she lives in and so many things are new to her. At one part she is even seen reading another girl's journal from before the epidemic and is completely dumbstruck with how things has changed. It's things like that when you're playing the game that makes you appreciate every bit of detail that has gone into it.

This game is in my opinion one of, if not the greatest game on the Playstation 3. The only other game to come close in my opinion would be the other Naughty Dog game, Uncharted 2, but to compare the two games just seems so wrong. It's like comparing Indiana Jones to a Best Picture winner. The two are so different and are trying to achieve too completely different things, that it's unfair to compare. I'm giving this game a 10/10, and I'm completely fine if they don't make another, and if they do then I just have one piece of advance, don't mess it up.
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Olinea
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Game: Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Genre: Puzzle/Logic

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Herschel Layton, Luke Triton, Maya Fey, Phoenix Wright. 4 characters that have provided hours of entertainment for me. It is not exaggerating to say that I've been waiting for literal years for this game to come out. I remember last October when my friend asked what games I'd get for a 3DS if I were to ever get one and this was first in line, with "Oh yeah, I'd have to get Pokemon" right behind it. So yeah, you could say I've been moderately excited for a while.

The game follows these four characters as they meet a mysterious girl named Espella Cantabella and are pulled into the world of Labyrinthia, a world where magic and witches instill fear in the townsfolk - a world where the fates of all of its inhabitants are ruled by the Storyteller, an enigmatic figure who is revered, and feared, by his people. Whatever the Storyteller writes comes true - until Layton, Wright, Triton, and Fey show up in his town. Soon, Espella is tried in the Witch's Court for the crime of using magic, and it's up to the group to save her from being convicted.

As a combination of two series of games, the player experiences two forms of gameplay. It's structured very similarly to a Phoenix Wright game, in that the game centers around 'witch trials' - the group collects information about the town during the day, trying to solve some of the mysteries behind figures and events (similar to Layton games, where there's a board of 10 mysteries that are solved over time), and collecting evidence for trials later in the day. Here, the group plays the role of defense in a trial, using evidence collected and introduced in the trial by the prosecution and testimonies to expose contradictions in the prosecution's arguments. As a result, one can consider gameplay to be switching between the two, although of course Layton/Luke show up in court and Phoenix/Maya help explore the town for clues. The game contains
Number of puzzles and trials

which took roughly 19-20 hours to fully beat, and about 18 hours to finish the story mode while rushing through and not solving many optional/hidden puzzles. There's no immediate replayability - I know I've played Ace Attorney games after a few years and remembered some plot progression but not when to present certain evidence, but once you've done the story mode and finished the puzzles you can't exactly boot it up for a while.

As far as story goes, the game does a great job of merging the characters' worlds together while keeping them intact. Layton is seen as a wise leader held in high esteem by all, Wright leads in the courtroom but still acts as comic relief poked by Maya, and Luke is eager as ever to help out. Very few characters from their universes appear - only Chelmey and Barton appear at the very beginning and an animated Edgeworth after the game is over and cutscenes are playing. No Pearl, no Descole - all new characters. It's not unfeasible to see their worlds collide but I feel it works well.

Story progression also takes the best of both worlds - the Layton games throw you into a mess and flurry of mysteries as you're barely keeping it together, and during trials you start piecing things together - right before some new twist changes the game and you're back to square one. It keeps you hooked with new information right until the end where it clicks and everything's figured out. It baits the hook and reels you in. I'd say it's par for the course in terms of Layton stories and ultimately that's how it's structured so I can't really compare it to a standard Ace Attorney case. I sincerely doubt anybody playing this won't find it gripping.

If you're a fan of one series, I recommend playing the other. If you're a fan of both, I recommend the game with no reservations. For those looking for an entirely Layton game, play a Layton game - if you're looking to solve cases without the puzzles, you go Ace Attorney. Part of the novelty of the game is blending the two together, but this isn't the kind of game you buy for the novelty - it's because it merges gameplay of two amazing game series. I waited for this game for years and it did not disappoint in any way. If you're a fan of both series you owe it to yourself to play this.
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Romanticide
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Updated the OP, now that someone's used this thread again.

I'll move the 6th gen consoles into the "retro" section later today. It's not so much that they're retro as we've all moved on to 7th/8th gen consoles and reviews for PS2/Xbox/GCN/DS/PSP games would be few and far between. I'd rather have a less unwieldy OP, too.

