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I got a little handheld emulator so have been playing some old games, I just beat Survival Kids last night. A weird little game. Surprisingly ambitious, though they fell short of the mark they were trying to hit, I feel - the first act of the game, where you're exploring an island and getting resources to survive (though honestly actually surviving isn't that difficult, with food and water in plentiful supply) is the most interesting - each new resource is a potential for use and something that might be able to be merged with something else. But then it falters where, after you've found and crafted pretty much every tool in the game, you just sort of are forced into a scavenger hunt to find some gems to unlock a ship (why is a ship locked up using various gemstones? No idea) and escape. The last part of the game is just navigating a big ruin, solving rudimentary puzzles to get the last of the keystones, which was pretty tedious. I was surprised to find that the game has multiple endings and even a sort-of branching narrative, where another character can show up and affect your ending in multiple ways. Heck, if you get a radio and make an SOS signal on the beach you can escape within a couple days and, well, avoid like 90% of the game entirely. Anyway, was interesting, not particularly good, but I'd play the sequel.
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Dec 15, 2023 16:25
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Beat The Great Ace Attorney. Only took me...uh a few years. Look I get distracted easily, and there is a real problem in the game of bloated dialogue. Anyway otherwise it was pretty good. Not my favourite Ace Attorney game but definitely near the top. Just gotta finish up the little side story stuff to get that plat.
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Dec 21, 2023 07:19
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Cyks posted:I liked it up to the actual sea of stars. Everything from that point on felt extremely rushed and lazy. The alternative ending for 100%ing the game is even worse, IMO. This is a problem with introducing a whole other world in almost any game, especially if it's later in the game - it feels like a separate thing that isn't as fleshed out as the first.
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Dec 25, 2023 21:12
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As I play only the most recent releases, I have beaten Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, released on the GBA in 2006. Fairly simple game and story, pretty fun. I liked crafting new weapons and maxing their TEC out (because my brain is wired like that), getting deeper in the labyrinth, etc. Think I'm going to check out the later games in the series, to see where they go with it.
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Dec 28, 2023 02:34
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Beat Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty last night. Just working on getting the last couple of endings for trophies, but it's good. It follows the rest of the game in not really having a 'best' ending, but I quite like the whole thing. Definitely one of the best DLCs in recent memory.
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Jan 3, 2024 13:48
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Finished all of Phantom Liberty. It's strange saying goodbye to Night City a second time, I found myself just sort of wandering around taking in the sites, before heading to the Glen Apartment, taking a nap and just sorta...looking at the skyline from the balcony. It's such an incredibly-realized location with some excellent characters, I feel once again like I'm leaving a place I've lived.
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Jan 4, 2024 01:49
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I just finished Lil Gator Game. A fantastic little package one can finish in an afternoon, I was not expecting it to be as funny as it was, either.
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Jan 6, 2024 03:50
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Discendo Vox posted:Just finished 100%ing Ghostwire: Tokyo. A game well worth the price of admission even just for the incredible, incredible assetwork that went into it. If playing, note that the postlaunch "tatari" zero XP mode is for masochists and unlocks nothing. Generally, the difficulty of this game is a bit weird- several semipassive systems buff the player's HP and XP with continued play and minor exploration. This combined with overtuning of enemy health and limited ammo means that the game feels fairly unresponsive and bone-crunching when you start (at least on Hard), and once you hit some basic upgrades around the middle (especially equippables that boost damage or double currency income), the game suddenly flips to pretty trivial. So, basically, play on Normal. I loved just walking around Shibuya and taking it in - it's meticulously decorated and full of details, especially when you go into a building and see every single bespoke item placed there. Game's flaws aside, it's a great representation of the place.
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Jan 9, 2024 03:03
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SirSamVimes posted:I did indeed mean Golden Idol. The names keep getting mixed up in my brain. What's real funny is how many people call it The Curse of the Golden Idol.
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Jan 17, 2024 04:27
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Finished Chained Echoes a few days ago, currently working on the plat. It was pretty good. I didn't find it as great as lots of others did, but I enjoyed a lot of the mechanics and the quick-paced battles. Biggest issue I had was the number of characters you got. By the time I had a roster large enough to fill out my party (eight people), I was feeling like it was a lot to manage, but then it kept adding more, to the point where when the last two people joined I just didn't care about them in the slightest, and have yet to use them even once. When you start, every party member feels like they have a role to play - debuffing, buffing, elemental damage, different elemental damage, healing, etc. Then you start getting more people that are just, like, the same, but usually worse, or they have multiple roles, or the one that's basically just random damage and effects almost all the time, which is really useless. A very interesting story, moreso because of its limited scope - it's a rare thing when a jrpg introduces a world but only takes place on a single part of it, even after gaining an airship. Likewise, the story involves a world-ending foe called the Harbinger and the fact that it's starting to wake up, but the plot you play just involves confronting other beings that would destroy life to keep that foe contained. You never encounter the Harbinger at all. It makes the world feel huge, both literally and figuratively, and really sets up a lot of sequel possibility, something that games like Final Fantasy, which tend to take up the entire world and face off against enormous legendary foes, can't really do.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:07
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Just beat Remnant 2 with a couple friends tonight. The ending was certainly not what I was expecting, though I am curious where the DLC will go. Really good game, though I wish it was a little longer.
