Video Games

Jan

2023

Review: Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk and Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk

Got Milk?

Go on. Judge it by its title. Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk and Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk. It’s a beast.

However ludicrous it may seem, the title encapsulates what you should expect from the duology. The repetition is disarming, but the words are mundane. Our protagonist’s goals are similarly simple—a trip to the store and a bedtime routine—but her perception distorts these events into nightmarish scenarios. The recursive title also mirrors the protagonist’s attempts to cope with the world through wordplay and obfuscation. Even the distinction between “inside” and “outside” represents the shift in perspective between the two entries. What seems random at first glance is exactingly intentional.

You can also look at the title and think it’s beyond stupid, rendering my commentary irrelevant. “Milk 1 & 2” delight in their own inaccessibility and eschew a clear narrative for surreal commentary. Being visual novels, they traded gameplay for text boxes. Your enjoyment also hinges on your ability to appreciate a slow burn which never builds to a bonfire. If you don’t buy into it, the whole affair reeks of highfalutin angst.

Considering both games clock in at under an hour total, I argue those interested should take the risk and play it without any other context. Recognizing they cost eight bucks, I acknowledge a review may be in order before you make a commitment.

What is it?

Milk 1 concerns a girl going to the store to buy milk. She cheekily frames her errand as a visual novel, casting you as a disembodied voice which either guides or criticizes her. Through her eyes, we discover an alien version of our world comprised of a sludge of two shades of red and black. This filter transforms her grocery run into a bad acid trip. Support her, and she will accomplish her task and invite you into her psyche. Upset her, and she will serve you a game over.

Milk 2 picks up immediately after the first’s conclusion, even beginning with an animated sequence summarizing Milk 1’s events. You need not worry about a game over here, and the visuals forgo the dizzying hallucinations for a more traditional anime style as we see her from the third-person perspective. The girl introduces this sequence as a point-and-click adventure, charging you with inspecting various objects in her room to help her collect her thoughts (represented by fireflies). Based on how you respond to her and if you collect the fireflies, you uncover one of five potential endings, each conveyed as a dream.

What’s good?

From the aesthetic to the soundtrack to her ramblings to our dialogue choices, Milk 1 and 2 craft an oppressive panorama of the girl’s mental illness. The first game illustrates her relationship with her psychosis and gives us a glimpse into her trauma, all the while disorienting us. The second game contributes further detail, tracking how a once semi-functional girl became caged in her own room. Gradually and almost insidiously, we discover we are not her path to relief but just another symptom of her illness. One of the most visceral realizations comes when we understand why she so meticulously cares for the order of her belongings—including her trash—in her room.
Nikita Kryukov, developer of the Milk games, has designed one of the most compelling video game protagonists in recent years. The girl’s mental illness has incapacitated and isolated her, but she is by no means a damsel in distress. She fully recognizes her likely prognosis but shows resilience by adapting to her myriad of symptoms. Many of her strategies take form as obsessive-compulsive habits, but they allow her to gain a semblance of normalcy and stability. We also see her personality outside of her illness, a witty child who takes joy in her imagination and delights in gaming, drawing, and 3D modeling. Her unrelenting determination and positive attitude add to her endearing character, a shining image which becomes all the more tragic once we understand it will be snuffed out.

What’s up to your preference?

Both games bear the label of psychological horror but don’t supply the scares associated with the genre. Certain images will invoke unease, but neither game is intended to strike fear in the player. We’re meant to empathize with the girl who exists in the chasm between sanity and insanity, a torturous limbo. This connection can stir up existential dread, which is praiseworthy of Milk 1 and 2 but is arguably not what most gamers want from a spooky game.
An hour’s worth of content may not satisfy some gamers. Unlocking all of the endings and trying out different responses will only take another half hour, if that. You have access to the soundtracks for both games, but the songs don’t exactly qualify as ear candy. With these limiting factors, your mileage depends on how much you relish ruminating on the games’ themes after you’ve reached the endings.

What’s bad?

