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Squiddycat posted:lol if you think any videogame is good from the first 30 minutes * Speaking of little things dragging a game down... I was hugely glad when I learnt the hidden shortcut to skip all of that nonsense.
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Jul 26, 2019 06:50
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ItBreathes posted:drat. Well, I guess I'm not picking that back up. You mean MGSV, the game where a female sniper has to wear bikini at all times because some parasites that keep her alive feed on sunlight? Writing in that game?
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Jul 26, 2019 08:32
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I'm trying to think of which of my favorite games are immediately playing some of their best cards in the first thirty minutes that weren't predominantly multiplayer-focused like fighting games. And I've got, like... Metroid Prime, Secret World Legends (not the original Secret World), Earthbound if you're into what it's putting down, Saints Row 3, and Ocarina of Time but no other Zeldas. Platformers fare well, I guess. I'm not trying to make a point, I just wanted to think about how long it takes for my favorite games to really sell themselves.
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Jul 26, 2019 08:58
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Cleretic posted:I'm trying to think of which of my favorite games are immediately playing some of their best cards in the first thirty minutes that weren't predominantly multiplayer-focused like fighting games. That's ignoring shorter games like Return of the Obra Dinn where you see good stuff right from the start because the game just hasn't got time to be padded.
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Jul 26, 2019 09:07
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Metal Gear Solid 2's Tanker level is great from the get-go.
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Jul 26, 2019 09:33
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Necrothatcher posted:Metal Gear Solid 2's Tanker level is great from the get-go. MGS1 gets you in the action fairly quickly too.
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Jul 26, 2019 09:51
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I wish Dishonored 2 had the one campaign with both Corvo and Emily against a new antagonist. Sherlock Holmes only fought Moriarty once so I don't see why they need to bring Delilah back.
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Jul 26, 2019 10:33
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The whole MGSV hospital intro is basically my everyday morning routine irl so I might be an outlier
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Jul 26, 2019 10:36
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Terminally Bored posted:You mean MGSV, the game where a female sniper has to wear bikini at all times because some parasites that keep her alive feed on sunlight? Writing in that game? Never forget:  
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Jul 26, 2019 10:43
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e1m1 still an all time opening great
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Jul 26, 2019 10:47
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I guess this sort of ended up being coincidentally on-topic but I just finished off the main game of Far Cry 4 and boy when taken as a whole is the game just...weird. I see now why I originally got burned out where I did - the first third of the game or so just isn't very good. Amita and Sabal are inexplicably at their worst in the early game, the game leans on those rear end in a top hat magic archers for outposts before they almost stop appearing completely, and the story missions are kinda unfocused and uninteresting. Oh, and the annoying focus on the arena. Then you ram a goddamn gas tanker into Pagan Min's front door and start the obligatory second half of the game. Suddenly all of the missions involve actually teaming up with the rebels to get poo poo done, culminating in a final all-out assault on the royal palace that's hectic and fun. Character arcs start to pay off. Even the final Shangri-la chapters manage to better designed. Buuuuuut on the other hand, the story pacing is just a complete and total mess. Yuma has like five minutes of actual screentime tops and has no real payoff; mind you her whole weird obsession with Shangri-la actually has a lot of thematic resonance but it's hidden beyond the game throwing yet more drug sequences at you before she meets an otherwise inconsequential end. She feels like she was being set up as Ajay's equal, but instead of showing that through tactical or combat prowess her sections come off like a reprise of Far Cry 3's worst aspects. Dealing with the rebel power struggle also feels off, where Bhadra literally just goes "poo poo I dunno, you have to decide" despite the final choice in this case being whether or not she's married in a really grody religious ceremony. Instead of uncertainty it just reads like she has no actual agency as a character. Part of the problem is a criticism I've heard before where it doesn't matter at all what you choose at any other part of the game - the losing side gets mad at you, the winning side gets more radio chatter, you move on. And ultimately the game is too caught up in its otherwise fantastic endgame momentum to give the concept of a rebel splinter faction any room to breath so you go deal with the loser of the power struggle in five seconds and promptly move on. Even the systems pacing is way off. Side missions lost any appeal to me after a point because I didn't need the XP and I also didn't need the money. There's not even token achievements for doing every side mission