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Jan 21, 2024 08:05
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Just beat Chants of Sennar and Dead Space today. Both great games, could not be more different from one another. Chants was really cool, learning these languages and the respective grammars made me feel pretty good, as well as the story of the tower you're ascending and its people. Neat ending sequence. Wish the languages were more complex though, for the most part it was just replacing words with other words. It makes me want to play Heaven's Vault more, though, since in that game you had to figure out intricacies of symbols and how, when certain symbols were on top of other symbols, it'd change meaning of words in a way that was crucial to understanding. Chants had a smidgen of that, or aspects of languages that, like, would identify differences between verbs, nouns, people etc, but nothing much more than that. Got the plat too, pretty easy to do. I certainly was hoping to get more interrogative indicators. Dead Space is Dead Space. One of the best survival horror games, made better. Still prefer silent, never-takes-off-helmet Isaac, but this one's not bad. Planning on doing NG+.
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Jan 22, 2024 02:28
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Just finished playing Swordcraft Story II, an old GBA game. Wasn't too bad, fairly repetitive in its mechanics but with a bit more nuance to them than the first Swordcraft Story. The story was pretty goofy, coming off more at times like children fighting than anything of world-ending significance, at multiple points the villain shows up all smug while you're doing stuff and the protag will just be like "Hey go away!" and he'll just leave in a huff. The end of the game picks up a bit more in that regard, but for the most part you're just sort of wandering around getting the game's sword mcguffins, same as the first game more or less (but with way more focus). Quite liked the art of this game, very vibrant and details (except for character portraits), and so far is the only game I've seen that allow you to adjust the tint/brightness based on if you're playing it on a GBA or GBA SP. Just found out there's a Swordcraft Story III, but alas it is stuck in translation limbo.
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Jan 29, 2024 18:30
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Trucker Hat posted:I just beat Final Fantasy 12 Zodiac Age last night. I have tried most FF games, but this is the first one I ever beat. I have played FF12 twice, and I still could not tell you what the game's plot is. Something about ghosts? And I remember a tower. I love its gambit mechanics, but it feel real dull in other departments.
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Feb 7, 2024 14:54
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I preferred Earthbound over Mother 3. There's just something about how down-to-earth it is (well, relatively speaking), I really like the journey through a small town Americana, rather than the setting of Mother 3. I will never forget how when I first got the game I was under the impression that the first weapon you get, a Cracked Bat, was a flying marsupial that...had a crack in it or something? Zero idea how I ever came to that conclusion.
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Feb 8, 2024 01:07
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Yakuza 8 sort of has that same extremely slow beginning, but I had the benefit of being kinda brain-fogged when I played it, so I just treated it as an interactive movie that I didn't have to think very much about, which I actually really liked. Just chilling on the couch while my man Ichiban's life just falls apart around him.
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Feb 8, 2024 17:54
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credburn posted:13 Sentinels is the one that has those "kids gotta be naked to use the machines, no other way to do it" situations, right? To be fair, it is because (huge spoilers, do not read this if you haven't beaten the game but plan to) typically when you grow a clone in a vat they don't come with clothes
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Feb 15, 2024 03:16
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Finished Granblue Relink. Or, at least, the story, which arguably is like a third of the game's content. Liked it, but the final chapters were a little exhausting. Really had that problem of "time for the final fight!"....."okay actually THIS is the final fight!"...."Okay in fact now THIS-" and I was just happy for it to end. I wouldn't have minded it going that long, but being constantly told you're in for the final battle, have a huge climactic fight and big finale, only to have it pulled out from under you can be really annoying. Looking forward to getting into the rest of the game though.
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Feb 19, 2024 04:38
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Oh I remember playing Severance in...2002 or something, after buying a pirated copy from a shady back-alley store in south asia. Man, I had no idea what the game was or what I was getting into and did not get further than the first area. Really kicked my rear end, that one.
