Recent reviews by Martonimos

Kisima Inŋitchuŋa may play like other puzzle-platformers, but it's an experience quite unlike anythine else out there. Its gameplay consists mostly of well-crafted puzzles, using a few simple concepts (the basic actions of each character and the later addition of a magic bola) in interesting ways. Switching between Nuna and Fox for single-player was breezy and effective, although I imagine the game would be much more fun with a second player. A few bugs and unclear objectives brought the experience down, but the gameplay is quite good overall.
It's the presentation that really sets Never Alone apart, though. The game is up there with the finest in terms of atmosphere, with beautiful music elevating the immersion. The graphics are well-done, although the scrimshaw-styled cutscenes outshine the real-time graphics of the game. I wish they'd gone all the way with the art style, like Okami or Muramasa, but the spirits that appear in the game do use the scrimshaw style, and look beautiful and eerie against the more realistic backgrounds. Even if you're unfamiliar with Iñupiat lore, the game does an excellent job of drawing you in, even providing interviews with Iñupiaq people (called Cultural Insights) to explain some of the legends and inspirations behind the game.
The experience is hurt by its simplicity and short length. However, it's still a great experience overall. It's a great idea, and one worth supporting in the hopes of seeing more games follow in its footsteps, bringing indigenous legends to the world in a brand new way. Besides which, it's a pretty good game, one I wholeheartedly recommend you try.

Rochard makes a great first impression, then completely fails to live up to it. The blues music, gravity-manipulating gameplay, and Metroidvania-esque exploration of the opening quickly give way to a tired plot, repetitive puzzles, and a soundtrack that sounds like it could be pulled from any sci-fi game or movie without having any personality of its own. Worst of all, the game ends its generic, uninspired story with a cliffhanger for a sequel that may never materialize-not that I can say I'd be all that keen to play it if it ever did. There's good stuff in Rochard, and if you don't care about the things I've mentioned, you may like it, but I can't say I enjoyed it enough to recommend it to anyone.

Brothers is a beautiful piece of interactive storytelling, its best moments ranking right up there with Dear Esther's and Bastion's. The developers took the idea of controlling two characters with a single gamepad, something other developers would have turned into a soulless, leaderboard-driven, low-budget cash-in, and instead delivered a fable unlike anything else in gaming. The only real problem is that it lays on the tragedy a little too thickly, to the point where it stops being emotionally engaging and just becomes depressing. Also, they're not messing around with that T rating; this is not a game to let young children play unsupervised. Other than that, this is one of the few games that really goes out of its way to establish an emotional connection through the player in both story and gameplay, and succeeds marvelously.

This is one of those games that gets everything right. The strategic one-on-one combat, the acrobatic platforming, the open exploration, and the cel-shaded art style are all wonderful here. However, it's the relationship between the Prince and Elika that's the real star of the show; their dialogue, which you can initiate at any time with the push of a button, showcases their evolution from antagonistic to flirtatious to genuinely caring for one another. This game recalls some of the best parts of classics llike Okami, Metroid Prime 3, and of course, earlier Prince of Persia games. Why Ubisoft has yet to produce a proper sequel to this game is beyond me.

If your typical big-budget action game is the interactive equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster, Dear Esther is the interactive equivalent of a poem. It packs more meaning into its short length than most games do in ten or more hours, meaning which is, itself, interactive, since it must not only be put forth by the developer, but interpreted by the player. Haunting and beautiful in the same way Myst was, but lacking all the frustration, Dear Esther will be sticking with me for years to come. I've played many games that have explored the boundaries of interactivity, and, despite not giving you much to do, this is perhaps the best one yet.

UPDATE: There is now a "realMYST Masterpiece Edition. I haven't played it myself, but imagine I'd recommend it over this if I had. Original review follows.

An excellent update of an already excellent game, it's hard to recommend RealMYST whole-heartedly. Mostly, the video sequences are much better in Myst Masterpiece; here, due to the real-time 3D (as opposed to pre-rendered screens), they look pixelated and are sometimes hard to hear. However, nearly everything else is fantastic, and you really do feel like this is Myst the way it was meant to be played. I'd recommend this version above all others (make sure you run it in the proper compatibility mode, though), and if you want to see how the video sequences were originally, you can probably find them on YouTube et al.

This game is a true work of art. You've probably heard about the narration, the gravely-voiced stranger who tells you what you're doing as your doing it, but what's remarkable is how effective this narration is at describing the world--the world that's been destroyed. Excellent action-RPG gameplay and an interesting art style work with the narration and fantastic soundtrack to create a true masterpiece. And yes, the soundtrack is fantastic; if you have the opportunity, pick it up by all means.