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Let's face it: It isn't an Until Dawn game if it doesn't have the legendary O' Death song, and this remake has replaced the intro music. They are butchering the classics, as Homer Simpson famously said. And what is the point of making this remake? It's totally unnecessary.
A group of teenagers go back to the lodge where something terrible happened a year ago. A good idea? Surely. Will they survive... until dawn?
The Animals of Until Dawn
But the game does have many animals.
The player has the option to even hurt animals (a squirrel and birds), but IF you want these human characters to survive the night, it might be better to not to do that.
I returned to this game after a long pause, and then the first thing I encountered was a badly hurt deer. The options were to either kill it or comfort it. Either way it's not possible to save it, you can only watch it suffer and die. I won't put a screencap of that of course.
Until Dawn: Wolf
A part of Mike's story is a wolf. Mike first encounters this wolf in chapter 5.
There's even a trophy for saving the wolf, called The Skillful Wolf Man: Mike kept the wolf alive throughout the Sanatorium.
It starts with a simple thing: Do not kick the wolf.
Then give the good boy a bone.
Until Dawn Remake gameplay (PS5)
By the way, men worry me.
Until Dawn Remake is currently free to play on Playstation Plus Extra.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure (affliate link) is a life simulation game which takes place on a vacation island inhabited by Sanrio characters. The game became available for PS5 in August 2025, and I loaned it from the library.
I didn't know any other of Sanrio characters besides Hello Kitty prior to playing
this game. But now I got to know them and fell in love with them,
especially Cinnamoroll and Keroppi.
This game is designed to be played every day for a very long time, and not much at a time. It is
limited how much you can advance in the game daily. Hello Kitty
Island Adventure isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. You need patience to
play this.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a game aimed for children. At first I thought that there's isn't much to do, but I was wrong. It is a long game, it can take a year to play through.
Tips and tricks
In this blog post I have gathered some things I wish I knew when I started playing this game.
All the story progression revolves around advancing friendships, and that is done by giving gifts. By default you can gift a character three times a day. It is essential to give everyone the best possible gift.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure Gift Guide
To get the most out of the game the progress in friendships is crucial. So I strongly recommend you to check out these gift guides.
Once unlocked, keep a companion friend with you at all times, they will help you with their abilities.
When you give gifts keep Hello Kitty as your companion to gain extra
friendship progress. Also keep her as your companion when you are making any food
items to get extra ones.
When you have made best friend status with someone and gift them, keep Miss Melody with you to get extra items. Which characters' items you still need even after that? In my experience at least Chococat's and Kuromi's. When repairing cabins Miss Melody reduces the cost of strawberry crates, but only when opening new cabins.
Keep Chococat with you when you are crafting
items to get extra ones.
Keep Keroppi as a companion when you are catching critters to slow them down and to make them less spooked.
Pochacco makes you move faster, so he makes collecting items take less time.
And late game, Big Challenge's vacuum ability makes looting items a lot easier.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure Visitor Cabins
You should start decorating visitors cabins as soon as you can. I waited too long before I realized I should be doing that. It can be confusing which items every visitor requires in their cabin. Once again wiki is your best friend (pun intended).
How to put clothes on visitor cabins? I had problems with that. First you have to craft a mannequin and place that in the cabin. Then you can put clothing items on the mannequin.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure Critters
Keroppi became my favorite character, but I hated his Best friend quest. A supposed critter friend wants to make furniture out of them?! How cruel and unethical, and makes zero sense. Of course critters want to spend an eternity suffering as furniture.
How to get iron in Hello Kitty
At one point in the game I absolutely ran out of iron. The best way to grind iron is Gem match mini game. It's located right next to Dance hall in Gemstone town. When you match a pair you might get iron. I got 90 iron in minutes.
South Park vs. Hello Kitty
In 2006 a South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" featured a game named Hello Kitty Island Adventure. At that time that game did not exist. In 2023 the game became a reality. Choosing this name for their game earned a lot of points from South Park fans for Sanrio.
I must admit that as an adult I enjoyed Disney Dreamlight Valley more than adventures on Hello Kitty's vacation island.
In honor of the first Red Dead Redemption coming to PS5 it's free to play on Playstation Plus Extra.
John Marston is a wannabe farmer, who has done some terrible things in his past (see Red Dead Redemption 2), while being a member of Dutch's gang of outlaws. Now his past has caught him, and he's forced to track down some old buddies. And of course to kill lots of people in the process. And unfortunately innocent animals too, especially horses and cows.
This game is not suitable for animal lovers. Right at the start of the game you have to kill some bunnies. And this theme goes on through the game.
In fact many of the trophies/achievements require killing animals. Kill one of each animal type, kill all the buffalos until they go extinct, kill 18 bears and so on. This was my second playthrough of the game, and this time I refused to do any of that...
Not to mention the still present trophy which requires killing a woman by placing her on the train tracks... But don't worry, this woman was evil! (as are all the scantily clad women in this game, who are asking for help on the roadside, so beware of them!)
Horses
There are lot of animals in Red Dead Redemption. There are almost no cars, so riding a horse to everywhere is a must. It gets really annoying really fast when you have to ride to same locations over and over. Thumb hurts from pressing X. And when you die you don't only have to do the mission again. You have to ride to its location again. Long, long ways.
