fernandopa’s profile
Consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!
Slain would be a very decent and average game had it been released in the mid-90s, but for something released in the mid-2010s, it`s just not good. It adds nothing to the hack-and-slash genre that you haven't already seen hundreds of times over the years. The music is decent but movement and combat are not that good, enemy and level design is pretty subpar, and the lore/world is forgettable. Skip it
Such a good palate cleanser after Picklock
Consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!
Monaco is a sweet game with an incredible sense of style and aesthetics. The graphics, while not impressive, are very easy to read and delivers enough information for you to enjoy the game without ruining the challenge. The sound design fits the overall vibe of the game perfectly, it's not perfect but it also isn't bad and I never got tired of it. Bonus points for the soundtrack that fits the game like a glove.
The plot keeps you hooked, at least on the first Act. I felt it started to drag a bit on the other Acts, but you can pretty much ignore the plot since it's a very arcade-y game, which is a plus. The writing is generally fun as well, really good and it surprised me in a positive way.
The gameplay is where it shines. This is a game where planning and execution are very independent of each other. Sometimes you sometimes will plan a perfect route and execute on it flawlessly and feel like a master thief, sometimes you don't have a chance to plan but will still pull a perfect heist by the slimmest margin, sometimes you'll plan a grand robbery and have it foiled by a cat on the very beginning, having to improvise a plan B on the spot, and sometimes you won't be able to plan and will simply be killed by the first guard you see. When you die, you can pick up the game on the same level with another character, so failing isn't too punitive. And each character brings a very unique gameplay style to the heists, which is super cool and adds a lot of variety and replayability.
I was probably a bit too tired of it by the time I beat Act 4, since it gets very repetitive (especially on single player), but I have no doubt that Monaco is one of the greatest stealth co-op games I've every played and I very much recommend it.
April 2025
Aaand April is over. Won’t lie, it was a tough month gaming-wise. While I was able to put a lot of hours into Elden Ring (35+) and I’m happy I did, I ended up slacking a bit on SG Wins. Beat one of the two PAGYWOSG games I had set for myself, cleared one from the backlog, and played a lot of Abyss Chaser’s demo for the SG Magazine. At least the SG Win I didn’t beat this month, Monaco, won’t take long to beat in May, and I’m trying to set myself back on track with two additional wins. If I manage that, I’m happy.
I also abandoned two games. One if FTL, which I had been meaning to play for a while, but I just couldn’t get a good handle on the mechanics and the complexity curve, it just felt overwhelming and not fun at all. The other one was Picklock, curiously similar to Monaco but it’s crazy how a few gameplay changes turn the former so much worse than the latter.
SG Wins
Deep Dungeons of Doom
3.0 hours, 0 of 46 achievements
A Tale of Paper
0 hours, 0 of 27 achievements
Children of Silentown
1.9 hours, 0 of 26 achievements
Journey of a Roach
3.0 hours, 0 of 18 achievements
Keys received as a gift
Windowkill
3.0 hours, 0 of 37 achievements
Fashion Police Squad
0 hours, 0 of 25 achievements
Prodeus
0 hours, 0 of 30 achievements
Purchases
None!Freebies
AtmaSphere
0 hours, 0 of 107 achievements
Shipwreck
0 hours, 0 of 14 achievements
Dreams of Aether
0 hours, 0 of 15 achievements
Three Sisters
0 hours, no achievements
Apr 2025
Mar 2025
Feb 2025
Jan 2025
Dec 2024
Nov 2024
Oct 2024
Sep 2024
April Assassination #3
time steals away like a stream and we glide hence away
I don't know how, but I survived this wondrous, wicked, wild world
April Assassination #2
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.
April Abandonment #1
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.
April Assassination #1
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
March 2025
I had a lot of fun in March, although I spent a decent chunk of time to simply beat a game I would have dropped otherwise (Borderlands). I think it’s good for my gaming fluency to have finally played it, but the gameplay got a bit stale towards the mid-game and I don’t think it ever recovered. It wasn’t a bad deal either way. Hellblade on the other hand, was such a thrilling ride, and I finally got my hands on Elden Ring (thank you Vash and Arrmeya) and I finally understand what the hype is all about. I think I sank close to 15 hours in my first two weeks and I’m still so, so early in the game hahaha it’s awesome.
Two SG wins beaten, four new wins (so total is -2), and two games beaten from my personal backlog. I’ll be kind to myself and try to limit my PAGYWOSG games to two at most, because I know most of my time will be consumed with Elden Ring. But that’s by no means an issue hehe
SG Wins
RESTLESS SOUL
3.5 hours, 22 of 30 achievements
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
14.2 hours, 13 of 14 achievements
Backlog
Borderlands GOTY Enhanced
24.1 hours, 35 of 80 achievements
SG Wins
Keys received as a gift
Purchases
Freebies
Mar 2025
Feb 2025
Jan 2025
Dec 2024
Nov 2024
Oct 2024
Sep 2024
March Assassination #4
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.
March Assassination #3
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.
2141 | games |
92% | never played |
0% | unfinished |
4% | beaten |
1% | completed |
3% | won't play |
- Won on SteamGifts 236
- Short (0-5h) 569
- Medium (5-20h) 599
- Long (20-50h) 149
- Very Long (50h+) 26