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Author Topic: roguelike games  (Read 272767 times)

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popsofctown

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1050 on: December 10, 2015, 01:51:42 am »
+4

Branded weapons of Chaos, Distortion, and elements you are currently weak against should probably get an alert in a different text color as soon as they go into your LOS.

Player Ghosts are just kinda unfun, I don't like them.

I think dying to random crap is supposed to be a part of crawl and a part of roguelikes, for sure, though.  You don't want to be able to maths out a way to never ever die.  If crawl has problems on that end, it's that the randomness isn't distributed out in the right way.  The difficulty curve is a little too shaky at times.  Dying to random crap on orc 3 wouldn't feel awful if your last two runs died to random crap on orc 2 and orc 1, i think it feels bad because it's like, die on d:2, die on d:5, die on 8th rune, die on orc 3, because the difficulty curve is so wonky.


I guess another problem that maybe you're touching on is how many "almost tabbable" situations there are in crawl which can make it feel really tedious.  You get into a lot of situations where there is like a 99.7% chance you'll be fine if you tab or take very simple incautious actions to get through it.  If you do the cautious stuff every time, it feels tedious and takes forever to get to the choices that are interesting, and it feels like you get asked 10 times "would you like to spend a tick of piety to switch this from .3% chance of death to 0% chance of death" before you get to an eleventh situation which is like, "burn your second to last scroll of blinking to go from 3% chance of death to 1% chance of death, or burn only a potion of heal wounds, but only reduce it to 1.3% chance of death" where it's like man that's interesting.  Eventually you just start tabbing through the 99.7's to get through the game quicker and get to the interesting parts and then all your deaths are the boring .3's: where you get turned into a bat and then paralyzed the next time unit.
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Elestan

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1051 on: December 10, 2015, 03:06:54 am »
+5

BTW, for anyone who hasn't yet heard, Nethack 3.6.0 was just released; it's the first new release of core Nethack in 12 years.
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Jorbles

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1052 on: December 10, 2015, 11:05:52 am »
+1

BTW, for anyone who hasn't yet heard, Nethack 3.6.0 was just released; it's the first new release of core Nethack in 12 years.

Have they changed any thing? I had thought that Nethack had stopped development entirely.

Hmm, looking at the website makes me think it's just an update to keep the game working on modern operating systems.

Branded weapons of Chaos, Distortion, and elements you are currently weak against should probably get an alert in a different text color as soon as they go into your LOS.

Player Ghosts are just kinda unfun, I don't like them.

I think dying to random crap is supposed to be a part of crawl and a part of roguelikes, for sure, though.  You don't want to be able to maths out a way to never ever die.  If crawl has problems on that end, it's that the randomness isn't distributed out in the right way.  The difficulty curve is a little too shaky at times.  Dying to random crap on orc 3 wouldn't feel awful if your last two runs died to random crap on orc 2 and orc 1, i think it feels bad because it's like, die on d:2, die on d:5, die on 8th rune, die on orc 3, because the difficulty curve is so wonky.


I guess another problem that maybe you're touching on is how many "almost tabbable" situations there are in crawl which can make it feel really tedious.  You get into a lot of situations where there is like a 99.7% chance you'll be fine if you tab or take very simple incautious actions to get through it.  If you do the cautious stuff every time, it feels tedious and takes forever to get to the choices that are interesting, and it feels like you get asked 10 times "would you like to spend a tick of piety to switch this from .3% chance of death to 0% chance of death" before you get to an eleventh situation which is like, "burn your second to last scroll of blinking to go from 3% chance of death to 1% chance of death, or burn only a potion of heal wounds, but only reduce it to 1.3% chance of death" where it's like man that's interesting.  Eventually you just start tabbing through the 99.7's to get through the game quicker and get to the interesting parts and then all your deaths are the boring .3's: where you get turned into a bat and then paralyzed the next time unit.

