amphibious_ReViews

I decided it was time to jump into DOOM II after I had a couple of friends over and we played though the first episode of DOOM in multiplayer. We foolishly thought we were playing through the sequel (due to a misclick in the menu of the DOOM + DOOM II re-release), so I thought I'd just pick back up where we left off. I was immediately confused by the difference in mission structure between the two games, which helped me realize our mistake. I still wanted to play the game though, so I just started fresh. As a disclaimer, I want to warn you that I did play at the lowest difficulty. If I had the time and the attention span, I could have made it harder and just tried to get good. However, as a dad of two littles, my gaming sessions were just too short for that approach to make sense. Regardless, I am more than content with the way I beat the game because I actually got to see every chapter before I felt like I needed to move on. I know that some people live and die by boomer shooters...

When I booted The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD up for the first time on my Switch 2, I had not expressly intended it to be a part of my Daddy-Daughter Game Night series. My eldest was playing more Tomodachi Life at the time, so I figured she was focused on that, yet I hadn't even cleared the introduction before she saw giant birds on my screen and was locked in. About a third of my time with the game from then on was spent with her as my cheerleader, pointing out interesting things on the screen and listening with rapt attention as I read the game's dialogue with storybook voices. I have heard many times over the years about how frustrated people were with both the controls and the structure of Skyward Sword. As a kid, I was able to play my brother's copy of the Wii original a few times, and I only ever loved it, so I thought I was just immune to such frustrations. Now, playing the HD version as an adult with a lot more experience (and, arguably, less patience) with vi...

Stardew Valley is the kind of game that you can play forever. No matter what you've accomplished in it, there's always something more to pursue. While that sounds pretty neat, it is also the primary reason that I was too intimidated to start playing, instead letting it rot in my Switch library for nearly a decade. I purchased the game back in 2017 when it first launched on the console, and then I let it lie untouched in my periphery until a friend from work insisted that I finally try it. Over 85 hours of gameplay later, I managed to extricate myself from what I now consider to be an all-timer. Stardew Valley is what happens when you let a fan of classic farming sims create a love letter to the genre. With only a passing fling with Friends of Mineral Town under my belt, I have precious little experience with this side of the cozy gaming spectrum, so I wasn't able to fully appreciate all of the decisions that made Stardew Valley. However, the way it kept my mind in a chokeho...

I was at a work cookout when this localization was announced via a Nintendo Direct. Being who I am, I had to have a single earbud in so I could listen to the live presentation as we sat at the picnic tables waiting for the food. I've been known to have some giddy reactions to Nintendo Direct announcements before ( Xenoblade Chronicles 3 comes to mind), but that was always in the privacy of my own home. If it weren't for this cookout, I would have been working remote and my response to this announcement would have likely gone unnoticed by anyone but my cats. Instead, I had to explain to my boss why the official translation of a thirteen year old Japanese-only DS game prompted an audible yelp amidst the picnic table banter. Now, a few years after that embarrassing moment, I've finally beaten the game that many consider one of the best in the Ace Attorney franchise. When the official localization to English was announced, I already had the fan translation of the D...

I'm not usually one for reviewing demos, since I don't think a pared-down experience properly exposes you to the game it represents. I've been known to review them anyway if they're a wholly separate experience, not just a vertical slice or content-limited introduction, but the new Tomodachi Life demo does not fit that bill, so what gives? When I downloaded this demo, I was driven by the nostalgia of receiving the "Move-In Version" for the 3DS game over a decade ago. When I first booted it up, I wanted to show my daughter how silly it was, but I intended to be the one who played it. However, she was immediately so interested that I switched over to her profile and handed her the reigns. What followed was a little girl enjoying a short demo so much that it seemed like a full game through her eyes. She got significantly more time out of it than I would have, and still wants to keep playing around with her Mii islanders. In light of that, I thought this absolute...

Spurred on largely by NintendoLife's Alex Olney, I have purchased most of Siactro's library on Switch. All of their games are detrimentally inexpensive, to the point that I would have thought they were shovelware if I hadn't been told otherwise. First on that list is Toree 3D, which includes the levels from its remix on PC, Toree 3D: Jumbled Jam. While I don't think this first game is at all groundbreaking, its controls are tight and the PS1-inspired graphics are pretty attractive. While I don't have much personal experience with Sonic games yet, I think the inspiration is obvious in the gameplay. There's an emphasis on speed and precision in all of the main stages, with a timer on the top of your screen constantly reminding you of how long you are taking. However, like the only Sonic game that I've beaten so far, the focus was split and the game's speed suffered as a result. Especially within the Jumbled Jam remix stages, there were many times where I h...