Milk 2’s endings do their best impressions of arthouse film, translating what we already knew into esoteric musings. The Milk games succeed in their ability to depict one girl’s psychosis as a concrete reality. What she perceives is what exists, and we experience despair, confusion, and isolation as she does. The endings approach these emotions symbolically, tasking us with deciphering dreams which are as unrealistic as they are coherently thematic. Prior to her going to bed, the girl describes exactly why she has come to dislike her dreams, rendering the actual dream sequences unnecessary. Having her fall asleep and cutting to her waking up would have effectively communicated how disturbing her dreams are to her, no matter what these dreams actually contained.
Milk 2 has a glitch which softlocks the game. After selecting the vent in the girl’s room, she comments, “It’s not easy to get out of here…Ehehe…”. The fact that you cannot progress past this comment is ironic enough to make me question if this issue was intentional. The fact that this issue halts the game is evident enough it should have been fixed before release or with a day one patch.

What’s the verdict?

With most reviews, an “8” rating signals a safe purchase for the majority of gamers. When approaching Milk 1 and 2 and other games of its ilk, your tolerance for experimentalism takes precedence over whatever opinion we critics dole out. The duology is not fun or entertaining. It is neither addictive nor relaxing. It bathes you in discomfort and distress, allowing for a deeper bond with negative emotions and perhaps some clarity around them. If you’ve appreciated works like Bojack Horseman, Requiem for a Dream, and the Road and can stomach weird works like Serial Experiments Lain, Eraserhead, and Borges’ Labyrinths, Milk 1 and 2 offers another intriguing window into dysfunction.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 8
Time Played: Around 3 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Paratopic, Doki Doki Literature Club

Scoring Policy

May

2018

Solomon Vs. the ClusterPuck Bots

Like Falling Off a Bicycle

Call it a calling, a gift, a natural affinity. Whatever you label it, some people have innate talent, making them able to easily achieve something that might take others days or months or years to obtain through practice. Growing up, I was fortunate enough to pick up some skills rather effortlessly. In fifth grade, I began joining the grade level above me for math. In middle school, my band teacher fawned over my French horn performances (no matter how painful it is to admit I played that instrument). By my senior year of high school, I was going to the local university for my English courses. I was not a prodigy by any means, even if my ego rivaled one’s.

Natural skill certainly supported me during my childhood and adolescence. It gave me self-confidence and a level of self-respect. That said, an inborn ability does not replace hard work and practice, and talent only travels so far. The supposed math genius in me hemorrhaged and died when calculus infected the previously simple and sweet equations. I abandoned the French horn soon after it became apparent that practicing in class was not enough to keep up with the rest. When my undergraduate career threw me into an ocean of accomplished writers, I fled to shore and hid from writing for years, fearing my best was someone else’s average.

Now that I’m older and unbearably more mature, I can recognize that any initial skill I have is a good launch pad for future improvement. All talent can be fostered, and if there is a peak to how much an ability can be improved, I can make Editor One cover up my limitations. With my YouTube videos, I learned pretty quickly that I would have to rely on gained experience instead of my God-given birthright to become a viral internet sensation. Each video is a lesson, something I have regurgitated in almost every one of these video journals.

ClusterPuck 99 proved to me that occasional practice is not a sufficient pathway to success. In the six weeks between my last Isaac video and this one, I avoided my recording equipment, reasoning I could take a break while the Namco video was being edited. During that time, any and all skill I had dried up and mummified, so my initial takes of ClusterPuck were not much more than me moisturizing myself while I mumbled and stumbled and cursed and cried. It wasn’t pretty, but now that I’ve posted this, I feel turgid once more.

You know the drill at this point. Shoot me some shit or keep it to yourself if that’s your fetish. I’m GoNNA make me some videos.

Apr

2018

Solomon Rambles About Stoning

Tumblestone

Where Sausage Is a Selling Point

In the land of puzzle games, Tetris has stood as the supreme king since its rise to power in 1984. Puyo Puyo has served as its second-in-command, and together, they unleashed the puzzle beast that is Puyo Puyo Tetris. A number of puzzle games have vied for the throne, be it Nintendo’s own Dr. Mario franchise, the sublime Meteos, or the casual-darling Bejeweled. Against such behemoths, it surprises me that so many indie developers invest their energy into making puzzle games. On a system already drowning in match-three knock-offs, puzzle games must burn with creativity to separate themselves from the common peasants.

On looks alone, Tumblestone appears bound for serfdom. When it originally came out on the Wii U, I was so turned off by the visuals that I ignored the tempting sales and glowing reviews. I had planned to continue ignoring it when it came to the Switch, but then I exhausted my wish list of good multiplayer games to play with my partner. Rather than acknowledge her pleas to play board games or engage in social activities in that hellish world known as “outside,” I downloaded Tumblestone. Remarkably, not only did it keep my pasty arse plastered to couch, it demonstrated a level of quality deserving of at least the title of duke in this puzzle aristocracy.