I REALLY want to play Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright, but so many good things are coming down the pipe and I need money for them, plus Christmas. Thinking that, Xillia 2, and Bayonetta 2 are going to be early 2015 purchases, and that's if Persona 5 doesn't drop then. That'll probably be spring at the earliest, though.

Anyway, review plans... I'm obviously doing Civ: Beyond Earth. I doubt I'll do either version of Smash or the Hoenn remakes; I'll leave those to anyone else who wants them. Other than that, idk. Was thinking of playing Remember Me when I'm not Mario Karting or whatever since I picked it up for $6 recently.
Edited by Romanticide, Sep 25 2014, 08:18 AM.
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Romanticide
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Game: Remember Me
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC (played on PC)
Genre: Action-adventure


Remember Me is one of those rare games with the "female protagonist" you hear so much about nowadays, so from the get-go I was interested in this game. I wound up not picking it up because the reviews were fairly meh on it. It's hard to justify dropping $60 on a new IP (and a short game) that isn't received well by almost everyone. However, $6 on that game is a different story.

The game is ostensibly an action-adventure title, but even from the start, I found this to be more of a beat-em-up in the vein of Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, Onimusha, games like those. However, Remember Me's combat is far more simplistic than the combat in any of those series. You can pull off all sorts of kickass combos in those titles, but in Remember Me, you're limited to four, and the button presses are the same for each.

However, you can alter what most of those button presses *do*, and this concept forms the core of the Pressen system. There are four types of hits: Regen, Power, Chain, and Cooldown. Regen heals some of your health, power is obviously a powerful hit, chain amplifies the effect of the previous Pressen, and cooldown lowers the cooldown time on your S-Pressen skills, which are essentially your special moves. I like the concept of altering what each combo does for you, but being constricted to four combos really takes a lot of the wind out of the system's sails. I mostly used the X-X-X and Y-X-Y-X-Y combos because they were the easiest to use, I had them set up to do the things I needed to do, and they ensured I could actually pull off combos. You can dodge and keep your combo intact, but I'm not very good at this kind of game, so that was rare for me.

On that note, your S-Pressen skills are important but frankly a bit OP in most fights. They all allow for fairly easy kills on many enemies, and the cooldown Pressens ensure you can spam them almost at will. That said, in some later fights they are absolutely essential because there are enemies that do some bullshit things like teleport, etc.

This is also an easier game than those titles. You'd think that simplicity in execution would lend itself to more difficult combat, but even I, a mediocre Bayonetta/Onimusha player, did not start to die in combat until 3/4ths through the game. The late-game fights are somewhat hard because they start throwing enemies/combinations of enemies that aren't easily exploited at you, but they don't compare to boss fights or even some mook fights in more difficult titles. I found most of the boss fights underwhelming, both in difficulty and in concept. The last one especially just descends into a bunch of stupid bullshit in phase three. Games like this need strong boss fights, and Remember Me doesn't deliver.

However, I must say I loved Kid X-Mas's boss fight. It's just wonderfully cheesy, like an old-school WWE match in 2084. His dialogue is appropriately hammy given his character, and the fight itself was fun without veering into the bullshit that later boss fights had.

The other core gameplay conceit is the memory remix segments. The idea is that you alter one of someone's core memories in order to change who they are. It's a very fitting idea in a game about memory and I love the idea of a major non-combat mechanic, but it's underutilized and it's unintuitive. The controls are not very good. You rotate the left analog stick clockwise or counter-clockwise to move the memory forward or backward, respective, which isn't bad in and of itself. However, you also have to move the right analog stick to adjust the camera and find memory glitches, which change how the memory plays out. Sure, it's easy to use two analog sticks in the course of normal play, but you're not normally rotating one very slowly and looking around with the other. While it got easier as I went along, it still felt *weird* to me throughout. I would have liked a system where you can pause the memory and THEN look for these memory glitches; it'd have felt far more intuitive.

There's also a bit of platforming on offer here. It's not the main attraction, but it works well enough. After playing Mirror's Edge, I wish every environment were designed like that: color-coded so you know what you can interact with and how. Even so, the futuristic overlay on almost everything is fitting and it helps you find your way. There were a few moments where I felt lost, but looking around solves that issue.