Your horse can die from the bullets of your enemies, and unlike in Red Dead Redemption 2, there is no horse reviver. When the horse dies, it's gone forever, with no way to save it. In terms of gameplay this means nothing, because you can whistle for another horse straightaway.
And unlike in RDR2, you can't take care of your horse either. No grooming, no feeding, no patting. No nothing!
Cows
There are some missions about herding cows. But in two of them you have to try to stop them from committing suicide. If you fail, they will jump down from a cliff or run in front of a train. So if you don't want to see animals die, don't play this game.
Dogs
You can do some nightwatch missions with dogs in three different towns.
And then there's the Marston family dog, Rufus, who helps you in some missions.
Is Rufus a good boy? Probably, but John Marston surely isn't.
Chicken
There are chicken on farms. It's easy to run them over with your horse, so be careful. Sometimes dogs kill them... I was playing the horseshoe minigame, and when I finished it I found two dead chickens...
Water Allergy Is Real
Be afraid of water. Be very, very afraid of water. John Marston is infamously allergic to water. If he even touches water he will instantly die.
One time I was almost done with a gang hideout, all enemies were dead but I still needed to burn a couple of boats. I looted a box on a pier, and fell into water. Mission fail, and I spawned in a town long away. I was a bit pissed...
Luckily Jack Marston doesn't suffer from the same problem.
Bugs
Red Dead Redemption on PS5 is still a buggy game, as these pictures prove:
I have developed a habit of playing cat games on the anniversaries of my cats' deaths, and also on their birthdays. Cats and the Other Lives was on sale in the Playstation store, and I ended up postponing playing it until the anniversary of my last and oldest cat Kali's death anniversary. And little did I know how suitable this game was for that purpose.
In Cats and the Other Lives, a family member dies and the family relations are observed by the family cat named Aspen. She is said to be an old and fat cat, who likes to roam around the mansion. She of course likes to do cat things, such as scratching furniture, being afraid of water, chasing mice and dropping things off from tables.
This game addresses some dark and depressing themes. What secrets and tragedies are hidden in the Mason mansion's past and present? Something even more sinister than hemorrhoids? Possibly.
There are some more difficult minigames in the game, which I had to try many times. I hate having to repeat sections in games. I also had some problems with the controls, and I wasn't the only one.
How long is Cats and the other lives?
This is exactly the question I wondered when I started playing this game. I didn't know if I could play the game through in one sitting. Somehow I assumed that the game would be too long for that, and I was right. My first playthrough lasted for about 6 hours, so it is a short game. And sadly there isn't much replay value. But I did play it again, because I had missed one trophy.
The game is divided into three chapters and three days, plus an epilogue.
Cats and the Other Lives: Ending
In the end the cat and mouse kiss. What happens if you kill the mouse earlier? Surely the mouse can't be there in the end then?
The game's ending left me worried. In fact towards the end I started getting scared. If you want spoilers you can check out the ending yourself.
Trigger warnings: this game has dark themes, and not everyone always
treats the kitty nicely. At one point one character even kicks the cat.
Cat games
There are more and more games coming out where you play as a cat. Some of them are garbage, but Cats and the Other lives is not. In fact it is a hidden little gem. This game and its ending stayed with me for a while.
Mafia: The Old Country (affiliate link) is the fourth installment in the Mafia game series.
In the early 20th century, Enzo works as a miner in Italy or somewhere in Sicily. He manages to escape from the mine and ends up recovering at the home of a local mafia boss. But even though Enzo kills hundreds of people for the boss, is he still good enough for his daughter?
Is Mafia The Old Country open world?
Technically the game is supposed to be open world, but there isn't anything to do.
I thought this would be an open world game like the previous Mafia games, but I was sorely disappointed. Mafia: The Old Country is a short and linear walking simulator, easily played through in a few evenings. I borrowed this game from the library. There were many reservations for it after me and I thought it would be rushed due to the two-week loan period. But no, I easily finished the game in a week.
If there is even a plot, it is completely predictable. And the stupid knife fights that were used a lot as a game mechanic were of course unnecessary and unpleasant in my opinion. Also, the stupid mechanic that requires you to constantly sharpen your knife is... stupid.
This game made me hate men even more.
*The ridiculous way Isabella's ass is animated.
*The men who made mods for the game to undress Isabella.
I guess I should learn how to mod so I can make mods for games that undress men.
And since I already had a hard time with Mafia 2's save system, the question arises: Should I play Mafia games at all?
VERDICT: I'm glad I didn't pay a penny for this game.
BEWARE OF SPOILERS!
Mafia The Old Country: How many endings?
There's only
one ending, and it's a bad one. Or so many people seem to think. For
me the endings where men die and women survive are of course happy ones.
There is no happy ending in this game, or of course it depends on who you ask. I had the same experience with LA Noire. Shortly before the end I read the plot reveals. I don't know how I would have reacted to Enzo's fate if I hadn't known about it beforehand.
Mafia The Old Country: Gameplay
The animals of Mafia The Old Country
The player can ride horses in this game. Often you can choose between a horse and a car.
And there are some chicken, but I couldn't find any other animals in the game.
Is Mafia The Old Country worth it?
In my honest opinion: hell no. But maybe I was just expecting too much.
Mafia The Old Country: Getaway driver
I just needed an excuse to use this funny trophy video.