I guess I expect the game to be unfair sometimes and I expect to make mistakes and die because I took a risk. (Like entering Lair without Poison Resistance feels a little risky for instance) At no point did it feel like I was taking a risk that wasn't inherent to advancing the game in the most cautious way possible in the case where I died. I had even been given and was using the proper protections against what killed me (2 levels of magic resist mutation, 1 additional level from chain mail of magic resistance and 1 more from levels). Like I've heard that there's people who can beat this game consistently, sometimes doing it multiple times in a row, but I can't fathom how they do it if things like this can happen in the game. I dunno, maybe I just got extremely unlucky, but it's very frustrating, until that point this felt like one of the strongest characters I'd ever played and then I just died with no chance to react to anything.
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Grujah

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1053 on: December 10, 2015, 11:28:05 am »
+1

BTW, for anyone who hasn't yet heard, Nethack 3.6.0 was just released; it's the first new release of core Nethack in 12 years.

New Dwarf Fortress released recently too.
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Jorbles

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1054 on: December 10, 2015, 01:08:08 pm »
+2

BTW, for anyone who hasn't yet heard, Nethack 3.6.0 was just released; it's the first new release of core Nethack in 12 years.

New Dwarf Fortress released recently too.

This is super good. You can build Taverns/Inns, Temples and Libraries now. Dwarfs write books with descriptions like "It is a durian wood bound codex that consists of a 44 page essay entitled 'The Joys of Amethyst', authored by Urist McDwarfdwarf. It concerns the ascendancy of Urist McDwarfdwarf to mayor of Egg Stabbed in the summer of 127. Overall, the prose is not awful, but not very good either."

Mercenaries and travelling minstrels ask to join your fortress, you can build musical instruments, rent rooms, it's a pretty huge bundle of new features. Still buggy because it only came out a week ago, but it's being patched up pretty rapidly.
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sudgy

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1055 on: December 10, 2015, 05:53:07 pm »
+1

BTW, for anyone who hasn't yet heard, Nethack 3.6.0 was just released; it's the first new release of core Nethack in 12 years.

Have they changed any thing? I had thought that Nethack had stopped development entirely.

Hmm, looking at the website makes me think it's just an update to keep the game working on modern operating systems.

They hadn't stopped development, they just never developed.  They started again, and this is just their general fixup.  I think they're planning on doing more.

There's a few new features as well, like a lot of patches were incorporated.
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   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

pubby

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1056 on: December 12, 2015, 08:14:33 am »
+1

New Dwarf Fortress released recently too.
Apparently army pathing was fixed, which means ambushes and sieges will actually happen on a regular basis. It seems like DF's military system has gotten less and less playable each release, but maybe now it's fun again.
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A Drowned Kernel

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1057 on: December 12, 2015, 08:20:47 am »
+2

BTW, for anyone who hasn't yet heard, Nethack 3.6.0 was just released; it's the first new release of core Nethack in 12 years.

New Dwarf Fortress released recently too.

This is super good. You can build Taverns/Inns, Temples and Libraries now. Dwarfs write books with descriptions like "It is a durian wood bound codex that consists of a 44 page essay entitled 'The Joys of Amethyst', authored by Urist McDwarfdwarf. It concerns the ascendancy of Urist McDwarfdwarf to mayor of Egg Stabbed in the summer of 127. Overall, the prose is not awful, but not very good either."

Mercenaries and travelling minstrels ask to join your fortress, you can build musical instruments, rent rooms, it's a pretty huge bundle of new features. Still buggy because it only came out a week ago, but it's being patched up pretty rapidly.