The premise of the story is basically that the Memorize corporation invented a device called the Sensen, which allowed people to upload their memories to the internet and share/delete them as they wished. This plays out in various ways for everyone involved in the story, as you might imagine. Anyway, in the year 2084, Memorize is now the richest corporation on the planet and their home city, Neo-Paris, is by extension the richest city on earth. However, where there are very rich people, there are also very poor people, who predictably live on the margins of Neo-Paris and foster resentment towards Neo-Paris's rich and powerful. There's a lot of 99% and revolutionary rhetoric here, which is always amusing in productions from major corporations because they benefit the most from the status quo. The story isn't anything original in spite of its ambition and its premise, but up until the end I thought it was executed well enough. In the last 20% or so it all just turns into a giant pile of wut, which dilutes the impact of an otherwise decent story.

Where the game really shines is its characters. People say they want "strong female characters", but to put Nilin on such a list is to do a disservice to her and to all female characters. I just want female characters to have the same breadth and depth as their male counterparts, which isn't too much to ask. Nilin is definitely "strong" in the traditional sense, but she also expresses emotion. She questions Edge, the enigmatic leader of the Errorists (the group against Memorize and their monopolization of memory), his motivations, and his means. She questions her own actions when they lead to death and misery for Neo-Paris's poor. In short, she's a well-realized character and I played through the game in one sitting because I wanted to see what happened to her. This game has an ethnically representative cast, with Scylla and Tommy being black, and Kaori being presumably at least part-Asian (it's never *said*, but she does look Asian). None of the characters play to common stereotypes either, which is something we need more of in gaming.

This isn't to say every character is great. Madame, one of the game's antagonists, falls into the overused dominatrix character trope. She looks good because video games, but the more egregious offense is that a lot of her dialogue is sexually charged. Doctor Quaid, another antagonist, is just your typical boring crazy doctor. Some of the secondary characters, like Bad Request, Kid X-Mas, and the aforementioned Kaori, aren't developed. I would have liked to know more about these characters and how they became what they are; the chapters concerning these characters would have had more impact. As it is, you go do a thing just because you're told to go do that thing, which sucks.

The graphics are pretty good. Obviously not Crysis 3 or Metro: Last Light or something, but they are pretty good. They're about what you'd expect of an AAA title, so no surprises there. I loved the artstyle, though. Futuristic games done well are like art porn to me, and Remember Me manages to capture the charm of Paris (slums aren't charming, but y'know) while making the city look like something out of a sci-fi flick or some shit. The soundtrack is quite good, having music that's fitting of the current mood/events in the game. There isn't a single track that I can recall hating, but on the flip side, I can't recall one that I loved either. Oh well, it works, which is what you want.

There isn't much replayability. No new modes are opened up post-game, and this is a story/character-driven game. You could go for the achievements/trophies, but even so, I can't see that pushing your playtime far over the 30 hour mark. Not that I think these achievements are particularly rewarding; stuff like "do 40 8 hit combos" does not inspire me to continue playing your game. The game is pretty cheap on every platform now, so the value for what is on offer is there.

This game definitely has its niche. If you want a game that is more focused on its characters and its world-building than it is on delivering a hardcore beat-em-up experience, I would recommend this game.
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MrMarill
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DAT STORY TIEM

It's weird for a game to choose a female lead and then screw up characterising other female characters. The gameplay also seems somewhat underwhelming so I might pick it up for like £5 but not much more. Good review, all in all.

I'm planning to do a review of Kirby Triple Deluxe at some point this week. Undecided if I should do Smash/Pokemon or not, might be too biased. I don't expect Smash 3DS to actually be all that fantastic, game modes got cut out (Event Matches, Subspace) and Smash Run looks really boring. The appeal is just the multiplayer but it's a 3DS game. There's not much multiplayer to be had when you're on the go but mish, we'll see when it comes out.
Edited by MrMarill, Oct 1 2014, 08:36 AM.
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MrMarill
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DAT STORY TIEM

Review of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire on my inactive gaming blog here. Woohoo.
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Romanticide
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Haven't done a review in forever because I haven't played much that I felt *needed* a review. Pokemon, Smash, Mario Kart, Bayonetta... We know these titles. Even something like Cities: Skylines has gotten plenty of press, and I'm waiting until the last episode for Life is Strange, even though you can probably guess how it'll go. At this point I think I'd rather do games that people might not know about. Anyway...


