Recent reviews by Wormerine

"The best stealth game ever made?"

Not sure about that. I would still give this title to Thief 2. That said, Klei seems to have a talent of creating brilliant games no matter what genre they reach for and MoN is no different.

Great artstyle mixing western-style animation and Japanese themes. This 2d stealth game allowing for variety of approaches. You want to sneak? You can. You want to murder everyone in the room? You can. You want to murder one guard and hung him high to terrify other guards, who the fall to their deaths, or shoot other guards. You can.
While levels aren't complex as in earlier mentioned original Thief games or Hitman: Blood Money, they are designed well enough to allow for different paths and encourage exploration. Add to that really solid game mechanics which allow you to make your own path if you feel like it, by distracting enemies or taking out guards in ways not specifficaly designed by creators.

The UI makes sure that whatever you do you know hom much noise you make and who and how can hear you. Thanks to this you always know how much noise you make and can plan your moves accordingly.

Anything bad? The writing could be better. While the story is pretty solid and the little "Haiku scrolls" you find in every level are brilliant, I am not a big fan of the dialogue in the game. It is just too dry and character-less.

Still, a must buy for anyone even remotely interested in stealth games.

A brilliant first person puzzle game. Unless you hate puzzles there is nothing to dislike here. Minimalistic visual design, extremely clever puzzles - some of which force you to throw away any preconceptions of how the game works. If you like to exercise your brain give it a go.

WARNING! The game uses DirectDraw technology. That means that if you run anything newer then Windows XP you will encouter problems with this game. I have Windows 7 x64 and managed to bring the game to mostly playable level (the game slows for a second down everytime I change a character or choose a skill to use.

That said the game itself is quite excellent. The artstyle still looks just fine even though it is an old game. The 6 characters you will play as have variad skills, which you can use in creative way. There are no easy or scripted way through enemies and you will have to make your own way using tools given to you. The game is hard and you will have to use quicksave a lot on your first playthrough. Still, it is a great game in a long forgotten genre of games. It was fun back in 2001 and hold up really well to this day.

EDIT: Surprisingly, the game has been updated to work on modern systems. What you have here is an excelent game from a nieche genre, which until recent "Shadow Tactics: Blades of Shogun" (also strongly recommended) has not been made anymore. Keeping my fingers crossed to see more of those.

Really fun multiplayer turn-based game. Beautiful artstyle, neat combat system and so far a well designed game. While there are microtransactions it is NOT a pay to win title. You can accelerate your ingame currency income, but as your team is matched against enemies of the same team strengh it is not a problem.

Worth a try. You might just love it. Now I will have to try the singleplayer Banner Saga.

Really, really, really good stuff.

Dragonfall is an isometric cyber-punk RPG, with turn-based combat, colourful artstyle and great writing. While the original campaign (Dead's Man Switch) was a let down with very linear campaign and low interactivity Dragonfall fully makes up for it.

It is a great title and worth checking out for any RPG fans. Great story with clever twists, interesting companions, impressive world reactivity and fun, well designed combat.

Absolutely brilliant.

Legend of Grimrock brings back to life an old genre of games I am not too familiar with. While it does use some oldfashion gameplay mechanics (like tile based movement) the game does not feel old in anyway. The gameplay is surprisingly clever and engaging. The real time, tile based combat creates an interesting challange forcing the player to dance around navigating in panic the well designed dungeons. It is not an easy game but the challange is fair and rewarding. The puzzles in the game and very creative and quite often challenging. Add to that the great atmosphere and it is a must try.

It is a pretty good game and worth giving a playthrough. It is delightful when it sticks to its roots and allows for a mix of free platforming, exploration, puzzlesolving and combat. The graphics are very imressive and as far as 3D platformets it is one of the best out there.

Where the game stumbles though is in its narrative. It might seem strange to complain about story in a Tomb Raider game as those always used to be silly but this time the story overtakes the gameplay. Expect lots of cutscenes and scripted and on-rails sequences. They often interupt the gameplay and there are times when game restricts your ability of jumping or using weapons. It might not be a problem, if the story wouldn't as bad as it is. The characters are forgetable, Lara's story arch is poorly done. It is at it worse, when it tries to be serious and gritty (which is often.)

If anything, this games gives home for a really good Tomb Raider game in the future. All the elements are there. All crystal dynamics need to do now is to make a Tomb Raider game. More tombs and history, less character abusement. It can be effective, when your characer gets seriously injured once. It get ridiculous when it happens in every major section of the game.

“Less than a sum of its parts.”
Rock Paper Shotgun

Being very fond of Supergiant's previous effort, "Bastion" it is difficult for me to seperate these two games.

„Transistor” is a much more mature game, with in-depth mechanics and wider range of storytelling techniques. The art and sound design, soundtrack, voiceacting are all wondeful. The combat system, which domminates for entire game is an interesting mix of real time and turn based system. Overall, even though it is a fairly short game the quality makes it more than worth the asking price.

However, unlike “Bastion,” “Transistor” does not combine all its assets flawlessly. There is a constant clash between gameplay and story. This time around, the game requires much more filddling in menus and awkward UI design doesn’t help. You will spend a lot of time reading and managing skills, if you want to get most out of the story and combat. On one side it is a good thing allowing for a pretty robust customization but the frequent, lengthy interruptions break the flow of the game. The problem could be reduced by quicker and more intuitive UI design dedicated for mouse and keyboard. Let’s hope it will be addressed in the future.

It is certainly worth playing and it is not a game to be easily forgotten. Supergiant remains one of the most interesting developers out there.

EDIT: After an initial playthrough or two, the Long War Mod is strongly recommended.


A solid reboot of classic UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense. And that says a lot. Not as deep nor replayable as the original but the pace is better and it’s more approachable. The Enemy Within expansion is a must have giving a major boost to the first half of the game. Sadly as a downside the second part of the games gets rather weak in comparison. Game still could use a 2nd big expansion focusing on the late game. Small story DLCs can be skipped. Still a must try for any challenging turn-based strategy fans.