Oh cool, I didn't want to have any free time anyway.
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Jorbles

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1058 on: December 17, 2015, 03:35:44 pm »
+2

Playing a MeGl of Yredelemnul. Enslaved the soul of Josephine. The only Unique in the game who casts Ghostly Fireball. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
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Jorbles

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1059 on: December 17, 2015, 04:36:13 pm »
+1

Playing a MeGl of Yredelemnul. Enslaved the soul of Josephine. The only Unique in the game who casts Ghostly Fireball. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

She died three floors later. It was good while it lasted. Picked up Louise later who is a lot more durable and has a dire flail of crushing.
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sudgy

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1060 on: December 20, 2015, 12:36:04 am »
+2

I've just got to say, programming these things can be one of the most rewarding things ever.  I just reworked the files in my program (split up some files, added new directories, etc.) and wanted to run it just to see if it worked.  I ran up to someone blindly and attacked him with no strategy and barely beat him (I think I lost an arm or something in the process).  I pick up the corpse and started eating it, but someone else came up to me and started attacking me.  As I keep on eating and picking up my body parts that are flying off of me, I die.

Totally not how you're supposed to play the game, but so rewarding to know that all of this works just as intended.
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   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

sitnaltax

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1061 on: December 21, 2015, 10:11:53 pm »
+2

Just finished up two DCSS games in the last week or so: a HESk^Dith and a GhWr^Qaz.

Dith is pretty amazing. You get a huge offense boost to both melee and magic, accuracy penalty to enemies, and a big stealth bonus. The active abilities are lackluster (especially for a non-stabber) but who cares? The Skald book is awful except for Spectral Weapon, which is very strong. Unfortunately, that means you have to take the fragile High Elf into melee to make it work. I splatted a dismaying number of promising HESk's before I got wise and started playing them more like AEs. I cast Airstrike almost 1200 times in my final winning game.

The GhWr of Qaz just felt invincible the whole way. It's a blast to play (pun intended) and I'd recommend it highly. I can't find much to like about the Warper book, but starting with a scroll of blinking is like having two bonus scrolls (since you don't blow the first one you find read-IDing it). I boosted Strength and took plate armor, and Qazlal took care of every monster I couldn't shred with claws.

If anyone has a suggestion for my next game, I'm looking for an interesting new playstyle. Here's what I haven't won yet. I don't need to tick off a new one of each.

Unwon species: Fe, Fo, Dg, Mu, Op
Unwon backgrounds: Ne, Su, Ar, Wn
Unwon gods: Beough, Ely, Jiyva, Nemelex, Zin

The obvious choice is some kind of Su or Ar of Nemelex, but my adventures with Nemelex so far haven't gone well.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2015, 12:40:35 am by sitnaltax »
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Titandrake

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1062 on: December 25, 2015, 12:57:36 am »
+4

I've been playing Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth obsessively the past few days, and I just beat Mega Satan as the Lost. Had Ipecac + Mom's Knife + Infestation 2 + 9 Lives with Holy Mantle unlocked. Almost used up all my lives but I got there in the end.

Edit: Just got The Hush too. Tech X + Quad Shot + Poly + 3 orbitals. Completely insane, I didn't even need the Holy Mantle proc to win.
« Last Edit: December 25, 2015, 04:16:57 pm by Titandrake »
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heron

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1063 on: December 31, 2015, 01:17:54 pm »
+3

Here's a necrodancer puzzle: I got 527 gold in the bomb lore codex challenge. How did I do that? Can you do better?
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popsofctown

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1064 on: January 10, 2016, 10:45:24 pm »
+3

i finally got binding of isaac.  I don't think it's really a roguelike tbh.  Like the fact that you could just be so damn good at bullet hell that your stats don't matter disqualifies it from being rogeulike to me.  It's pretty good game though.  I really hate that i have to look up what the items do when I get them though.
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Titandrake

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1065 on: January 11, 2016, 01:44:25 am »
+1

I call Binding of Isaac a roguelike because eventually the bullet hell becomes too hard for almost anybody to get through. I don't know of any real time roguelikes where a theoretically perfect player cannot beat the game from base stats, but I've played very few of them, so perhaps they exist.