Game: The Fruit of Grisaia
Platform: PC
Genre: Visual novel

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Forgive my Amane bias.


It's been a great year or so for visual novel fans. It began in 2014 with the release of Steins;Gate in the west, and I fully intend to pick that up very soon. The anime was incredible and I expect the source material to be even better. However, the end of 2014/the beginning of 2015 brought us Kickstarters to translate some of the biggest and most well-known visual novels: Clannad and The Grisaia trilogy. This review is obviously for the first of the three Grisaia games, The Fruit of Grisaia.

There's not much to say about the gameplay. It's quite literally 70+ hours of clicking a mouse (or hitting enter), with very few choices. The first three choices aren't relevant to the narrative; they're just kind of there and affect a few lines of dialogue. Each of the next four choices immediately forces you onto one of the girls' routes, and each route has a choice that determines the ending you'll get. If you decline every choice, you start Yumiko's route. I kind of wish there were a "no romance" route, though I guess that'd defeat the purpose of the game.

The premise of the story is pretty simple: You play as Yuuji Kazami, a student who transfers into a school that has only six students: Himself and five girls. There is no overarching narrative; rather, Yuuji wishes to live life as a normal student. You'd be correct to say "sounds like the setup for a harem visual novel", and it plays that way for much of the common route. There is so much suggestive dialogue and so many humorous scenes that it's easy to forget all six of these students are isolated from society because they have deep psychological problems. The humor works to make the emotional points of each route feel more poignant, and it also serves as a break from said emotional moments. Crying and then laughing at the girls' hijinks is not an abnormal occurrence in this game.

However, there are a lot of implausible events. Yuuji himself is a walking implausible event. Don't think too hard about how it's possible for a 16 year old boy to be Jason Fucking Bourne with even scarier accuracy, how more than one character can survive normally fatal gunshots for any length of time, how a girl with the mentality of an eight year old has 70 million yen in her bank account with no restrictions, how it's possible to hastily arrange for the demolition of a building, amongst other events... It strains immersion if you think about shit in this game too much, to say the least. There are rich and powerful people driving many of these events, but shit is still incredulous if you have even an iota of knowledge about how the world really works. Just accept that crazy shit is happening and move on.

"THAT'S COOL AND ALL RO, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GIRLS?"

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Yeah, what about the girls tho?
(Amane, Michiru, Makina, and Sachi, from left to right.)


Okay, so there are five different girls you can romance: Amane, Michiru, Makina, Yumiko, and Sachi, in the order I did their routes. Sadly, you cannot be as swagtastic as the Proswagonist from Persona 4 and romance them all at once, but them's the breaks.

Amane is the oldest and most "developed" girl of the bunch, and as such has a "horny big sister" mentality. Sure, it's easy to like her and consider her waifu just because holy shit is she hot and very upfront about her desires, but I also enjoy her personality. She's one of the more reliable girls of the bunch, she's surprisingly perceptive given that all of these girls aren't exactly "normal", and she's a pretty good big sister to Makina. She also has the best route, albeit very horrifying, and her good ending is the best scene in the entire game. The scene where Amane reveals how she truly felt and now feels about Yuuji is also one of my favorite scenes in the game. In short: She's waifu.

Michiru is quite easily my least favorite girl and remained such after reading this, but being my least favorite girl in Grisaia is like being my least favorite pizza place: It's still good and I'll still like it. So it goes here. Her whole shtick is pretending to be a tsundere, which she does to make people laugh and feel like she has some worth as a person. She also blacks out from time to time, which is the scarier of her problems. Both are dealt with during the course of her route, because obviously. Also features lots of Kittymeow/Meowmel, and cats are always the best. She is really shitty with names though.

Makina is the adorable little sister, if said adorable little sister had the mouth of a sailor. She often has a pithy insult or a line that sounds even dirtier than it would from the other girls because she looks and acts like a child. At first, she's afraid of everything and everyone she's unfamiliar with, but over the course of her route, she comes out of her shell and starts trying new things/working a part time job. Her bad ending is HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST READ material, and the good ending is the same, sans the most morbid aspects. I wish we *couldn't* romance her; she's just too little sister-like for me to feel she's a viable option.

