technopagan

Definitely "Abzû" and "Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice". One is a beautiful piece of art that touches me every time I replay it and the other finally gave me a wonderful example to show to friends & family of how noisy it is in my head sometimes.

In no particular order:

• Finally do those after-class reading + tutoring sessions for kids in my daughter's school.
• Sign up for shifts on the "Good-Night-Bus" in my local town that looks after homeless people during night-time.
• Play hand-pan, guitar & other random instruments at local relaxation spots to add to the overall atmosphere of "the good life"
• regularly offer my handymen skills to my neighborhood via local web-platform and also contribute to "Repair-Cafés" as a helping hand
• Find a local community-garden project to help out at so that the city stays 0.1% greener than without me
• Offer my yet-currently-relevant professional skills (Frontend / WebPerf / CDNs / DevOps) to a NGO that couldn't usually afford my wages (again: preferably something relevant to my region to feel a sense of impact)
• Keep maintaining my OpenSource repositories and publish new ideas ASAP to prevent Software Patents

Magnolia.

Having JUST finished replaying it myself last week, I wholeheartedly enjoyed your review. Thank you!

I had the exact same thought regarding the ending: the girl that in this game is so often depicted as vulnerable and caring (she loves her friends) is at the same time a ruthless serial killer who doesn't seem to hesitate for a second about setting dozens of stranded survivors on fire who "just" want to escape the island as desperately as she does. When the final outro cutscene was playing and she ends with "I'm not going home..." I couldn't help but fear for the next group of people she'll encounter. ;)

Non-sequitur: OMG did I hate the quick-time events, though! Felt like I needed to fail at least 3x for EACH quick-time event before I got it right. /o\

Yes! No.1 reason: microphone quality! I have to attend many calls every day and no Bluetooth headset (BT v.4 > 5.3, SPS, AAC, LDAC) has even come close to the simple quality of a ~25,-€ wired headset.