ALBERELVIS

Like every good story, it requires an introduction, my name is Albert, I was born somewhere, and like many others, I never had a lot of friends, my situation at home was complex, and I ended up being raised by different people. One of those was my dad, and he became my only source of love in this hard, complex and sad world, he was at all effects my superhero. When I was alone at school, he would throw me chips over the fence of the school and would come to see me almost every day he could. When I had a problem, he would just make me feel like those problems did not exist anymore, he was just great. I grew older, and we got a bit distant, I don’t know exactly why, I guess it was because I was a teen and I had to be and edgy boy… he stopped being my hero to become my “boss”. Now I had to work, study, grow up, leave videogames behind, and build a nice future for me. He of course would not say it like this, he would shout and insult me, tell me that I was a lazy bas*ard and that I was worth nothing. At the moment I did not know it, but I craved his love and approval so much, I wanted to feel love again so much, that almost without realizing I started doing what he told me. That sounds kinda normal right? Well, he is pushy, like really pushy, and he did not want me to get a job, he wanted me to study, and he did not want me to study any diploma, he wanted Medicine, he didn’t want me to be any kind of doctor, he wanted me to be and orthopedist or gynecologist. I used to convince myself that it was what I wanted, so I became the number 1of my promotion, I ended up in Harvard because that is what I wanted, and I wanted to work in the USA, I wanted to make millions and work as an orthopedist…I went to college and just in a few weeks those insults became praises of admiration. It felt so rewarding to go back to my dad after a few months and bring him good news… Dad! I got accepted in Harvard. Dad, I got the best grade in Anatomy!!! Dad! I am going to graduate With Honors!. Dad… Dad…Years passed and I can say I never had enjoyed such a level of complicity with my father. But one day, when I was a few months away from getting my diploma, I started feeling sick. I left with a few friends to spend New Year’s Eve and something was off. All my friends were so excited about were they going to work, and what hospital where they going to apply… But I wasn’t, I was feeling like ****. And I decided to leave early the house where staying and drive home. It was a long drive, 10h+ and I just couldn’t figure it out. There was a sense of fear, tiredness, melancholy…I got home and laid in bed for 2 days until I came across this game. I don’t really know what pushed me to play it, but I am lucky I did. This game talks about a guy who does things for approval, this consumes him, and for me, it just clicked!!!I always wanted to make my father happy, he was my hole world, and getting his approval was more important than my own happiness. Without realizing I turned the “I want to become a doctor because it will make my father happy” into “I want to become a doctor.”I believed it so hard I became and over-achiever, and I thought it was because I wanted to be the best doctor, for personal ambition or whatever, but it was not true, I just wanted to have another reason to call my dad and get a pat in the back again and again and again…Approval it is not like a vaccine that you get once and you are healed, it is like water or oxygen, you need it daily, like a drug that keeps you moving…Now with perspective I believe that I was so f*cked those days because subconsciously I was picturing myself once again taking an important decision and wasting another 6 years of my life doing something I was not passionate about. And for what?I believe a lot of people overestimate the money that that doctors make. Not because the sum it is not juicy, but it is something that drains your life, in so many ways… at least for me it destroyed everything I ever felt passionate about… This game made me reflect about who I want to be and what are the things that I want to make my priorities. For those who read this, I don’t know if this game will make you reflect as much as it did to me, all I can tell you that this game was of the best invested 90 minutes of my life. And for the creator, Thank you so much. I don’t know if the decisions I will make will be the best ones, but for the first time in my life I am sure I will take make them for the right reasons

It is a well-designed game, and it is very fun to play with friends, but it is a shame that the community is dead. I guess I was just unlucky to play it in the downfall of the game. Big shouts to my friend Ropiey