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Feb 23, 2024 19:55
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Also I just finished Metroid: Fusion for the first time since...eh, whenever it came out. Some aspects I quite liked about the game, like bosses being tougher, enemies hitting harder, and hunting for items being a little more...involved? Dunno how to put it, but it felt like I had to hunt some stuff down rather than it being easy to get. Plus the ability to grab ledges/ladders seems like such a little thing but it really helps Samus feel more flexible in her movement. I forgot how much it sucked having a mission guy who directed you where to go and how you couldn't go places until they let you. And the whole "Adam, oh he called me Lady because he respected me" was so gross, I am so glad that Dread dropped all that like a rock. What I found really bad, however, is the last stretch of the game, where after you get the screw attack, you go to the navigation point and are told to blow up the station. At this point, you are no longer allowed to explore, doors are locked around you, you're funneled into finishing the game, and there is no indication at all that this is going to happen. If you return to the save after beating it, you can explore further, but...I'd rather do that before beating the game. Anyway overall still a good package, but definitely one of the weaker Metroids given its structure.
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Feb 23, 2024 21:13
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Finally beat Song of Horror. It was...eh. I played it over the course of a bunch of Thursdays, a couple hours at a time, with friends. It's an episodic game, and I think we would've appreciated it more if we had played it as such, rather than just going through the whole game in one go, as it became a little tiresome by the end, especially with a bit of a disappointing ending. Also a lot of the puzzles were just bad, including one that involved listening to drips to estimate an amount of liquid (which took us ages to do), or one involving piecing together a grainy photograph to look for details on it. There was also an annoying number of instant-kill places in the game, where you'd just be given a yes/no prompt that looks like any other yes/no prompt to get an item, and if you selected yes you'd die. A bathtub that looks like it's plugged up, release the plug? Death. A window is open, want to go through it? Death (you need to go out the other window). It also has an issue where, like most survival horror games, you're running back and forth to find keys and puzzle hints and whatnot, but in this one, various threats that start minigames to survive will pop up the more you're running around, so if you miss a piece of paper with a clue, or a key in another room, that's a greater chance you're going to run into something that will kill you if you don't pass the minigame. Anyway, it's a neat sort of idea for survival horror where you don't just rely on shooting things or using consumables to survive, but it could've used another pass of polish.
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Mar 1, 2024 15:45
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Discendo Vox posted:There's regrettably nothing else quite like Obra Dinn Look up The Roottrees Are Dead if you haven't already
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Mar 10, 2024 15:36
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I beat Pacific Drive the other day. Really loved the game. The sort of attention paid to protecting, maintaining, and upgrading your car, the journeys out into the zone, the characters, log entries, I enjoyed all of it (except for the mid zone, which had some of the most annoying poo poo and I tried to avoid as much as possible). Would love to play any DLC that comes out, just to spend more time in the world. That said, the ending kind of disappointed me. I know that they set up what the goal of the whole endeavour is going to be at the outset (freeing you from the grip of the remnant), but since you never really feel the effects of it while playing, it doesn't really feel like you did anything. I was hoping for more to happen, or for a more...I dunno, something bigger to occur in the climax. Ah well.
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Mar 11, 2024 03:33
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I just want to know what it was like for the first person who ventured into an unplayed wad thinking "Oh, okay yeah recreation of a house, I'll do the guy a solid and play it to pay tribute to his friend, got half an hour to spare." and just fell down the rabbit hole, returning to the thread ragged and with a 5-o'clock shadow to post "Hey guys it's, uh"
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Mar 12, 2024 18:54
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Tortolia posted:Thanks to the Steam Deck being really good at this, I've continued my visual novel streak by starting over and completing Danganronpa 2 (had tapped out around chapter 4 during a previous attempt, got distracted I imagine) and then running through Danganronpa V3, the latter of which I completed last night. I know the series has a bit of a history here on the SA forums, and to some extent might be a bit played out, but both are excellent titles if you can get onboard with their particular mix of exaggerated anime character tropes and crazy murder setups. 2 has probably the best character in the trilogy, but V3 easily became my favorite due to several factors; a generally solid cast, some twists that lean on the fact that if you're playing the third game in a trilogy you almost assuredly have done the earlier games, and some excellent trial minigames that not only were fun to play and visually interesting, but solved a lot of the problems the earlier games tended to have with characters being weirdly passive in a life-or-death scenario. Great soundtrack too, particularly "Scrum Debate". Really liked V3 but was really annoyed by (end of first trial spoiler) the fact that you end up playing as the wimpy Shuichi rather than the far-more-interesting Kaede. The twist of the first trial being that you were the murderer was a cool one, for sure, but I would've rather you start out as the typical boring DR protag, some generic dude, before he's executed and you play as her instead
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Mar 25, 2024 13:59
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Dragon's Dogma really does a great job of representing those big brawls you get into in a tabletop game where people are leaping across the room, there's magic whizzing by, you turn to see your ally is on another enemy just hacking away at it so you jam your sword in before running off to take care of the foe that's approaching the wizard who's in the midst of another spell, etc.