or collecting every collectible. At best, you can get infinite rebel tokens but that entire system is itself a dead end and those things are pathetically cheap to just buy and even easy to earn by accident. Maybe part of the problem is all the bonus DLC missions add to too much extra XP/money but I honestly doubt they made that big of a difference. There was a single story mission that sucked as bad as the previous one I posted about - escaping from Yuma's prison. They depower you by stripping you of all of your gear, but it's done so shoddily where you have to blunder through a mostly-linear obstacle course of enemies and structures, somehow find time to stealth around and turn off alarms without being given any stealth tools beyond the lovely auto-crossbow, and also get put in wonky situations like needing to find a way to kill a heavy or two while you have basically nothing on you. It's another case where trying to stuff Far Cry's loosey-goosey stealth mechanics into a more traditional linear level just doesn't work very well. Edit: Huuuuh I just looked it up and also I apparently somehow accidentally skipped or just never got Amita's ending cutscene (and subsequent ability to kill her after the fact). Probably for the better because it would have soured me on the whole thing. Edit edit: Seems like you have to specifically visit one of the towns to get the cutscene to trigger and I honestly don't remember seeing any indication of that either. Bizarre. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 11:25 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 10:49
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this is maybe too broad for this thread because it's not little but every single thing about My Friend Pedro other than the basic mechanics and gun fights is terrible. The miserable platforming, the insanely generic graphics, the reliance on boring gimmicks, and the... I'm not sure how to describe it, but it has a weird nasty tone to it (because it's a 2005 Newgrounds game that fell through a wormhole)? Even ignoring the probably subjective last bit I don't know where the years of development went, the good parts of the game were done long ago.
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Jul 26, 2019 11:54
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I'm playing the original NES Ninja Gaiden and gently caress me this is some bullshit. Getting to Act 5 wasn't too hard, but after that I have no idea how anyone ever completed this on original hardware.
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Jul 26, 2019 12:10
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Necrothatcher posted:I'm playing the original NES Ninja Gaiden and gently caress me this is some bullshit. Getting to Act 5 wasn't too hard, but after that I have no idea how anyone ever completed this on original hardware. We mostly didn't! Honestly, though, if we did it was because that was the only god drat game we had that was any good and we played the hell out of it, because they were not cheap and reviews were not as thick on the ground as they are these days.
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Jul 26, 2019 13:12
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Terminally Bored posted:You mean MGSV, the game where a female sniper has to wear bikini at all times because some parasites that keep her alive feed on sunlight? Writing in that game? Forgot about that (clearly I didn't play a lot of MGS5), but I muted all the character voices in Destiny 2 because it was so awful I couldn't enjoy the jumping and shooting while it was happening, so I'd say drat near anything has better writing than D2.
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Jul 26, 2019 13:25
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Cleretic posted:I'm trying to think of which of my favorite games are immediately playing some of their best cards in the first thirty minutes that weren't predominantly multiplayer-focused like fighting games. And I've got, like... Metroid Prime, Secret World Legends (not the original Secret World), Earthbound if you're into what it's putting down, Saints Row 3, and Ocarina of Time but no other Zeldas. Platformers fare well, I guess. Saints Row 2. First game I had on the PS3, and it ruined GTA IV for me. SR2 opens with you waking up in a prison hospital. You customise your character, then bust out of the prison with a series of fist and gun fights before stealing a cop car to hightail it to the docks. You then jump on a boat which your NPC companion drives to the mainland while you fire a machinegun at pursuing speedboats and helicopters. Awesome. GTA IV opens with you being picked up at the docks by your loving cousin and slowly driving him to work. Because that's the sort of excitement I'm looking for in a game called "Grand Theft Auto," hot chauffeuring action and idle conversation with family members.
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Jul 26, 2019 13:37
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I'd say RE4 has a great first 30 minutes. You get the run up to the village to learn the controls, then you have the big village fight.
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Jul 26, 2019 14:18
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RE4 follows into cheesy action action-movie fare and yet I can't help but touch cloth everytime Dr Salvador appears to this Silent Hill-esque drone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N27kSs882Lw
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Jul 26, 2019 14:26
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Okami is one of the biggest offenders. It's about 40 minutes of clicking through text boxes (no voice acting) with few short walks, drawing tutorials and couple of super easy fights before you get any meaningful gameplay.