I learnt about this game during the Christmas of 2021, my good friend Guillaume indistinctively played the game in a small house in the center of rural France. I curiously approached him and like a kid being offered the purest Colombian cocaine… I got hooked. During those days with him, everything felt incredible, the mechanics, the map, the scenarios and the storylines, the character development and the feeling of becoming the leader of an unbeatable mercenary company was just ecstatic. It was simply perfect. But everything comes with a price, and this experience was no different. What was the price you might ask? 200h wasted without enjoying the time with my friends? Yes. Burning the motherboard of my laptop? Of course. A hypertrophic cardiopathy derived of chronic cocaine use? Surely. But most importantly, this game took my soul. What started with a great experience became a poisonous relationship of addiction. At some point I even stopped enjoying it!!! I just felt that I had to get all the achievements, and the downfall began, every fight became a torture, each failed roll of dice a fountain of tears, I just hoped for the next random event to not become a metaphorical knife digging deeper in my chest. The game nourished by your soul keeps a perfect balance between randomness and player-oriented strategy, the micromanagement of the soldiers it is not tedious, and some mechanics like the food poorly implemented in most games here are just a minor inconvenience that increases immersion. The countless scenarios, origins for the company, and styles of play make this game highly replayable. Your decisions during the game dictate the ending, and how successful your company will end up. Do you want to retire from your own company early and live a peaceful life? Do you want to fight till the end and retire as part of a legendary army? Or you will die trying? Even the idea of being a lonely wolf it is contemplated and comes with strong and weak points; fascinating. It is as hard as you want it to be, and it feels rewarding in both ways, either by creating an overpowered company that razes wherever it steps, or by achieving to scape with barely your life as the last man standing, with hopes to rebuild your army. This game it is essentially perfect and equally noxious for your mental health, so…Do I recommend it? Abso-fuc*ing-lutely

Short and cute game, with simple mecanics and a fantastic artistic design. It might have some simplistic perks, but it feels rewarding to be ambitious and try to take the optimal paths in world map. The game is classified as “strategy” and while the gameplay is super satisfying, it is simplistic. There are not many penalizations for the repositioning of the troops around the island and most tactics are pretty straight forward. I have nothing bad to say about it, it is close to perfect, and it will definitely kill a few afternoons of boredom.

Automachef is a game about optimization, it does not really take a mastermind to complete the game to a 100%, but what it requires is time. Most games about design require from the player logic and cleverness, but here, it does not feel like that, it feels more like a tweaking game, where you must spend several minutes changing the frequency of the dispensers and the energy usage of the machines to reach the perfect ratio between energy usage, food usage and cooked meal output… I felt that just after a few levels it became repetitive. The super player-dependent mechanics, like the assignment of directions for the arms even if make sense, are tedious. At the end, the biggest challenge is the space management, where you have to fit 5 different industrial machines in a broom closet, and while that was enjoyable, since it required real thinking from the player’s side, it made the blueprints useless, bringing back the constant sensation of repetitiveness. Why do I have to redesign the same hotdog machine 10 times so it fits in a miniscule tile? Many times it is not even challenging, it is dull to: take the dispensers, assign the buns, put another dispenser, with the hotdog, place the belts in the right direction, the arms to the grill, and the smart arms to the belt again when it is cooked, place the assembler and select the recipe… Later assign an order reader, connect it to all the parts and place the right proportion of ingredients, and later spend 15 minutes going back and forward in the specific scenario to see if you can maximize the energy or avoid food waste. This example is with the hotdog, one of the easiest recipes, if not the easiest one, get ready when you have to make the meals, or implement the sauces, a true nightmare, but again, not because of hard, but because of tedious. Do not misunderstand me, the game has great features, and the storyline is hilarious, (Robot-world-destroyer-cat-lover) but I guess it is not my type of game. If you enjoy the minmaxing every single scenario it might be your type of game! It is obvious that the game has time put into it, it is polished, and the steam workshop can add new scenarios and recipes, and that is fantastic! I wish all games had this! I just wished that if the developers were going to release a second part, they made the blueprints a bit more useful in order to reduce the repetitiveness.