If you're okay with spoilers, http://platinumgod.co.uk/ will be your best friend. I still have to go there for some of the trinkets, there's just so many.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2016, 05:50:39 am by Titandrake »
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Hyphen-ated

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1066 on: January 11, 2016, 12:45:43 pm »
+2

I call Binding of Isaac a roguelike because eventually the bullet hell becomes too hard for almost anybody to get through.
not really. it's actually very easy compared to true bullet hell games in the "shmup" genre. but maybe my perspective is distorted because I hang around in the isaac speedrunning crowd.

I like to call these kinds of games roguelikelikes but that's a little bit of a mouthful. "action roguelike" is an okay name as well.

Quote
I really hate that i have to look up what the items do when I get them though.
Here let me pimp to you my tool that helps with this problem:
https://github.com/Hyphen-ated/RebirthItemTracker
it shows the items you pick up along with a little blurb about what they do, and you can click on them to go to platinumgod and see the full description
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Titandrake

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1067 on: January 11, 2016, 03:43:56 pm »
+1

I'm pretty bad at shmups (my personal records are no-continue clears of Touhou 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 on Normal, and Extra clear on Touhou 8 ), but I would say Isaac's dodging is a bit different. A lot of bullet hell games can be beaten by brute force memorization - the pattern will always be the same. In Isaac, individual enemy patterns might be the same, but different room layouts and upgrades makes each room play a bit differently than the other one. The actual dodging precision you need isn't as demanding, but you need more improvisation and latent dodging ability to do well in Binding of Isaac. (That or you need to play long enough to see most rooms in the game. I suspect that's the only reason I've had any success in Binding of Isaac.) I was surprised at how quickly I learned The Hush's patterns, FWIW, and that's the most shmup-like boss in the game.

The Touhou games at least have a lot more get-out-of-jail free cards thanks to bombs giving invincibility + free damage. In Isaac, if you know you've made a mistake and have no time to fix it, you're taking that hit, and possibly losing out on a devil deal for it.
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sudgy

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1068 on: January 11, 2016, 04:04:19 pm »
+3

I like to call these kinds of games roguelikelikes but that's a little bit of a mouthful. "action roguelike" is an okay name as well.

I like calling them "roguelites"
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   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

popsofctown

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1069 on: January 12, 2016, 05:57:43 pm »
+1

You could beat Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup with base stats by being infinitely LUCKY: you could win the stealth roll on every single enemy on every single step, even with base stats, and just grab the orb and win without ever engaging in combat.

But you couldn't beat DCSS with base stats by being infinitely GOOD:  if you were super skilled at the game and made the perfect choices on your path to the orb, your skill would only bring your chance of winning using only base stats up to like .000005%.

Meanwhile in BoI, if you suck at bullet hell games really bad, you'd actually lose even with perfect luck (whereas in DCSS with perfect luck it would be almost impossible to lose as long as someone explained that the walls in the slime pits hurt you if you touch them.)  But if you are awesome at bullet hell games, you can get the worst possible rolls for drops and never get offered an item that gives actual character growth after every boss and still beat the game just fine.




I've played at least 1 action roguelike where both being skillful can avoid damage and help you win, but reaching 100% mastery of the core mechanic won't get you a free win with base stats, that's elona shooter. (A supercomputer could beat the game with base stats, but there's no way a human could).  It doesn't have a couple other hallmarks, like you're not exploring a dungeon, and most of your growth is choices instead of mostly randomized.  But it is much more of a roguelike to me in that improving your character's innate strengths is more important to keeping you from dying and deleting your file than your ability to play the action mechanic.  So I don't want to cop out and say "Oh this is an action roguelike, action roguelike's can't be real roguelikes, you can obviate the rogueish aspects by playing the action mechanic".  Because i've played at least one counterexample.  And it's not inherently different when a tohou master beats Greed with base stats and I die against Greed with max stats vs. Walrus beats Sigmund with lv1 stats by using the poison blowgun and i lose against Sigmund with lv2 stats by using my bow.  Those are both situations where you can get a better outcome using the same stats by being skillful.  The difference is that if I'm level 15 I just won't die against Sigmund even if I suck, because character stats are a much bigger factor in that game and it's more of a true roguelike.  Or if Walrus is fighting Mennas using a level 1 character he's not gonna win, because his character has not grown enough.  It's a matter of degree.
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blueblimp

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1070 on: January 12, 2016, 11:06:55 pm »
+1

I like to call these kinds of games roguelikelikes but that's a little bit of a mouthful. "action roguelike" is an okay name as well.