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Jul 26, 2019 14:28
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Inspector Gesicht posted:RE4 follows into cheesy action action-movie fare MIIIIIIIKEEEEEEEE
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Jul 26, 2019 14:29
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Kennel posted:Okami is one of the biggest offenders. It's about 40 minutes of clicking through text boxes (no voice acting) with few short walks, drawing tutorials and couple of super easy fights before you get any meaningful gameplay. Persona 4 is like four hours or text boxes with no actual gameplay
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Jul 26, 2019 14:31
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Dash Rendar posted:Same Library? You're on a different ring at some point arent you? The Library, Silent Cartographer, and Control Rooms are present on all the Halos and the Ark to an extent (and it's implied that the bigass hole on Earth in 3 has something similar to at least one or two of those). You go through a lot of it in Halo 1, the Arbiter walks into a blown up and flaming one on another Halo in 2, then you glimpse or walk out of one on the replacement Halo in 3 on your way to warthog running to the frigate (with the towers you enter previously in 3 being Cartographers). The level layouts are almost identical, but they hide it with damage to the structure, Flood infestation, etc. RBA Starblade has a new favorite as of 15:07 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 15:03
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Nier Automatas intro is entirely on rails, and the lack of a checkpoint til the end is dumb, but it's a gloriously amine kaleidoscope of bullet hell, scrolling shooter and action game. Makes me wish they scrapped the open world and did the whole game like that. And, as maligned as it is, Irenicus Dungeon at the start of BG2 is loving fantastic. You get a simple little dungeon crawl, a scenery chewing villain, some incredibly hosed up evil wizard poo poo, it's fantastic. It is not fantastic the following 87 times you restart the game.
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Jul 26, 2019 15:16
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It's time for more... ...experiments.
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Jul 26, 2019 15:22
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Cleretic posted:Ocarina of Time but no other Zeldas. ah yes, the brilliant shoved-into-the-action gameplay of OoT, where you need to trim hedges for twenty minutes to buy a shield so a fat kid will let you do anything, truly the best intro to a Zelda game
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Jul 26, 2019 15:24
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Nier Automatas intro is entirely on rails, and the lack of a checkpoint til the end is dumb, but it's a gloriously amine kaleidoscope of bullet hell, scrolling shooter and action game. Makes me wish they scrapped the open world and did the whole game like that. And butts! Don't forget butts. You totally looked too, you ButtLooker! A little thing seemingly dragging nearly EVERY modern game down: code:
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Jul 26, 2019 15:27
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food court bailiff posted:ah yes, the brilliant shoved-into-the-action gameplay of OoT, where you need to trim hedges for twenty minutes to buy a shield so a fat kid will let you do anything, truly the best intro to a Zelda game Yeah, I'm not sure any 3D Zelda actually had a good intro. That one kinda sucks, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are worse, even the objectively best one in the series Majora's Mask almost made me give up and quit the first time around. I guess BotW at least just kinda dumps you into it, for all the other problems I have with it.
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Jul 26, 2019 15:35
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Ah... The Child of Bhaal has awoken.
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Jul 26, 2019 15:36
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food court bailiff posted:ah yes, the brilliant shoved-into-the-action gameplay of OoT, where you need to trim hedges for twenty minutes to buy a shield so a fat kid will let you do anything, truly the best intro to a Zelda game I wasn't really going for 'shoved into the action', but more 'first thirty minutes or so is a decent microcosm of all the main reasons to like the game' (note I have Earthbound there, and that opening's super sedate). Ocarina gives you story and setting, overworld and dungeon gameplay, and a bit of spectacle in that period, and while they all get better over time it's all there to show you what's coming. I was mentally contrasting with Majora and Wind Waker especially, who take quite a while to get to their first proper dungeons; that's not a ding against them of course, but we're quantifying using a specific metric. I will admit I forgot to factor in the overhead Zeldas, though. Those get to the chase really quickly, albeit mostly because they're games that are pretty light on anything that would pad out early gametime.
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Jul 26, 2019 15:49
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food court bailiff posted:ah yes, the brilliant shoved-into-the-action gameplay of OoT, where you need to trim hedges for twenty minutes to buy a shield so a fat kid will let you do anything, truly the best intro to a Zelda game Haha what? It eases you into the control scheme in a natural manner and simultaneously to the fact that exploration is the name of the game. Then it puts you into a dungeon that explores the fact that 3D-gaming means thinking vertically. It's the entire game in one intuitive slice.
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Jul 26, 2019 15:54
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Hey! Listen!