Ancestors The Humankind Odyssey is a videogame that it is developed under the premise of exploration and evolution. Here the tutorial, markers and HUD are kept to an absolute minimum, and for me that is where the virtue arises. Both the little monkey as well as you are in a journey of discovery, starting off with the simple concept of object permanence or switching an object between hands, to developing systems of communication and crafting primitive tools. First things said, the game feels a bit clanky, some bugs here and there might not ruin the experience but for sure make it feel less fluid. It is something that usually bothers me a lot and in most games pulls me out of the immersion, but in this case I don’t know if it is because the implementation of some new patches or because I am very lucky, but most performance issues have been minor and have not compromised my experience in a substantial way. With that said, lets talk a bit more in depth about what the game has to offer. In the visual aspect the game is not a marvel, but it does the job, specially in the jungle segment were the lack of direct illumination hides some of the worse details. The engine is capable of portraying truly beautiful scenery, and the use of lightning sometimes tricks you into thinking that what you are seeing is worthy of an avatar film. The controls are a big part of the experience, they are initially complex and do not feel agile, but the progressive interiorization of them feels rewarding. It is in moments like this that it feels like you both, the monkey and the player, are leaning simultaneously, definitely a peculiar experience. Well, I will conclude by saying that it is a journey meant to be played without spoilers, and I would invite you all to enjoy it by yourselves. It is an ambitious game, developed by a humble studio and worthy of your time. I hope for this game to become the starting point for a new generation of brave developers. Totally recommended!

Firstly, I have to say that when I see this game I think about my cousin, a brown boy that is like my brother, and even though we barely play anymore, I kinda miss exploring new games with him, me playing this game was his idea, and only because of that, it will always have a small chunk of my heart. Having said that, this game is legendary, it stablished the foundation of what it would end up becoming one of the most relevant games in the genera. Only because of that it deserves some kind of admiration. While it is true that this game is definitely not as polished as it’s following instalments, this new graphics make it a bit easier going for those who don’t have nostalgia as a driving force. I will not fake being an expert since I am not very familiar with those strategy games that revolve around pressing keys like a crazy man without taking a second to think (StarCraft mainly) or like in this case, a game based around clicking on top of a bunch of poor slaves so they reach and chop a tree faster, but I will say that the game was very intuitive, and I can appreciate how the learning curve can remain interesting for beginner, intermediate and advanced players. As far as I know AOE2 is more polished in terms of mechanics, and I have not explored, nor I have the expertise to judge if the nations are balanced, but only the aesthetics of building my empire and crashing my troops against my cousin is a core memory that will be with me for a long time. Recommended to play with friends without a doubt.

We start where we left it, and with the introduction from the previous chapter, our favorite detective is forced to face a new challenge. In this episode, Holmes faces a game proposed by Arsène Lupin itself! And very soon the theme absorbs that playful dynamic of puzzles with a heavy real implication, and opposed in the first games of the franchise, was for some reason, solving a puzzle would open magically a door using the power of Bluetooth. For me, the theme only takes interest at the very end, where the intentions of the famous thief are clear since until then it just feels a bit of a pointless cat and mouse game. The music, as always, perfect, and the variability of the environments is very charismatic, but sometimes it turns a bit generic in the most aristocratic setups. The characters are a bit bold, and with exception of the 3 stars that carry the weight of the action, none of them will remain as charismatic with exception of the librarian. There are only 2 elements more that I would like to mention and are related to the puzzles. The addition, as in the previous videogame, of the spacebar as a finder of clues solves the “pixel hunting” that the first games suffered, and do not compromise the difficulty of the puzzles since map is always full of things to distract your eyes. But here comes for me, the best element of the game, and this is the genuine difficulty of the puzzles. I think that with this chapter the developers achieved that perfect valance in terms of the puzzles and their difficulty. Letting aside, the natural feeling that all share, we are going to go from pure inside game logic association to pure logic combinatory exercises. Even sometimes you are going to deal with culture mazes where your knowledge about British History is going to take a protagonist role, as is in the case of the museum. Sometimes the puzzles can come tedious since, in order to avoid try and error strategies, you are going to see yourself forced to go back and forward to the same place to collect different pieces of the same puzzle or opening the same file/ letter with the clues to follow the correct order a bit too much (we are talking, as for example, in the case of the medals, more than 15 moves checked individually)… Maybe a bit more difficult in oppose to repetition would have been better suited and could have turned the game a bit more engaging but is definitely one of these aspects that have proved to be a pro vs a flaw. Lastly, just to say that the humor expressed at the very end of the game is just perfect, was off of what we would be expected in games of the genera and for me a great detail for the most “senior players”. “The danger is imminent, instigated by a man of Machiavellian, twisted tendencies, who is deprived of all sense of morals and scruples. Furthermore, he is French!!!” -Sherlock Holmes