I like calling them "roguelites"
The problem with the term "roguelite" is that it's vague about what about the game is different from a traditional roguelike. For example, "roguelite" can also describe a game that doesn't have true permadeath. "Action roguelike" is a more precise way to refer to games that replace the turn-based combat with real-time combat but retain other aspects.
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Hyphen-ated

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1071 on: January 13, 2016, 04:38:40 am »
+1

"Oh this is an action roguelike, action roguelike's can't be real roguelikes, you can obviate the rogueish aspects by playing the action mechanic".
. . .
The difference is that if I'm level 15 I just won't die against Sigmund even if I suck, because character stats are a much bigger factor in that game and it's more of a true roguelike.
I feel like you're placing too much emphasis on level progression as the essence of what it means to be a roguelike. imagine a game like DCSS or nethack but with no exp, skills, or equipment. early monsters remain threatening through the entire game. you find increasingly powerful consumables as you progress, but you have to save them for when you're facing more powerful monsters. perhaps you could beat the game with no consumables at all but it would be ridiculously difficult and require some (realistic) amount of good luck.

to me, that game would absolutely be a roguelike, no question. but it sounds like you wouldn't think so; is that right?

this is actually a dumb semantic thing to argue about but whatever
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1072 on: January 13, 2016, 07:07:07 pm »
+1

I feel like you're placing too much emphasis on level progression as the essence of what it means to be a roguelike.
To support this, the Berlin Interpretation actually doesn't mention character progression at all.
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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1073 on: January 14, 2016, 05:19:41 pm »
+1

I think you agree with me, Hyphen-ated, since you wouldn't exclude consumables from your hypothetical roguelike and still call it a roguelike.  I focused on character progression a little bit when i posted but that's interchangeable with building a collection of consumables to be a roguelike.  In Binding of Isaac your collection of consumables is also totally unnecessary if you are good at bullet hells.


In your hypothetical game, being very very good at the game and not randomly finding consumables puts your chances of winning at somewhere less than 100%.  Binding of Isaac is not a roguelike because being very very good at the game and not finding consumables (and or permagrowth, either one) puts your chances of winning at 100% or virtually 100%.



If you think permadeath is the only thing that makes a roguelike a roguelike and I can make a donkey kong machine an action roguelike if I jack the max lives down to 1 I don't think I'll find any common ground.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2016, 05:23:16 pm by popsofctown »
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Hyphen-ated

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Re: roguelike games
« Reply #1074 on: January 14, 2016, 06:04:01 pm »
+1

Quote
I think you agree with me, Hyphen-ated, since you wouldn't exclude consumables from your hypothetical roguelike and still call it a roguelike.
I would still call it a roguelike, but maybe only like 90% clear-cut instead of 100%

[in the Binding of Isaac] being very very good at the game and not finding consumables (and or permagrowth, either one) puts your chances of winning at 100% or virtually 100%.
I don't think this is actually correct. There are a substantial number of unavoidable sources of damage in the game, most notably stomps from daddy longlegs and phase 2 isaac beams. If you have base dps and base health, you're non-negligibly likely to die to these bosses from random unavoidable damage before you can kill them.

Quote
If you think permadeath is the only thing that makes a roguelike a roguelike and I can make a donkey kong machine an action roguelike if I jack the max lives down to 1 I don't think I'll find any common ground.
permadeath and random generation are the two biggest factors. I would consider donkey kong with random levels and permadeath to be an action roguelike. that's pretty close to spelunky, which is the game that basically kicked off this whole modern trend of bringing roguelike elements into action games.
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