Recent reviews by Wormerine

Hot Lava is an enjoyable little game, though I feel it is not on par with the other Klei titles. It is light on content, and it being a 3D game, it feels rougher then what one would expect from the studio. However, it is still quite fun.

Hot Lava is a First Person Platformer, themed about The Floor is Lava game – that means all of the four main worlds are familiar places (playground, school, supermarket, home) spiced with imaginary lava and obstacles. Main focus of the game seems to be speedrunning, and if it is your jam you might squeeze quite a bit of playtime out of your buck. There are also items to collect, skins and sticker to unlock.

Beside that the game has modding support, allowing for custom areas and tracks to be made. As usual, content on offer varies in quality, but some of them are pretty decent.

Might hold some nostalgia value to Sonic fans, but as a new comer to the series, I found it to be an underwhelming platformer, with clunky and unresponsive controls and archaic designs, like arcade leftover "lifes" system.

It’s one of those mixed review, rather than straight up negative ones.

When I tried DS2 for the first time, I did it straight after completing DS1. I bounced of the game pretty hard. The drop in quality was quite noticeable and changes in design, some subtle some pretty noticeable made me quit after couple hours.
After some time have passed I craved more Dark Souls, so I reinstalled the game and gave it a second go.

The basic systems of DS are still intact and in some aspects they are improved. It is an engaging combat system, and DS2 is still one of the better action/RPGs you can play. However, it undermines it’s design in couple different ways, without a good excuse to do so.

One of the most damaging things, in my opinion, is the change to how health is treated. The core gameplay loop of DS was moving safely between bonfires – you had a limited amount of healing items in the form of estus flasks: those would cover for misplays on your part. This meant health available to you was limited, and encouraged thoughtful and skillful play. On the other hand, game respected your health and very rarely damaged you in unfair way.

DS2 in addition to estus flask, has consumables which you can carry up to 99 at all time (not to mention more power version of those), and which are pretty cheap to buy. The reason for that, is that the game loves to ambush you in the most merciless ways, and enemies are often designed in a way which makes it really unlikely you will come out of engagement unscathed. Some bosses continuasly damage you by their very presence. That lowered greatly my engagement with the game, as I stopped caring about not getting hit – because at anytime I had plenty of healing items and because game so often takes your health unfairly, I started blaming it for unfair hits even when being sloppy.

Another big step down is the enemy design – for the most part you face dudes in armor, and as the result most locations feel very samey. There is no feeling of growing in power, or facing more dangerous foes – whenever you are in early or late game area it feels the same, just enemy HP and damage is more bloated.

The game loves to cover its lack of interesting and challenging enemy design, by throwing you against hordes of enemies, or altering some core aspects of game – some enemies seem to be impossible to interrupt or/and have unlimited stamina. Mass enemy attacks rarely have interesting compositions – often it is just multiple enemies of the same type hoping to overpower you by surprise.

Level design isn’t great either – visually it’s all over the place. Some locations are stunning, other remind me of plain PS1 titles. There are few areas with more intricate design, but most of them are very straightforward, and some have gimmicks which are barely explored. The worst part however, is that the way they are connected makes no logical sense – it’s clear that they designed different locals in separation and then slapped them together.

This lack of level cohesion, and complete lack of direction to speak of, makes most of the game aimless – you are told to hint 4 big souls, and next 40 hours or so, will be spend meandering through random locals hoping for you to stumble upon one of those bosses.

DLC content for this game fair much better, and shows how much the game can improve with a coherent level design. Overall bosses were also much better in DLCs, and at least the first one has a devend enemy variety. This content is the main reason I would recommend giving DS2 a go, as the base game is fairly underwhelming. Unless you really crave for more DS, and you find much lesser DS better then nothing.

XCOM2 recognizes what worked about 2012 XCOM REBOOT and expands its strengths while patching some of the issues.

While the game core remains the same there are many improvements throughout – UI is more helpful, classes are better designed, enemies are more interesting, combat more balanced, and campaign offers more choice in how you can progress through it.

XCOM2 even took some cues from Long War mod, and implemented enemy design were enemy types stay relevant throughout majority of the game, rather than appearing in difficulty waves - making enemy composition more and more interesting as the game goes on.

While not quite solved, XCOM2 attempts to soften the impact that the “pod” activation mechanic had, by giving you scouts to allow for a more rapid movement throughout the map. At the same time it introduces mission timers to keep players on their toes. This second addition doesn’t work very well in the base game, due to the binary nature of the design – considering how common they are, the game encourages a very limited scope of strategies.

This limited tactical flexibility, shallow “strategy” layer acting more like a shop and waiting room in-between missions, and Firaxis’ really tight control over campaign progression/enemy placement/mission design means the game offers little replayability.