What is it?

Tumblestone presents you with a board with five columns of different colored blocks (the name of said stone-like blocks currently evades me). The blocks hang from the top of the board while your character scurries across the bottom (a la Magical Drop II). Predictably, you must clear the board of all blocks, and you do so by shooting the bottom-most block of each column. This is a match-three puzzler, however, so you can’t go shooting your finger-lasers just willy-nilly. Once you destroy a block, you must destroy two more of the same color. If you’re not careful while removing blocks, you could find the third purple stone you needed is inaccessibly behind another colored block, forcing you to restart the puzzle.

For the majority of the single-player modes, you can leisurely chart your moves and ensure your success. In the game’s three multiplayer modes, the tempo amps up to a feverish pace as you and your friends/bots race to clear the blocks the quickest. Puzzle Race plays exactly as it sounds: the first to complete the puzzle wins the round. The Battle mode adopts the traditional puzzler approach by throwing an endless number of stones your way. If the blocks reach your character, you suffer a squished death, and the last survivor wins. In Tug of War, you compete to complete smaller puzzles, and when you finish a puzzle, a new one is added to your opponents’ queues. Complete all puzzles in your queue, and the round goes to you.

Tumblestone also boasts a substantial single-player campaign, allegedly containing “40+ hours” of content. Although this estimate is grossly exaggerated, the campaign does a solid job of introducing gameplay modifiers which can later be applied to multiplayer games. A modifier may add a conveyor belt to the columns, force you to fire two blasts with one shot, or prevent you from making consecutive matches of the same color. You will undoubtedly come across a puzzle that appears absolutely unsolvable, but the game rewards you with skip tokens periodically, allowing you to avoid confronting the hard things in your life. Even in the instance that you use all of your tokens, the internet exists, so just Google your problems away.

What’s good?

Tumblestone is delightfully inventive and intuitive. The single-player modes can offer a Zen-like experience, allowing you to carefully complete a puzzle in one go or frantically destroy blocks until you find the right combination. In multiplayer, the puzzles are simpler, so muscle memory and quick wits trump thoughtful planning. Each modifier can drastically impact how you approach a puzzle, but no matter how jarring a modifier can be at first, each is simple enough for you to find a natural groove after a few puzzles.
Multiplayer can be tailored to both experienced and new players. Although the gameplay may be difficult to describe to others, most new players will understand the basic concept and even the modifiers after watching or playing a few games. By using the game’s rudimentary yet effective handicap system, you can craft a level playing field no matter the skill levels of your fellow players.
The amount of content packed into this indie release is staggering. The single-player content is robust enough that you don’t even need friends or loved ones, be it to play with you or save you from your hermitic lifestyle. For the hardcore couch multiplayer fans, the modifiers can be mixed, matched, and randomized to offer a unique challenge each round.

What’s bad?

Apart from the sound design and blocks, the presentation is awful. The characters look like Rayman’s deformed spawn; the backgrounds and locales are overly cartoony and lacking detail; and the single-player campaign’s story is rife with outdated memes and unironically cheesy gags. Couple all of this with an ugly menu system and you’d be forgiven to think Tumblestone was a flash game.
The single-player campaign is as bloated as a college professor’s ego. The game features over ten worlds, with each containing 30 puzzles based on a certain modifier. As I stated, I like the modifiers but not enough to enjoy 30 straight puzzles of the same mechanic. Each world also has a stage in which you must clear 3 or 4 consecutive, randomized puzzles. If you make a mistake, you have to try again from the first puzzle. Because these stages are unskippable, you will have to endure—on average—upwards of 20-30 of the same type of puzzle.
The multiplayer could use some extra features. Online multiplayer is present on the PC version but absent here. You can’t participate in team matches, and Battle mode does not allow modifiers. More modes would have been appreciated. Ultimately, the game offers enough, but why settle with what’s there when I can be demanding and entitled instead?

What’s the verdict?

