![]() ![]() ![]() It invites you to be more accurate or efficient or untouchable, but the only thing it demands is speed. A tiresome, obnoxiously hard and sadistic thing demanding perfection and punishing mistakes with instant death. Most people would have made this into a "hardcore" game. They should never be trapped in time like this. It feels somehow wrong to even share stills of the monsters. Each new run is another episode, the early levels not a chore or punishment, but an instant 'replay all' button. And it's incredibly easy, even after reaching the unrelenting rush of the later levels, to start right back up again without feeling like you've been downgraded. I am very wary of games that completely occupy my attention, because I easily lose weeks of my life to them, but Post Void pulls me in, detonates a world around my head, then spits me out again, dazed, exhilerated, and very much done. It has utterly consumed me for what feels like hours, but when I finally quit out, done for now, I realised it's been barely half of one. 2-5 minutes is a far more common play time. ![]() Levels are far shorter than you realise, and even succesful runs through all its 11 levels will take under ten minutes. It's difficult to talk about it without trying to remember what it does to your sense of time. It feels nice to fire near constantly, especially as monsters recoil when hit. The uzi comes into its own with a couple of reload/capacity upgrades. It's a game of instinct and intent rather than technical skill (although the latter helps, and you'll quickly gain it), and though a little luck helps, be it getting the exact upgrades you wanted or getting lost at the wrong moment, it's never made me feel hopeless, or cheated. It's a huge part of its whole feel in fact, as it's not about pixel-perfect aim but quickly and decisively aiming for about the right spot. Everything can be killed with a single shot, if accurate enough, and its hit detection is forgiving. Its four weapons are particularly transformative, but even your starting pistol is enough to see you through the whole game. You might favour a compass that points to the exit, or a bigger idol, which is the little skull you hold in your left hand, constantly leaking its contents, the life essence that you replenish only by slaying others in your path. Faster reloads, say, or bouncing bullets, or a switch to the deceptively powerful knife. Each time you reach a pool, you get a choice of three random bonuses or alternative weapons. It's a first-person shooter in which you race from a dripping pool of glowing energy, to another pool, dodging and killing monsters along the way. And when it takes hold, you can read it subconsciously like the code of the Matrix. ![]() It is an orgiastic, potentially seizure-inducing explosion of lights. If not for The Bundle, this game would have been the best deal of the year. There is a space in your mind between reflex and conscious decision, between panic and triumph. Its hypnotic rhythms, its lurid colours, its cacophony of violence and strangled, somehow endlessly escalating guitars. Post Void is about letting the game take you. That never mattered even when I thought it was true, but it isn't. I was probably too old to ever be good at it. Post Void, I had thought, was about being fast. I have only reached the void while drunk. ![]()
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