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Jul 26, 2019 15:59
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Cleretic posted:I wasn't really going for 'shoved into the action', but more 'first thirty minutes or so is a decent microcosm of all the main reasons to like the game' (note I have Earthbound there, and that opening's super sedate). Ocarina gives you story and setting, overworld and dungeon gameplay, and a bit of spectacle in that period, and while they all get better over time it's all there to show you what's coming. I was mentally contrasting with Majora and Wind Waker especially, who take quite a while to get to their first proper dungeons; that's not a ding against them of course, but we're quantifying using a specific metric. MiddleOne posted:Haha what? It eases you into the control scheme in a natural manner and simultaneously to the fact that exploration is the name of the game. Then it puts you into a dungeon that explores the fact that 3D-gaming means thinking vertically. There is no way you got to the first dungeon in Ocarina of Time in a half hour on your first playthrough without a guide, and the whole time you're trying to get to that dungeon you're stuck in a village full of the world's most annoying orphans. Cleretic is also ignoring BotW which gives you all of your tools and introduces you to combat, exploration, swimming and climbing right out of the gate, with just enough plot to be enticing but not a bunch of text dumps or NPCs or stone owls or anything. Rockman Reserve has a new favorite as of 16:17 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 16:00
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food court bailiff posted:There is no way you got to the first dungeon in Ocarina of Time in a half hour on your first playthrough without a guide, and the whole time you're trying to get to that dungeon you're stuck in a village full of the world's most annoying orphans. I did and I was like 7 and incapable of reading english. 
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Jul 26, 2019 16:04
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Len posted:Persona 4 is like four hours or text boxes with no actual gameplay Much like Kingdom Hearts 2 is about three hours of loving around, but when you get past that, it's all good poo poo.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:06
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MiddleOne posted:I did and I was like 7 and incapable of reading english. Yo maybe the fact that you literally could not speak to any of the annoying NPCs has affected both your playtime and nostalgia here, as a literate child in the language I played it it loving sucked. I mean this is 100% exactly what I was talking about, and if you could not interact with that portion of the game meaningfully then why are you presenting yourself as some kind of authority here?
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Jul 26, 2019 16:06
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OoT: Opening cutscene Find stuff Dungeon - ~10-15 minutes in Cutscenes Deku tree talks a lot Run to Hyrule Castle Cutscenes The Deku Tree is a nice dungeon but the game has a pretty slow start.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:11
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food court bailiff posted:Yo maybe the fact that you literally could not speak to any of the annoying NPCs has affected both your playtime and nostalgia here, as a literate child in the language I played it it loving sucked. I mean this is 100% exactly what I was talking about, and if you could not interact with that portion of the game meaningfully then why are you presenting yourself as some kind of authority here? It's not about being an authority. Speaking from a UX viewpoint the start of the game is solid. I get that you hated it but please back it up with some kind of an argument if you're going to get pissy about it.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:12
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MiddleOne posted:It's not about being an authority. Speaking from a UX viewpoint the start of the game is solid. I get that you hated it but please back it up with some kind of an argument if you're going to get pissy about it. It is possible to teach you controls intuitively without being boring as poo poo, Nintendo pioneered that back with the original Super Mario Bros. My argument is that it's boring as poo poo. The evidence is the actual game. You were literally incapable of experiencing the package as a whole when you played it, if you couldn't read the boring poo poo you might not have noticed that it was, in fact, boring poo poo.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:14
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Speaking of game openings and Halo, in the first level of the game you meet Captain Keyes who gives you a pistol and tells you that he keeps it unloaded. Despite going out of its way to mention this the game forcibly gives you ammo anyways five feet away from the captain. And it’s not like this is put into place to keep you from killing the captain because you can immediately turn around and kill him and the game then reacts to it and sends invulnerable guards after you.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:16
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food court bailiff posted:It is possible to teach you controls intuitively without being boring as poo poo, Nintendo pioneered that back with the original Super Mario Bros. My argument is that it's boring as poo poo. The evidence is the actual game. If your key interest playing your probably first 3D game in the 90's was binging NPC dialogue rather than interacting with the world then maybe you went into it with the wrong expectations? The game doesn't force you into any of the NPC dialogue.  I mean people were talking the opening to MGSV earlier and that is like the anti-thesis's of Ocarina's opening. You're hand-held like a motherfucker, nothing is intuitive and above all the game decides how you get to approach it. moosecow333 posted:Speaking of game openings and Halo, in the first level of the game you meet Captain Keyes who gives you a pistol and tells you that he keeps it unloaded. Despite going out of its way to mention this the game forcibly gives you ammo anyways five feet away from the captain. Find me the child who did not murder Keyes. MiddleOne has a new favorite as of 16:21 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 16:17
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