Issue #5
May Report
__________________________________A Tale of Madness, Donuts, and Real Life.
This month represents the first steps towards normal life. After the quarantine. That means: back to work! That means: less time to play.
But still, I found some time to try to tweak a little my report style, and now I have donut charts for my progress, what an incredible success! XD
Anyway, I was able to perform a huge and successful attack on my SteamGifts backlog, that now is getting very short. PAGYWOSG helped a lot, with 4 games fitting the theme. Yay!
In particular I played Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and that was quite an experience. One of the best games I’ve played so far, dealing with mental issues, but in an epic context. Just amazing, and very immersive.
Unluckily, compared to that, most of the other games I played this month didn’t feel so great, even if they were at least acceptable. As an example, I played Oxenfree, and it didn’t give me anything, I couldn’t feel it - so I want to replay it, in some time, because I feel like I simply wasn’t in the right mood to get caught by it.
For the monthly theme, I tried to play The Town of Light, developed and set in Italy, but I had major technical issues with the sound, so I abandoned it for the moment, and played Dishonored instead, developed in the near France. A really enjoyable, dark game. Particularly fit for someone who played most of Skyrim in stealth mode!
On the reading side, instead, Sandokan adventures are still going on, also because I have less time to read, due to real life, and a 2k pages volume is not that easy to carry around…
But in addition to this, I was happy about my readings on the comics side.
I finally concluded the epic saga written by Neil Gaiman, focused on the Lord of the Dreams, Sandman. It was a really long read, started several months ago, and this month I reached the end. It was a really nice character, and the adventures created by Neil Gaiman usually go from good to amazing, involving so many different mythologies and folklore. Sometimes a little harder to understand everything, with so many characters, and madness flying around - but totally satisfying, in the end.
Also, this month I read something totally different, a shorter comic - that I consider a real hidden gem. Its title is Daytripper, written by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, and it’s set in contemporary Brazil. In the end it’s a reflection on Life and Death, performed in 10 chapters, that tell 10 key moments of the life of the main character, a writer. The style, the colours, the art, the setting, the main themes - this all gave me some Macondo vibes, reminding me the great work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I really enjoyed it.
* as shown by GOG Galaxy 2.0
Aporia: Beyond The Valley
This is mainly a walking simulator. Set in an ancient world, long abandoned: you explore the remains of a once great civilization, in order to try to find out what happened. The story is explained mainly through egyptian-style murals, that you find during your explorations. There is also a number of puzzles to solve, in order to progress with the story: they're usually quite nice, pretty balanced in number and difficulty. The graphics is nice, but the game is really heavy on resources for what it offers - probably it's badly optimized - so I wasn't able to appreciate it completely.
Played on Steam.
Think locally
An interesting game. Set in a steampunk world afflicted by a terrible plague, you are an assassin with great weapons and supernatural powers, and you have to reach your final target, and restore your honor, successfully completing various consequent missions - missions that typically involve the elimination of a key character. In this game you can chooose different approaches to each mission: you could kill everyone in your path, or be a stealth ghost and reach the target without being seen. And typically there are different ways also to eliminate your final targets, creative ones, which encourages you to explore the environment every time. Also because your choices matter, in the end. In addition, a couple of DLCs add some depth to the story of one important character in the story.
Played on Steam.
May The 4th Be With You
Stikbold! A Dodgeball Adventure
A funny game, to spare some time, especially with friends. The basic mechanics is: dodgeball! Hit your enemies with the ball, and avoid being hit! Add to this a stupid story (involving hippies, bikers, and the devil itself), various fields with funny harasses peculiar to each of them... And it can become a dodgeball adventure. On the negative side, the AI is not really good, and sometimes you really feel it.
Played on Steam.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
This was an amazing experience. Following Senua in her double journey into darkness: on one side, exploring the most brutal aspect of the Norse mythology, trying to reach Hela in her kingdom; on the other, exploring the darkness inside Senua's mind. The world you see, you see through Senua's eyes, and everything is magnified: so the beautiful moments are really beautiful, but the dark ones are really dark, and the scary moments are truly terrifying. The immersion in this game is total, so you are totally involved in Senua's feelings, you can really empathise with her. Thanks to the story, also. And to the amazing voices and music. And of course the great graphics and landscapes designed. It took a huge work, with a lot of effort, to create this game; and a lot of courage to base it on a theme like mental issues. On the gameplay side, it is mainly walking around, sometimes solving simple puzzles, collecting lorestones to discover Norse myths, and some battles - pretty well balanced, hard (but not too much) and satisfying.
Played on Steam.
A nice visual novel, whose gameplay is mainly based on the choices you have in the various dialogues. Even if there are not many different paths to choose, in the end. It tells a classic story, set in a medieval China, where kung fu and magic mix up: there is the powerful enemy, the hero that runs away to master his power, and in the end defeat the enemy. The story is pleasant and keeps a good pace, and the art is pretty nice. On the other hand, the combat system is not great, sometimes not perfectly responsive, and the dynamics of the fights becomes pretty boring quite fast.
Played on Steam.
A funny point and click adventure, pretty classic, with all the pros and cons of it. In particular, some puzzles can be hard because you may not get how the dev thought the puzzle should be solved. But overall, it's a relaxing short game, with funny robotic characters and locations, and very nice art.
Played on Steam.
June is coming.
Glad to see you enjoyed Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. I absolutely loved it as well, definitely my all time favourite game.
Out of curiosity, what issues did you have with Town of Light? I have it as well and was hoping to play it at some point in the near future.
At the first startup, the audio worked fine; at the second one (and all the following attempts), I could get no sound at all. I couldn’t solve this in any way, and since I wasn’t in the mood to work seriously on it - I just wanted to play a game - I decided to simply uninstall it.