Luckily WotC addresses most of my complains adding new stuff to do in the strategy layer, improves soldier management by adding a much needed fatigue mechanic, stuffs the game with plenty of new mission types (often replacing timers, with a better mechanic) and adds various mission modifiers to keep things interesting, not to mention Chosen, which are there to ensure some of your units will spend time healing wounds.

It is still a spectacle over depth approach, but makes for a fun, easy to recommend experience.

If there were two things I would criticise: while graphics improved a lot since XCOM1, I am not fond of the graphic design. XCOM1 had a very neat look to it, while XCOM2 seems... confused. While I was never able to quite nail it, the whole thing just doesn't come together. Cities look bland, aliens often feel out of place in their enviroment, even if it's their enviroment.

The second thing I disliked is the writing - XCOM1 characterization was received well, and XCOM2 multiplied the amount of talk thrown at you. However, unlike its predecessor, the staff of the Avenger has very little personality, and without relatable setting to fall back into, XCOM2 story, feels like expensive bunch of gibberish, sprinkled with some really cringy jokes. WotC only worsened the situation by added so many people and aliens talking at you, without having anything of note to say. I found the obsessive habit of praising commander irritating.

Celeste is yet another pixel art precision platformer, but it also happens to be the best one I played in a while, probably since SuperMeatBoy.

Celeste relies on a simple, reliable control scheme, consisting of moving left and right, jumping, occasional ducking and an 8-directional dash. Controls are tight, and it feels great to just move around. Each of the chapters introduce some unique mechanic, which will make you change how you use available to you skill set.

Celeste is a challenging game, but manages to be fun all the way through. The game doesn’t satisfy with presenting tough challenges, but makes sure to make them interesting as well. None of the mechanics overstay they welcome. However, if you don’t enjoy honing your skills you might not like it – the game does allow you to play on a slower speed to give you more time to react. I didn’t use the mechanic so can’t vouch for this feature personally.
Unlike most platformers of this kind, Celeste also has a rather sweet story.

Just the main campaign should take you about 10+ hours on your first playthrough making it an easy recommendation.

In addition there are collectibles and two extra remixes of each chapter (think of the latter as dark worlds from SuperMeatBoy – however, they don’t use the same level design, rather push your mastery of mechanics introduced in the base chapter even further.) Completing those will extend the playtime considerably.

Controller is strongly recommended, especially as some of the later mechanics are designed for an analog stick.

Great art style, great theme, really shallow and repetitive gameplay.

You play as convicts, who are sent out to find parts to repair their prison ship, so it can leave the nebula. You will be boarding derelict ships, scavenging for items, ammo, food and fuel. When you die another convict will be send out, but the items you collected and upgrades you build will be preserved.

It’s is a fun experience for an evening or two, but it becomes quite dull afterwards. Procedural generation is very modest – ship layouts are predetermined, and what changes are enemy composition and modifiers. Unfortunately, every ship plays the same, and modifiers and enemies dictate how annoying each ship will be, but never shake things up in an interesting way.

Similarly, traits of each of the convicts get are uninspired – they may be better or worse at some things, some might take more/less damange from different sources. There are also some novelty traits, like colorblind, whch makes everything black&white, or different character hights. Those are cute at first but they quickly loose charm. Because items and upgrades are permanent death is irrelevant, and games lacks tension roguelites tend to thrive on. You always have same weapons and upgrades at your disposal, and traits don't shake things up, so every prisoner run feels the same.

As it is often the case with roguelites with permanent upgrades, succeeding in the game is not about you getting better, but about running the treadmill for long enough. As you play you will be getting more ammo, more weapons, more health, you will be able to hack turrets for less resource. My play style hasn’t changed much since my first run, and that’s because the game has very little depth to it. In this genre it’s a game killer.

The game might become more interesting with updates or expansion, but I fear only a major redesign of its core mechanics might address its underlying issues. Offers enough to be picked up on a sale.

"Bastion" was an indie megahit, "Transistor" a beautiful, clever, but ultimately confused and unsatisfying adventure. "Pyre" is the most original and ambitious game Supergiant made so far, and in my opinion: their best one yet.

There is certain discomfort when starting up "Pyre" for the first time - being an original creation, one doesn't know what to expect. It is difficult to describe what the game is, without spoiling things which are better discovered by oneselve. My elevator pitch would be, it is a jRPG inspired adventure, were "combat" isn't lethal, but carries narrative consequences. While gameplay in "Pyre" is solid (both in terms of party management, character variety and clever twist on progression by unique way of counteracting powercreep), the narrative is "Pyre's" main strength (aside from visuals and music, but at this point this is what you expect from Supergiants' Jen Zee and Darren Korb respectively). It is a slow burner, compared to its precedessor, and features a wider cast of well developed characters and bigger emphasis on player interaction. While the plot might not sounds too exciting if I were to describle it, the gradual revelation of world's mythos, consistantly increasing cast of characters (be it allies and enemies) and strong thematic consistency make it a journey worth experiencing.