In its current state, Tumblestone does not surpass the puzzle gaming greats, but it makes a damn good effort. Puzzle games are rarely hits at social gatherings, but Tumblestone has captured the interest of my friends and become the next Rocket Fist by offering short, simple bouts of competition. The game certainly has some room to grow, but that’s what makes the idea of a sequel so appealing. With some polish to the presentation, a streamlined single-player experience, and a wealth of new content, a Tumblestone series could be a major contender in the puzzle market. For my interested readers, grab the demo at the very least. Unlike other demos, Tumblestone is a solid representation of the experience you’ll get with the full version.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 7.5
Time Played: Over 25 hours
Number of Players: 1-4
Games Like It on Switch: Puyo Puyo Tetris, the Magical Drop series

Scoring Policy

Apr

2018

Solomon Visits the Switch Namco Museum

Too Much History Behind This One

We flew too close to the sun. I set out with a grand dream: play each of Namco Museum’s eleven games, lampooning the tired retro collection for every wrinkle and age spot it had. Editor One would then take my treasure trove of satire and select only the best nuggets. He would sit with Player Two and I and comb through his edits. Our collective minds would see all necessary improvements, and Editor One would slink back into his lair to produce the final masterpiece.

But the sun was so hot, and our wax wings could not carry us forever. It took me an hour and fifteen minutes to slog through all of Namco Museum, and by the 45-minute mark, I became acutely aware of how quickly my rambling was turning into babbling. Exhausted and defeated, I shipped the results to Editor One, and that sweet, innocent child endured all of it to excise 41 minutes of excess fat. The three of us sat down to watch the video, brainstorming edits while Player Two transcribed the road map for “Draft 2.” This process was actually remarkably fun, and we pretended to be a little YouTube crew, scheming for our next viral hit.

We were still optimistic, but the sun is a realist. Life got in the way, and Editor One had already developed a hatred for the damnable Namco Museum video. He had seen too much of it, had heard my voice drone on for too long. He tried to avoid it, but the video slowly became his raven, haunting him no matter how much he tried to purge it all from his memory. His dreams were of corridors, sprites, and darkness. Underneath his tortured screams, he could still hear a deep, malevolent voice grumble, “Druaga.” Four weeks passed without me hearing from him, and I can only imagine the hard drugs and women he needed to distract him from Namco.

We had been burned. Three days ago, I found a 27-minute video shared with me, the feared Draft 2. As I watched it, I could not enjoy it, knowing the pain we had all suffered making it. I wanted to be done with it, but there were still five issues, and with a heavy heart, I ordered Player 2 to give the changes to Editor One so that I didn’t have to speak with him. I was not privy to the conversation, but I believe Editor One at point asked that I “suck his ass.” I cannot imagine the severity of his mental instability for him to say something like that.

But here we are. I present to you the 25-minute video into which we all poured our love. We all learned something, be it video editing, effective commentary, or efficient teamwork. It’s amazing how much we have done in this month-long process. It’s amazing how much the original video has changed. It’s amazing that there is still a grammatical issue at 16:59 despite me explicitly pointing it out and stating how it could be fixed. I’m not blaming you, Player Two, BUT I DISTINCTLY RECALL SAYING THAT THE SEMI-COLON GOES AFTER “ROLLING THUNDER 2,” NOT “ARE.”

We’re done though and ready to move on. We’ve revised our plans, improved our wings, and steeled our souls, all to prepare us for the next venture. If you want to contribute to our growth, feel free to throw comments or money our way.

Apr

2018

Solomon Rambles About a Game Behind Bars

The Escapists 2

In Need of Redemption

A strong relationship sometimes takes sacrifices. Maybe you give up hanging out with your friends in order to watch trite romantic comedies with your loved one. Maybe you relinquish your loyal dog because you have nothing else for the blood ritual. Maybe you have to suddenly move for your spouse’s new job. In my relationship, my partner sacrificed free will and our future second-born child to make me happy. In turn, I agreed to purchase and play a game with her which looked utterly boring.

The Escapists 2 (E2) is not my genre of game, nor is it good enough to entice me to give the genre a second glance (unlike Mario + Rabbids). When I purchased E2, I recognized that it would go on my docket for potential reviews in the future, and a small part of me worried that my low expectations would ultimately result in a biased score. Fortunately for me, by the time Player Two and I had completed the first prison, we were both tired of the formula. If a game based on tedious resource management and routine can’t appeal to two neurotic, monotony-loving gamers, it deserves whatever paltry score I spit out.