I grew up with Sonic, Sonic and Knuckles on PC is probably the first game I've ever played. I have alot of memories replaying that mega collection back on the ps2 and I became a real big fan of the character, however, I remember being a kid and playing this game and this was my first time ever being disappointed with the blue hedgehog.

The team mechanic switching between characters sounds great as a concept but in practice makes the game very choppy and it doesn't flow together very well. The level designs are REALLY hit or miss for me, I really like the first three stages of the game, some of the best stages in sonic history for me, then you have stages like bingo highway and casino park which are down right AWFUL in my opinion. The games stages also are just too damn big, even for the ones that I enjoyed.

Playing through the game with multiple teams for the real was a pain in the ass as well, especially for those damn hide and seek chaotix missions, some of which took nearly 25+ minutes to complete.

In short, when the game is good, it's got minor flaws that keep it from being great, when the game is BAD, it's ANNOYINGLY bad

Sadly this game is a big disappointment for me. It really is not at all what I want from a Tomb Raider game. I was hoping for a game like Anniversary or Legend but instead got a a lame Uncharted clone with annoying crafting and waaaaay too many collectible crap everywhere. I am missing the the fun and creative environments filled with complex contraptions you need to operate to get through the level. Instead I am forced to run around a snowy soviet ruin, which is about one of the lamest environments I can imagine. Then there is a bit of stealth, which is my favorite part about the game tbh, but you are often forced to engage enemies in combat sequences that simply do not allow a stealthy approach. This would have been no problem if those sections or the combat in general were fun.

The game can look really pretty, but in some scenes it looks rather like an upscaled ps3 game level design wise.

The story bores me to death with bad writing and the word "Trinity" appearing way too many times.

I simply can not bring myself to continuing this game. There are also quite a lot of bugs, physics issues, not working climbing mechanics and inconsistencies in general.

Est. Reading Time 20 minutes.

CW: Ableism, Mental Illness, Drug Addiction

There are some mild 'plot spoilers' but I don't spoil the ending of the game, and most of what I do spoil is incredibly mundane, so feel free to read with that in mind.

Policy

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Milk outside is a sequel psychological horror short VN, where you explore the apartment bedroom of a schizophrenic young girl and attempt to assist her over the course of the night in her dirty room, in making sense of her mind as a disembodied part of her own brain. The game is a short VN, in part riffing on the dating genre with an point and click adventure portion wedged within. With compelling visual animations and sound work to boot.

Lets be honest here, Null (I choose to refer to her as Null because of her shirt) is very difficult to chat with. Shes incredibly self loathing and tedious to deal with, there's even an achievement you get from pestering her about her last day of school called 'youre annoying' which from outside reading I did seems to imply her dad said that... What I find so beautiful about this portrayal is it talks to something real about neurodivergence or in the disorderly cases mental illness: It kind of makes you come off like an insensitive jerk.

First I want to mention something about Null I don't think people picked up on, I think this text reflects a less 'well masked' form of autism than what people are used to seeing. It's easy to read the speaking repetitions for instance or the non desire to clean her room as just 'quirky' if you don't recognize these as legitimate life complications autistic people deal with. Echolalia, stimming, unusual organizational strategies, its all there. I don't know if I am personally autistic but I know people who've exhibited those traits who are.

On another note we discover, yet not right away, her room being a right fucking mess. It's very relatable. Even from a matter of logistics, there's often a problem for neurodivergent people, where more stuff is imported into the domestic space, primarily trash, than exported. This goes beyond just neurodivergence into a bigger issue for anybody who is being socially shamed by their society. The beat writer and opium addict William Burroughs played with this idea of 'junk'¹ in this way to drawing on his own experiences with addiction

""Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite. Assuming a self-righteous position is nothing to the purpose unless your purpose be to keep the junk virus in operation. And junk in a big industry. ""

While I couldn't find a direct quotation and depiction, Burroughs himself also lived surrounded by piles and bags of trash going to the ceilings. All while alienated from his friends during his time in Morrocco. Compare the aggressive quote with the physical junk in the room, and the fact its maintained by milk packets blocking her off and you find a stunning picture and perhaps you can see what I'm saying.

This is a far more sympathetic portrayal of mental illness because it's honestly more pessimistic about how poorly a lot of people like us are actually cared for by a larger oppressive system that can only be called ableist. This really is somebody so constitutionally trapped in loneliness and social disarray. Even her perception of time is exaggerated and all she can think about is the many ways she can die. Once you get into a point of frankly rather valid persecution and neglect its hard to pull yourself out on your own, if not impossible. Just as the inability to export trash reflects social neglect, so to does psychological self shaming reflect an inability to export violence done upon someone. One point about this I thought was particularly revealing is not only in the parental neglect surrounding her, but also in smaller moments like how when she was having issues in school other kids would call her a 'schizo'. Pretty much using ableist insults of non normative action to ostracize people and put them down.

