time steals away like a stream and we glide hence away

I don't know how, but I survived this wondrous, wicked, wild world

Consider leaving a Thumbs Up on my Steam Review - I really appreciate it!

This is the first game, but bigger and better in every way. The ball game is mostly the same, but now you have a health bar (weird at first, indispensable once you get used to it) and a few more tricks like picking the ball and parrying. There's also a randomizer effect that appears sometimes when volleys become too long, and can really end the volley in a pinch.

More characters, more and better backgrounds and levels, a Story Mode besides the old Arcade Mode, more tracks, it's overall a fantastic upgrade to the formula. If you liked the first game you'll love this one, and if you haven't played the first one, playing this one instead is the way to go.

Well, this was bound to happen eventually. I'm officially writing here about a game I've abandoned. Damn :(

Consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!

Picklock is a game …. is almost good. The vibe, the music, the setting, the graphics - they are all charming and quite honestly, good. I enjoyed all these aspects of the game for all the time I spent with it. But then …

First, the story. This game would have been much better had it been an arcade collection of levels for you to pilfer and loot. Trying to weave in a story here is a distraction that takes away from the charm of the game, mostly because you're forced to read very poor dialogue. The writing is so shallow that it brings the game down.

Something else that really brings the game down is the camera. Half of your playtime will be rotating, angling, and switching your camera perspective to allow you to open that one door or to step on that specific spot on the floor. Had the game committed to an isometric perspective, or a top-down perspective, or any other perspective, it would have benefitted immensely, but giving you the freedom to change the perspective not only is terrible from a gameplay perspective, but also from a controls perspective - it forces the game to be playable only on mouse and keyboard, and requires precision inputs. I'm not fighting the cops here - I'm fighting the controls, and that's just poor design,

The worst part rides on top of the bad camera - and that's the poor gameplay. The game is little more than watching guards, and timing your button presses. It's hard to feel that you have any skill or intelligence when you play this game. Guard left the door locked and came back to see it unlocked? No problem, he won't notice it. Guard leaves a door closed and comes back to it being open? He won't suspect anything. It's so dull. I get the need to script the AI to some extent, but without some reactivity to the player's actions, this goes from a stealth game to a rhythm game with poor camera and point-and-click skills are the only thing you need to succeed. Later in the game, when the level starts giving you fail states near the end of levels that can take up to 5 minutes to beat, and you start wasting these 5 minutes because of a single mistake in the last seconds of a level, is when it goes from jolly fun to rage quit.

I really tried to give it a fair shot, but the problems very quickly overwhelmed the nice setting and music that the game opened with. Just don't bother with this.

sequel to milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk. Same tone and vibe, but bigger and better in almost every way, except for the emotional punch that is as strong as in the first game. extremely poignant and can easily be a triggering game for many people

It seems that, coincidentally, I decided to play a game about mental illness literally just after beating a game about mental illness.

What this game and Hellblade have in common is that both are supposed to be quite good reflections of different mental conditions - psychosis for Hellblade, dissociative depression here. The way they present it, tho, are super different. Where Hellblade maintains high fidelity in sound and visuals throughout its narrative, milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk goes for low fidelity visuals and sounds. But if you think that makes the experience more comfortable and less eerie, think again - this is short, but is no walk in the park. It stops short of jumpscares, but it will have some sudden tense imagery and sounds that left me extremely uncomfortable.

I don't know how I think about this game. It was a short and intense experience, and while it probably won't last as long as Hellblade on my mind, it's definitely something special. I'll try to play the sequel tomorrow because, seriously, it's a bit too much for me to take both games on the same evening.

My Steam Review - Consider leaving a thumbs up, it means a lot to me :)

Hellblade was … physical. It was brutal. It was truly a horror experience, done beautifully in a captivating way that I can't recall experiencing before.

As a videogame, I can see the flaws that other people have pointed before. The combat can be repetitive, although it never ceases to be graceful and tense, as it should be. I thought the game had 3 or 4 combos, and was shocked to learn later at a Youtube video that there are almost 30 combos that can be performed in fight. The puzzles are usually slow, requiring a lot of walking around and observation. I wouldn't say that on average they are pretty straightforward, but combined with the unsettling setting, they work wonders to create the atmosphere the game is going for.

And if we step away a little bit from the videogame-y parts and lean more into the atmosphere and the intentions of the game, that's where it truly shines. Voice acting is superb, visual and sound effects combine (with the absence of a HUD) to create a truly immersive experience. Art direction is unparalled, and benefits immensely from the high fidelity of the game's models, textures and environments. The devs have a knack for scripting powerful scenes, and it got me every time.

I hardly play horror games, much less psychological games, so going through Hellblade was difficult. I was frequently out of breath and physically uncomfortable as I played, and I could hardly sustain a play session longer than one or two hours. But by the time you beat it and connect with the trials and tribulations Senua has encountered throughout her life, it's simply cathartic.

All in all, this is more than a game. It's the closest to what the Germans call a gesamtkunstwerk - a total work of art. Every discipline works to amplify and enhance the others, and the experience is so unique that you're left speechless, simply feeling the reverberation of the work on your body, long after you've finished it. Play it, play it now in a dark place with headphones on, and be prepared.