Recent reviews by DK

Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk is a short visual novel that allows you to see the distorted reality in the protagonist’s eyes which leaves you immediately feeling uncomfortable realizing that what she sees is not what any typical person sees. The first track that plays in the game is an eerie ambient noise that will give you the vibe of something not being right and that there is a clear issue with Milk Girl (the protagonist). While you’re not told what Milk Girl’s diagnoses are for her mental conditions, it is quite apparent that she definitely has some deep-seated trauma. I think the writing behind her not telling you her conditions was quite clever, actually. You are left to learn more about the character through her dialogue by paying attention and reading in between the lines. The basis of this game is simple; you’re a voice in her head that helps her with one objective: buy milk. You can either be the words of encouragement that help her finally achieve this goal, or you can be the words of discouragement that have some outright insulting and quite painful dialogue that you can say to Milk Girl that would completely destroy hers and anyone’s self-esteem… or what is left of her little self-esteem.

I will give you a fair warning though: this game is not by any means a happy or light-hearted game. It’s a downright sad, depressing, short visual novel that may leave you rethinking even your own sanity. That’s how it was written, and it achieves this very well in my opinion. It hits hard when you can relate a lot to Milk Girl. I’m not overly emotional by any means, but even this game and its sequel really hit me. If you like the first game, you should definitely buy and play the second game if you feel comfortable playing it. It’s much more fleshed out with massively improved visuals with a much more complex soundtrack that inhibits plenty more feeling behind it. Despite the sequel still being relatively short (roughly 45 mins to complete a playthrough), it has more story behind Milk Girl to make you more familiar with her and give a more complete understanding of her. Highly recommended, especially for only a dollar; or even less, if on sale.

I never was into visual novels and hadn’t really played any of them ever. The first game popped up into my recommendations one day for some odd reason considering I played nothing like Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk, but it did. I didn’t think much of the game and forgot about it for a while… boy was that a mistake because I wish I had discovered this hidden gem of a series much sooner. In fact, I liked this game so much that I actually dedicated my time to write a review for it. This is something I haven’t done for years since other games haven’t given me the need to feel like I should share my own input about it.

Without getting into too much personal detail, Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk really hits home with me due to my own emotional issues and struggles. While my own issues are not nearly as prevalent and extreme as the girl in the story, it feels so surreal to play a game that captures the idea of mental illness via psychosis so well. The game is so well done for being so simplistic that you can’t help but feel bad for this young girl who’s likely in her teens, judging by her interests, her vocabulary, and family life. It’s not only a game that describes the struggles of mental illnesses. It’s a game that, more importantly, shares a lesson with us about how people like this are shunned away from society and aren’t given the attention and encouragement they need to live what’s as close to a normal life they can possibly live. Most believe that people like this should be avoided and locked up in a hospital, which in many cases causes them more harm and worsens their condition. Everyone has their own struggles in life, what the average human being may find easy to accomplish, people like the protagonist have a near breakdown at just the thought of tackling such a daunting task.

The way I see it with the dynamic of both games is this: Milk inside a bag of milk is a game that asks you the question of, “what is it like to see the world in my eyes?” The first game merely shows you how someone with mental issues like schizophrenia, PTSD, and OCD (presumably) sees the world in their distorted view that many people cannot grasp and understand. Milk outside a bag of milk is a game that reels you out from only visualizing the world in the girl’s eyes to now creating a connection with her and trying to understand why she sees the world the way that she does. You’re now given more dialogue and stories based on her memories that help piece things together via fireflies to try and understand her trauma. Just like in the first game, you’re another alter ego, or alter egos in her mind that all have a voice. You can have the negative, insulting alter ego be the most vocal in her head to discourage her and bully her; or you can be the encouraging, positive alter ego in her head that tries to help her move on from her memories, despite the pain of telling you and a part of her “dying” in a way because of that, hence the first and second “deaths”. These “deaths” can be interpreted as Milk Girl moving on a step forward from an old life. Unlike the first game, you can’t fail for being too insulting. This is most likely because her mood has improved and there are fewer negative thoughts due to this and even says for you (the voice in her head) to not ruin her mood.

The soundtrack is just… mwah, chef’s kiss. It fits the psychological horror aspect of the game very well. You will immediately feel uncomfortable and uneasy when Milk Girl is having a hallucinogenic episode. The music is not there to fill dead air. It’s there for a purpose, to help give you audio cues along with the dialogue to get a sense of how Milk Girl is feeling at that particular moment. The soundtrack makes you feel her pain and torment instead of solely witnessing it.

The only gripe I have with the game is how short it is. I could only wish that the game was longer and more drawn out, but maybe the idea of the unknown makes the game that much better. With you, as the observer, being left scratching your head, wondering what happens afterwards in her life and the numerous questions about what she’s been through is what gives you that bittersweet ending. Did you finally help her? Does anything you “tell” her even matter?

Denuvo has been removed completely from the game. I now recommend buying the game as it's a pretty solid game. Maybe I'll write an actual review later if I get the time.

As someone who's bought the game on 360 back when it was only available on those generation of consoles, it was a very well made game.

It still is a great game; why do I not recommend it then?

The Online. It can be fun, but as a lot of other players said, to experience all of the new content that's added. You have to play and play this game for days and weeks on end just to get what you want without buying the Shark cards. Perhaps you could call it "pay to win", but you're not really "winning". Instead, you're just paying actual money to get in-game currency just so you don't have to waste an insane chunk of time to experience what the newer updates have to offer. I'm not a huge online player, and I've never gotten beyond Rank 30 on my 360 as I liked this game more for the singleplayer aspect of it. Sadly, there's only so much you can do before it's too boring and you want something more. Suppose you want to install mods; well, that's great...for a while. Again, that eventually gets boring overtime.

Then there's the cheater problem. When I do play online though, I'm not playing on a public session anyways, so I've not experienced any cheaters. However, there's tons of reports from others saying that there's absolute TONS of cheaters just spawning in tons of cheated money. I don't know if you'll get banned randomly or not. Rockstar said that you won't as long as you didn't ask for it, but people said they've been banned for no reason.

I really suggest that you don't pick this game up unless it's on a heavy discount. Many of you already played the singleplayer anyways, and it offers very little more features compared to the 360/PS3. If you want to play Online and you're thinking that you're going to get all of the content unlocked very quickly without tedious grinding, think again. I'm only like Rank 10 on the PC version since I never wanted to pull my data from the 360 anyways, but I really don't have the time to sit there for days and days, and neither do others, playing this game to rack in a few million even though everything newer costs well over that few million.

Pretty much, Rockstar kind of trashed the Online aspect by making it very tedious and pushing you to buy their Shark cards for money that still won't pay for a lot. I'm sorry, but you gotta pass on this game if you've already did everything on singleplayer on a console. It's not worth $59.99.