This might be the least helpful and stuck-up-its-own-bum review. But gosh, it is difficult to recommend this game without talking spoilers. It's good. Buy it. Play it. Thank me later.

I think that if I wish a game would end already while being somewhere halfway through it, it's an indication to not recommend it.

I have been enjoying this wave of Japanese console classics coming over to PC and I hope to see more of them.
Catherine is an original and one-of-a-kind title, so that's a shame that it is not very good. What we have here is a mix of quite passive narrative experience seperated by a block pushing puzzle game.

What's good - game looks nice, artsyle is great, voice acting and overall presentation is superb.

For a story driven experience I don't think the story is good enough. It starts really promising, setting up characters and some bizzare supernatural events. Unfortunately, it doesn't go any further than that - characters don't get developed, entire drama could be resolved within seconds if the main character were such a complete ♥♥♥♥. Granted, I am halfway through the game, so if it take a sharp turn into interesting territory I will update this review. As it is, I lost interest in the story, as every "day" is on repeat and nothing interesting happens. I feel like I am killing time before the ending comes. Your narrative choices revolve around you making decisions on how to respond to people but it falls heavily into "Paragon, Renegade" trap from Mass Effect - you will know early who you want your character to be, so the game boils down to figuring which answer fits to your CKatherine, without provoking engagement or deeper thought.

The puzzle part of the game is ok. I like puzzles, and core mechanics are fine. However, controls feel very unrefined and too often I end up doing something I don't want to or going the other direction that I wish I would. There are some annoying imperfections like camera swooping to show what the boss is doing, preventing you from seeing were you are going or what tiles you are stepping on.

What really kills the puzzle sections for me is the poor port of the game. Not that it is broken per say - but high framerate in Catherine is a lie. Gameplay of this game must have been locked to 30FPS and not matter if you run the game with 60 or 150FPS, gameplay feels sluggish and awkward as animations and enviroment still moves at 30FPS. Considering how game pressures you to move quickly it just feels awful to play.

If you played Yakuza 0 and crave more Yakuza 0, this is more Yakuza 0. If you didn't play Yakuza 0, you should play it first, instead.

Yakuza Kiwami is a fairly faithful remake of the first Yakuza game, using engine and assets from Yakuza 0. Gameplay is smooth and enjoyable as it is the same as Y0, with some extra polish and minor improvements. That’s works to its benefit and detriment as a lot of gameplay mechanics and minigames are simply moved over. If you played Y0 there will be a lot of déjà vu, and it can be a bit frustrating to fight the same fights and do the same minigames all over again. Most of them are optional activities though.

However, at its core it is a game from 2005 with dated narrative and quest design. There is a noticeable drop in quality, when it comes to character development and ability to juggle multiple story threads at once. Overall, while much simpler than Y0, the narrative of YK can be convoluted and gets constantly sidetracked. Characters get introduced and dropped at a whim and one of the big baddies of the game gets introduced just before the fight. The opening is dreadful, it starts with a fetch quest, trying to build up relationship between characters and failing badly at it. That’s one of the reasons (aside of overall quality) I would recommend playing Y0 first, as it better sets up relationship and characters for YK, than YK does. Expect a lot of melodrama, and unfortunately nonsensical behaviour to make this forced melodrama happen.

Side activities as well, are much more basic. Not a problem, but just a keep in mind you are buying a game from 2005 with a makeover, rather than brand new title. For the price, I still think it’s very much worth it.

Seeing it on sale for one pound I decided to give it a shot as the sequel is on its way out.

Very mediocare title. What you get is about 10 hours long corridor shooter with short driving between individual levels. It seems like once an ambitious title, which got cut and downsized a bit too much. It doesn't really work as a decent shooter - repetitive level design (both gameplay and visual) and really low enemy variety hurt it real bad. It makes an attept to be an arena shooter at some points, but enemy composition simply isn't interesting enough to make it work. One the plus sight, you get plenty of weapons at every given time, and various ammo for each weapon, but I can't say I found much use for most of them - their role overlap too much, and rifle works just too well for ranged enemies (with occasional sniping) and shotgun works best for anything that gets close. There are some really cool things done with enemy behaviour (enemies trying to dodge your shots or enemies hiding behind an enemy with shield for protection) but except for the initial "wow" moment they don't introduce much gameplay wise. Driving is awkward and car combat is extremely shallow. Story and world building is hardly there.

Sequel looks promising though.