This is also extremely relatable for me, and, I would imagine a lot of people. Even if you are able to function for the most part you've probably had your thoughts and actions dismissed as 'crazy' or 'spergy' before. Recently I found a very compelling dictionary on reverting from ableist language², here's what it has to say on 'schizo'

""This is ableist when used as a substitute for "switching rapidly" or "acting without regard for others" or otherwise implying a person seems mentally ill simply because they are unpredictable or make someone uncomfortable. The words "schizophrenic," "schizoaffective," and "schizotypal" are not ableist when actually referring to a person with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or schizotypal personality disorder.
Consider instead: wild, confusing, unpredictable, impulsive, reckless, fearless, lives on the edge, thrill-seeker, risk-taker, out of control, scary, lacks empathy, toxic, manipulative, egotistical, abusive, unpredictable""

It's a useful tool, but the fact of the matter is imagining these alternative phrases being used in public school, at least when I used to go, seems highly utopian. On top of this there's a lot of mockery around this as 'language policing' which is sad because in reality it means people are trying to ignore the potential pains of their callous speaking norms as 'freeing' when the very opposite is the case. People used to use the word 'retard' all the time in school and in gaming communities in the 2010s, but its very much out of vogue and offensive now. That being said I think the text of Milk Outside balances this well by pointing out the many other ways language can perpetuate it outlined in this dictionary as well. For example, early on you can tell her to 'act normal' which has to be a phrase almost everyone's frustrated parents have said at least once. It's one of the reasons I recommend giving this source a read.

The primary issue is using almost any phrase as a matter of derision but also as a matter of intentionality to be so. It's the 'schizo's job to 'stop being a schizo' and its their fault when they fail. As somebody who has screwed up a lot due to panic attacks and then had the people get upset at me for it, its something I deeply relate to. People often see when I panic and leave places and yell that people don't understand me as me being toxic, and of course its not something I desire to do, but in reality I have about as much control of it as a fish out of water once its gotten to that point, most of the time it can only be controlled by preventative measures in advance. Once they happen, its already too late. We can similarly read mental hangups like this a similar issue of that import/export analogy, if you have more negative perspective coming in than positive self perceptions (often encouraged by others) going out, the mind will become a junkyard of self loathing. Ultimately, you can't really control how you feel, at best you can nudge it a little. Ligotti describes this well in his deeply discomforting text Conspiracy Against the Human Race

"But we do not control what we think or feel about being alive, or about anything else. If we did
have this degree of mastery over our internal lives, then we would be spared an assortment of sufferings. Psychiatrists would be out of a job as depressives chose to stop being depressed and schizophrenics chose to silence unwanted voices in their heads."³

So then it follows well that the 'protagonist' does not have all that much control or feel like they are piercing the 'heart' of the problems shes dealing with. It's supposed to feel that way and you're supposed to be frustrated by it. Instead neurodivergence is repaired by a series of, often quite tiring upkeep of negotiations and preventative care. Not just with others but with yourself as well.

Let's talk about how well this works as a sequel. It's important to play the prior game first to get yourself acquainted with some important pieces of information, like for example her dad committing suicide. In fact I would say a better relationship with the character would be playing them back to back. This is meant to be a sort of meditational space away from the terrifying and blunt messaging in the first game, within which she can unwind and try and think about the difficulties of her life. The point being mental illness is not always something so easy for people on the outside to follow or sympathize with. Sometimes it consists of hard to untangle phrasing, and difficult moments of trying and failing to connect with them. It would be absolutely foolish to think this game didn't do its research either, because the main symbol on her shirt is the null symbol from Lacan used to explain the concept of the big other.

This game is a literary work which means you really have to play with it and be patient in order to appreciate it if you don't have these experiences. But trust me this is not a bad or 'toxic' reflection of mental illness. The neurodivergent require respect, accommodation, and patience. Through what you can pick up, this girl has been robbed of all of those. We all express being on edge in different ways, whether you find them endearing enough or you want to be closer to them, or want nothing to do with someone like this, fine. But this is a completely legitimate reflection of the stigmatization of mental illness and how they produce traumas the victims try to ignore. Ironically everyone referring to her as a lain clone or 'Milk Girl' is, I believe, missing that very point. After playing this game, if you have difficulty unraveling the complexity of its psychological portrayal check out this plot synopsis inquiry and this insight on the academic psychoanalysis work. Needless to say there's a lot of literary and technical depth in the game, especially in comparison to a lot of other VN's who are just going to show their characters at their most chipper with you and only get upset with you during the bad ending. This text throws those sort of dichotomies out the window.

I would urge my fellow gamers to not play games they in advance think they wont like. And not to publicly talk haven't been patient with, if you just kept fast clicking through all the dialogue prompts and reading as fast as possible then your inexperience will be negative out of impatience. I haven't continued to play Omori because of the dichotomous segmentation of 'pleasant fantasy worlds' vs. 'horrific apartment' and how much I felt locked off from the personality of my main character. But I'm not out to shit on it because I literally have not interacted with the text deeply enough to try and explain any sort of opinion on it, nor do I know where it goes. I'm not going to feel comfortable just saying 'bad vibes' on a text that is bearing such difficult and painful trauma like this. It's telling however that other people are so willing to do so. I think in a way this game made a brilliant commentary on a type of gaming experience that gets dismissed and ignored without even having to resort to meta. Intense word heavy games (VNs, Interactive fiction, etc) that discuss rough subject matter more pessimistically have been the laughing stock of gamers for a good while now.