Yumiko is the cool, reserved girl of the bunch. She's the least social of the bunch, though that's not exactly by choice. She's just afraid to let anyone get close to her because she believes she'll lose them in the end. Even so, over the course of the game, she opens up to her classmates across most routes (which I appreciate; the anime did a bad job with this), and becomes so sickeningly sweet in her route that I spontaneously exploded into candies. Her route has the amusement park scene, which destroyed me more than once. She also gets the only bad ending that isn't truly "bad". I love this route and I like Yumiko a whole lot more after reading this.

Sachi is at once the funniest girl, the most reliable girl, and arguably has the dirtiest mouth of the bunch. She gives Amane a run for her money where sexual innuendos are concerned. If I have a screenshot of dialogue (man I have way too many screenshots of this game, and I still missed good stuff), she's probably involved in some way. Her lines are that fucking funny. I think it's the contrast between her super-serious, reliable personality and the utterly ridiculous lines that come out of her mouth. It works for her. However, she obeys orders absolutely due to a childhood trauma, and that's the whole crux of her problem.

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This is why I love Sachi.


The artstyle... Works? It's not going to blow you away if you watch anime like The Rolling Girls or the new Fate/Stay Night, or play super duper graphically intense games, but it's quite good in its own right. I love the character designs; all of the girls look really good. Males look less good, but whatever, they aren't the main focus and you don't see them a whole lot over the course of the game. They still *work*, but they're pretty generic anime designs. Many of the backgrounds are pretty intricate, with lots of little details should you choose to take the time to look. Some of them, like the school and the dorm, are less so, but that's expected given the buildings are spartan.

The music quickly grows repetitive because there are only ~40 tracks in a game with a huge number of scenes, but each track works to set the mood for the scene it's assigned to. Most of the tracks aren't spectacular by any means, but there are a few gems amongst the bunch. "Flowers in Bloom" and "Want to Smile" are the best by far, which makes sense: If there's an emotional scene, one of these two tracks is playing and the waterworks begin. The opening theme and the ending themes are all wonderful though and I recommend listening to them at least once.

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Yumiko might be the last girl, but definitely NOT the least.


If it isn't obvious from the screenshots/the review itself, this game is something that I'd only recommend to people who can enjoy Japanese media. It's a very Japanese game in a very Japanese medium. Sure, adventure games are gaining popularity over here once again, in large part thanks to Telltale, but they're still quite different from a visual novel like this. However, if you're into this sort of stuff, I wholeheartedly recommend this title. At the very least, this is probably a 30-40 hour read, and that assumes you skip the voice acting. With voice acting it can easily be 70+ hours.

I felt more clicking a mouse and reading text for 78 hours than I have ever felt playing most video games. I cried, I laughed, I smiled, I got angry... There was almost always *something* to feel other than apathy and the sense that I've done this all before. Sure, this might be in part because first VN, but I'd rather read more visual novels than play more "traditional video games" at this point. It's a sad way to feel going into E3.

Anyway... Get this game. It's worth your $40.
Edited by Romanticide, Jun 14 2015, 06:41 AM.
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tfghost92
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After I accumulate 50 hours of gameplay, I will review Fallout 4 for PC
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DucksFAN93
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Game: Guitar Hero: Live
Released: October 21, 2015
Reviewed on: Xbox One

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REVIEW: Guitar Hero is back after a very long hiatus. The question, I think, everyone is wanting to know is if the hiatus did wonders for this band, or if they should have just called it quits faster than the worst one-hit wonder. Well, I am going to tell you, so keep reading.

The first thing to note about this iteration of Guitar Hero is that there is no longer a band component. You are limited to guitar or vocals only, which to me, is not an issue. Back in the day, I would play the drums and guitar only, so while I miss drumming, I am okay with not having the option as of now. My first choice was always guitar, so I am totally surviving. As for guitar, we ALL know that the guitar changed to the 6 button (3x3) format. Let me talk about that for just a second. The way you play has completely changed due to this design change and it is fantastic. Songs that were boring in the past because of the reliance on power chords are no longer boring, and can be fantastically challenging and fun because of the combinations the charting can throw at you. The learning curve for the new guitar is moderate; that is, it is easy to pick up and play if you play on default difficulty. Now, if you put it on expert, this is probably the hardest guitar hero ever, and that is without ridiculously impossible charts like Dragonforce or “Black Widow.” Seriously, you try doing “In Due Time” by Killswitch Engage on expert and nail the solo.