I have to say that my level of nostalgia with this release is very restricted compared to other titles in the franchise, and is that I enjoyed this game a short afternoon during my childhood, and I recognize, therefore, that I see more shortcomings than virtues at first glance, but, as always, I will try to be as impartial as possible. This short racing title is set in the universe of Star Wars, and draws on this inspiration for its unique turbo mechanics, which while it may seem rudimentary is very satisfying when masterfully controlled. Another interesting mechanics is the junkyard and improvements, as I find it interesting that the level of performance is dependent on the state of the parts, although I don't agree with the model of wear and tear offered, as it feels erratic and random. The graphics are grotesque, I know that a remaster has been made or is being made, and I love the idea, because this game can really be very immersive, and it is precisely about this topic that I would like to talk about, immersion. I found the game a bit easy, in very few races I didn't get first place at the first attempt, but here's the interesting thing, I've never played such a satisfying and immersive racing game when at maximum speed, you complete the circuit in an unpolluted way, for me, a very unique experience.

First of all, I'm probably not the best person to judge this episode of the Sherlock Holmes games, because for me, this game involves a very high level of nostalgia. The game starts off perfectly, calmly, and without unnecessary fuss, with class and elegance, but it quickly turns dark, and it is precisely in this balance between fantasy and reality that it gives my 20-year-old self and my 10-year-old self the chills. The story is told in a very visual way, and unlike the predecessor games, there is no final moment of "revelation", which although it usually works very well in cinema, in video games I think it is a disservice, as it generates in the player, the feeling of disconnection from the character, as this is able to draw conclusions without you remotely dazzle them, something that in this game is handled very well, being logical but not absurdly elementary. As far as the puzzles are concerned, I have mixed feelings, and I found some of them very elementary, while others, on the other hand, hid a logic on the verge of absurdity, as is the case of the numbering of the coordinates. In any case, I found them all satisfactory, unlike the first episode of the saga, the mystery of the mummy, where most of the puzzles involved completing images by moving squares. Speaking of previous episodes, I was a bit sad that the references were so scarce, as in the case of one of the paintings in Baker Street, or news in the newspapers, a real shame. The controls were smooth and agile, and with the remastered edition, in addition to a considerable improvement in the animations, the possibility of marking objects of interest, for me, has been a real luxury, since the countless hours trying to find the pixel that contains the x object of interest are over. For me, its only weakness lies in the decline of the plot, especially after the asylum in Switzerland, as the trip to Louisiana feels a bit forced and disjointed with the rest of the events. (I found the chase a bit too long). Anyway, it seems to me a more than worthy game to be played and that without a doubt, it has a special place among the famous British detective's deliveries.