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Mar 25, 2024 17:47
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apophenium posted:I really like puzzle games but I often get to a point where I have to look stuff up and then I feel like a dummy. I paid to have puzzles to solve and then I just watch someone else solve it and do what they do. Idk. I think it's probably more fun than opening the game up for an hour or so every night and staring dumbfounded at the same puzzle until eureka! Same. It's hard finding a puzzle game I like because I find that, if I look up the solution for one puzzle, then the seal is broken, so to speak, and now I'll likely just look up the solution for any puzzle I have even the slightest amount of trouble with. Stuff like The Witness was juuuust on the precipice of having me look stuff up, but thankfully I was able to make it through without. Because I knew that if I looked up a puzzle, then I'm going to lose the 'pull' of the game, I guess. But games like Golden Idol and Obra Dinn were that perfect level where things were tough, but not to the point of frustration. Games like, well, anything by Zachtronics are pretty much right out for that reason. Baba is You as well, even though I love the game, I feel like an absolute dummy real quick and just hit roadblocks I can't surpass.
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Mar 25, 2024 17:58
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SirSamVimes posted:I just beat West of Loathing and Shadows Over Loathing. Definitely some of the funniest games I've ever played and when the writing decides to take a turn for the serious it can actually be pretty compelling. Uh, spoiling this because I hate affecting someone's enjoyment of something, even post-hoc: The person who makes these is apparently an abuser, which sucks (I mean, for the obvious reasons) because before I knew about that, I loved these titles and their writing. I would've jumped at the opportunity to play Shadows, but now...eh.
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Mar 26, 2024 15:06
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I found the real draw of Gnosia was its narrative. Certain scenes will occur when particular conditions are met (for example, you're a particular special role and another character survives until the end), which trigger scenes and expand the story as a whole, making for some very exciting twists and turns. Kept me glued to it even when the werewolf gameplay was getting a little stale.
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Apr 2, 2024 16:48
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I beat Tears of the Kingdom the other day. Such a great lead up to a series of great fights, esp the final one where you're just miles above Hyrule, leaping onto a demon dragon's back, landing on the front of the light dragon to take you up higher , it was such a blast. Plus the music was awesome. But my favourite part, I think, is the approach to the fight, where you descend deeper and deeper and deeper, as you feel like you're descending into depths you shouldn't, like Ganondorf is some sort of eldritch entity that's been sleeping for a millenia. Felt perfect with how I've felt in the Depths, only moreso.
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Apr 15, 2024 03:54
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I beat Dragons Dogma 2. Except not. Sort of. I saw the credits?
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Apr 17, 2024 03:40
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Beat Amnesia: The Bunker. Quite liked it, a survival horror that really does feel like survival against an unstoppable creature. Giving you actual weapons and ways to drive it off, but still being fragile and unable to truly stop it was a great idea and really ratchets up the tension when you need to think about if you really want to spend a bullet or not. Didn't get all the trophies/collectibles, but considering another run to do just that.
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Apr 19, 2024 15:38
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Ineffiable posted:Beat Remnant 2 Man, I platinumed Remnant solo and the bosses having just numerous spawns was the absolute worst thing dragging it down. Felt like every fight played out the same. Remnant 2's bosses are so much more interesting.
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Apr 19, 2024 18:53
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Just beat Forespoken, working my way through postgame stuff now. Honestly, I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. The pseudo post-apocalyptic world, the mobile combat system, the story of the game and what happens near the end, I liked a bunch of it. Some stuff wasn't fantastic, and I think there's just too much stuff to do in the open world, but I still enjoyed parkouring around the place. It's a shame that they are almost certainly never going to make a sequel, because they drop a sequel hook after the credits that I'd be interested in. I think the game got a whole lot of hate when it was announced due to some real bad dialogue that was showcased, which is unfortunate, cause it's mostly at the beginning of the game and gets, well, less bad after the first couple chapters. Honestly, my biggest complaint about the story comes after the end of the game: Frey should've gone back to New York to get Homer  . That honestly made me sad because you could tell the little kitty missed her  .
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May 2, 2024 00:22
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Mode 7 posted:I just beat Hades, I suppose? I played it back when it hit 1.0 and absolutely loved it, got successful runs a number of times but eventually moved on to other games. I knew how many successful runs triggered the credits, so I really prepped for my last run, got a great set of boons, was ready to kick rear end and then Hades is just like "gently caress it just go", and for the first time I was like "...really? No fight? But my boons "
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May 7, 2024 14:12
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