That said, I do think there's legitimate reasons not to like this game. Even if its as simple as 'this just reminds me of how bad the intersection of poverty and mental illness is and makes me sad' or 'I sympathize with the character but the despondency doesn't make for a great game experience'. Or even more technical issues like the lack of skip or save functions (which for me don't matter at all and as I've laid out in my No One Can Ever Know writeup can actually enhance an experience for me). These disconnects are perfectly fine, but throwing the game away for its annoying aesthetics and circuitous dialogue is I think more than a little dismissive, and as a result playing exactly into the hands of the ableist prejudice it so accurately critiques.

That all being said, I feel like I haven't yet addressed any of the specifics. Most of my insight is more on other people's prejudices and an explanation of mental health, rather than highlighting why I enjoy this game so much. So here's a few more specific reasons I like it:

-The game was gifted to me by a girl who is incredibly similar to this character, who deals with a lot of ambiguous mental hurdles, and is also just starting to come to terms with her 'plurality' recently. This is something I'll speak about more in another text soon, but all that means for the moment is she, just like this girl, has personality issues that she is just starting to unravel. The similarities between her and this girl are to such an extent it goes beyond just a vacuous representation. In my experience there are people like this, and despite being difficult to speak to sometimes they have truly brilliant minds. It's funny because the masculine version of this type of character is found in the movie A Beautiful Mind, which I found insufferable to watch. That was because I couldn't really feel like I was 'interacting' with the paranoid delusions so much as being a specter. It made it seem like people really don't even try to intervene, this text makes it clear: they do but poorly. A lot of the mathematical fixations between her, for example squaring pyramids and such, seems similar to John Nash's thinking patterns.

-The music OST is 4 hours long apparently, most of it to do with the radio you can put on. This is longer than the expected length of a playthrough game, this is crazy considering most of the tracks seemed pretty good, if only about Yume Nikki length (like a minute long).

-The color palettes are soothing, using reds to display a sort of mistlike feeling, moving away from the oppressive use of purples and such in the first game.

-The text doesn't try to get you to 'date' the character but puts your protagonist in a similar engagement of inquiry you would find in those dating VNs. This is in itself a sort of micro genre, there's a list on this very site about it. However, its a microgenre that i'm fond of, since I see the ubiquity of the visual novel as a 'dating simulation' unfortunately. It also feels like a nod to how if it had been a more 'moe' human relationship with the character, it would have been more vapid and possibly offensive.

-The sound effect work on this one is just as brilliant as the visuals. Those little 'dings' whenever it's your turn to speak feels very satisfying and prevent you from accidentally hitting a choice on the screen without meaning to.

-I always love this eastern European architecture. It's so stalwart and gloomy, yet functional. I love how it makes the room look disorganized but not immediately 'gross' since its through her perception this stuff is happening.

-The opening with the horrific creature giving her a shot was incredibly well written and shows the text is not choosing more airy 'obnoxious' dialogue out of inability.

-A lot of the visual representations throughout the game have a mystical quality to them, falling down a hole or looking in a twisted funhouse mirror. A lot of the quiet visual representations are killer, wallpaper worthy, and absolutely worth the price of entry.

-On top of the clear literary thoughtfulness and understanding of psychology mentioned earlier. I'm impressed that the dev was able to construct a text with a convincing female lead. Even if he had to use a patriarchal gaze through the players role in order to connect. The dev here is Nikita Kryukov, who dons large gauges, a baseball cap, and a seemingly quiet demeanor and social presence. Primarily focused on appreciating the fan art put out and talking about various stuff around the game. From my cursory glance he's not even a comparatively active or political twitter user which is honestly quite rare and appreciated. And so, for a demure Russian dude, who you would probably seem more at home on the front of a nu-jazz record to so effectively write a vibrant story about the ableist oppression of women as it relates to imperial countries. It fills me with hope. For me, it means that if you try hard enough you can escape the biases of your own positionality to write about what you arent and capture the heart of that pain. This is a struggle and insecurity that plagues a lot of writers, with it being so in vogue for academics to tear apart 'poor representation'.

This all works to convince me the text has added something fundamentally unique to add to the VN form. I think perhaps my own experiences with girls that act like this and aren't doing it as a 'tumblr core' thing makes me a bit more sympathetic to them. But regardless, there's enough going on here for it to actually touch people who aren't on the inside of these struggles.

Mostly I felt I should just let people know there's more going on here. And on the charge of any sort of 'ableism' I will note that the people who call her 'Milk-chan' are also doing a huge disservice and seeing right past the character as well. So ultimately its not just the naysayers that are at fault here. Milk Outside asks us all to be more patient across the board and for that I consider it a masterwork of the visual novel short story. Quite honestly, it seems to me a lot of yall just got filtered by a Visual Novel, and thats pretty damn funny to me.

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1. DEPOSITION: Testimony Concerning A Sickness.

2. Ableism/Language

3. p.15, not for the faint of heart. I found a copy of it on Libgen but I wont link it here for obvious reasons.