Okay, here we have the first real Sherlock Holmes game in front of us, as the mystery of the mummy was on the verge of being classified as a sudoku with animations and terrible music. In this release, our dear detective is involved in the so-called "Silver Earring Case" in which we will investigate the events at Sir Bromsby's mansion with his consequent murder. The action is concentrated around a few locations, which for me is a virtue, but after about half the game, it dissociates from the central theme to fill the narrative with " diverse scenarios ", it is at this point where the relationships between the central events and the peripheral elements become almost random, only to make sense in the resolution of the case, and it is this aspect that without a doubt is the weakest, but I will describe it in depth during the analysis of the characters. In the mechanical section, there is much to say; on certain occasions, it turns out to be a pixel hunter, where it is more beneficial to drag the mouse around the screen than to actively search for the pixels in the form of "a feather" or "a piece of cloth". The character's movement is slow, and on many occasions tedious, depending on the perspective, the areas flicker due to the poor location of the loading screens (very evident in the area of the monastery and its labyrinth), I would find it in very good style for the character to be a little more agile and able to move rapidly around the screens; something that, paradoxically, its predecessor did, although more "uncontrollable". The puzzles are much more immersive and are justified by the plot itself, although they are all a little simple, the one that I found by far the most complex was the labyrinth of the abbey, but for a matter of memory rather than for a matter of deduction. Finally, I would like to mention the approach given to Holmes in this piece, and it turns out that when the plot began, the detective showed off his deductive abilities, describing Mr. Bromsby perfectly by the arrangement of the furniture or by the people attending the celebration, a fragment of dialogue in the purest Sherlock style, a delight. The biggest problem I find with the character is with the way in which he justifies the strings he pulls, very fine and almost unconnected with the subject we are dealing with here, but for reasons I do not know, always right, and that is that once the pieces are placed, everything is... elementary. Paradoxically, the last scenario where we treat and relate the famous silver earring to the case, could not be more fanciful, a cheap excuse leads us to relate two different cases with their only element in common, a striking silver earring of an actress who coincided with the daughter of the victim; I think it is too much even for Holmes himself; an unparalleled intelligence that not only breaks the charts but also brings out the scarce care for the script work.

It's a very very short game, in my case I completed it in just 2 hours, and I can't help but be astonished, this game is mechanically agile but tedious, lacking in rhythm, and has as its internal clock the completion of puzzles, at the very least, elemental, where the challenge revolves around finding some symbols or numbers that give you the answer to your question, or where in its most deplorable aspect, you have to slide squares to complete an image. I will not even mention how frustrating it can be to spend 10 mins searching for a pixel behind something, and that will definitely kill all the momentum of the player. Without a doubt, a great disappointment in all its aspects, from the grid he uses to separate his acts, as in his narrative. The only credit I can give him would surely be for many the least expected, and it is that the graphics are more than convincing for the time, although, I recognize that sometimes it can fail to try to be too ambitious, I will not judge for brave pioneering titles!

First of all, Call of Duty occupies a special place in my memory. I grew up with Call of Duty 3 and my brother with Call of Duty: Roads to Victory, I was a hardcore Call of Duty 4 Moden Warfare player, until MW3. Having said that, I will try to keep my feelings out of it. The game has a solid setting, in certain points a bit repetitive, but if you value the game individually, it's more than enough to pass. The story is absurdly simple, recovering a chemical weapon that blablablabla, the story is segmented into small operations that in maximum difficulty took few attempts to complete, and I must say that at certain times the game is a bit unfair, to the point that in realistic mode, this game feels like an Uncharted, where you shoot, hide, and shoot again until there are no NPCs on screen. There are many characters that literally have a line of dialogue, like Yegor or many others. Captain Price's charisma gets diluted as he appears on the screen, and it seems that only in the kinematics you can distinguish part of that soul that characterizes him. The gameplay has improved a great deal, with weapons now having a recoil that is erratic and more like the vibration of a controller than a 5.56mm rifle. (In my opinion there is no better recoil control than that of the Rainbow Six Siege). The decisions and little things like deciding to be part of the torture of the butcher, make me feel more inside, I just regret that these decisions are a mere circumlocution to offer me the same story with the same shots but with different lines of dialogue. Without a doubt the most enjoyable thing for me was: The night missions, no doubt, the graphic section and the dynamic lights have been a joy to play. The mission in the sniper's nest, the physics of the bullets were very good. And finally, the WarZone mode, which offers many possibilities both tactical and strategic, and the game is a real experience when you enjoy it with friends. I think I've been very benevolent with the release, I think the problems with the servers are unacceptable, and that the progress is based entirely on the hours of gameplay in "how much you kill and how extravagant", the battle passes are a rip-off, and it's just that you need to play for many hours every day to complete it, and I don't think that's dignified. The campaign choked me in many points because in realistic mode the enemies blow you up with two bullets, but still it was very short, excessively short, to say that the continuous story mode in special operations is very generous and that those are almost mini-games, wherewith two well-armed friends, the missions are a joke. I could get a thousand hits out of it, but I want to give the game a vote of confidence since it has introduced in me the desire to see what will happen next.