The black and white scheme works and it takes a little time for your brain to register what your hands need to do, and even now, my fingers fight my brain on some of the more challenging combinations. It is a blast once you nail it though, it stimulates the brain in a way Rock Band can’t to me.

You have two modes: Guitar Hero Live and Guitar Hero TV. Guitar Hero Live is the live action stuff you have seen in the trailers, and it is broken up into sets of three songs. You play through the songs to unlock a new set and new songs for quickplay. It’s fun (because the gameplay is fun), but you won’t even really care about the scenery of live action people. You will be too focused on playing well, which is fine. The game runs in this mode extremely smoothly, and I have experienced no hitches or stutters (on the Xbox One version). The track list extends to around 45 songs in this mode, so there is not that many, but the variety is decent. I’m not going to list songs because that is what the internet is for (1), and (2) everyone’s music taste is subjective. So while I may enjoy songs, you may not. What I can say, is that they definitely picked songs for fun charts, regardless if you like the music itself. This mode will last you around 4 hours, and then quick play is available to keep playing the songs, but the next mode is where everyone is wondering how the game works, so let’s talk about it right now.

Guitar Hero TV is constantly playing. Whether you are playing or not, the “TV” channels are constantly cycling. You can look ahead to the schedule and see when a certain program is going to play so you can plan ahead if you like. For example, I obviously love metal, so I look ahead on the program schedule to see when a show like “Metal Mayhem” will be on. If it is going to be on 8:30 p.m., I know to play around that time to play songs I know I will enjoy. There are two channels in rotation (with a third coming I have heard), so you are limited on what to play on the random rotations as of now, but let me explain how to get around that. You have “Plays” that allow you to go into the song list and play whatever song you want to. Let’s say I have this knack to play Asking Alexandria’s “The Final Episode (Let’s Change the Channel);” I can use one of my plays to play the song instantly. If I had 10 plays, using it on that song just cost me 1 to leave me with 9.

“Oh, so you are going to end up paying to buy more plays to play the songs that you want whenever you want…no thanks!”

Hold on there! Yes, you have limited plays. Yes, you can pay to buy more without playing the game. No, you don't have to spend any real money on this, nor should you.

The game makes it so easy to earn coins (in game currency) to purchase plays that it renders spending real money useless. If you earn 3 stars on any type of play in GHTV (That is using a play, doing a premium show, playing the channels) you will earn coins. If you do well on that song, you earn about 160 coins. A pack of 50 plays is 30,000 coins (Of course there are smaller increments like 10 or 30 plays). I have played GH:L a TON (mostly on-demand songs, honestly), and I have not dropped a dime into the game past what I spent to purchase the game in the first place. Oh by the way, I use Plays all the time, and I have 76 sitting in my bank right now. I am playing whatever I want, and not worrying about running out of plays. The game rewards you for everything! Leveling up earns huge pockets of coins as well as 5-10 plays. Having the channels is fun too, because it really lets you play stuff out of your comfort zone, which has exposed me to awesome bands I would not have played otherwise (The Wonder Years, 4 Years Strong, Warrant, You Me at Six, Lonely the Brave - to name a few).

There are a few things I want to nitpick. Sometimes in GHTV the video stutters in the very beginning, which causes the chart to stutter, which makes it hard to time the strums. This happens very infrequently, but it happens. Also, I miss training mode so I could practice hard parts of songs. Now I have to just play them as they come up or use a play, which sucks because I am getting good at doing harder songs riffing, but I would love to practice the solos without using a play or waiting for it to come on rotation. You can’t sing unless you have a guitarist (like, why?) and you can’t have a second guitarist have their play rewarded in split-screen. Only player 1 gets coins, XP and plays for playing; the second player is just there to play, which is dumb.

Also, new songs are added every Wednesday, and they are put in Premium Shows at first, then the next week they go into the rotation and On Demand area. Totally easy and it works, and you don't pay a dime to get extra “DLC,” so that is awesome. The song list will be over 300 starting tomorrow, and you only pay the $100 to buy the game and guitar. That is really good value. I know the plug could be pulled at any time, but Activision SEEMS committed at this point, and they have been saying that this is their biggest GH sales wise since WT (I think), so it seems like it will be around for some time.

Overall, I definitely recommend this Guitar Hero to you guys. I am loving the game, and while it has some nitpicks, at the end of the day, this is the most fun I have had with Guitar Hero. I haven’t played RB4, but I know I made the right decision picking GH:L.
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