amphibious_ReViews

Super Kirby Clash released as an upgraded version of a 3DS title that I had already played a little bit. Because of this, I already knew most of what I should expect. However, I'm a sucker for free spinoffs; there's something about little side-experiences that I enjoy, so playing this game was practically inevitable. The gameplay loop is simple - choose a fighter class, team up with three other Kirby's , fight a boss, then upgrade your gear with the rewards. This is fun at first, especially since local multiplayer is an option. Unfortunately, after a little while, I found that it got pretty dull. This is exaggerated by the fact that the gear upgrades are gated behind a premium currency, making progression slow. Super Kirby Clash partially makes up for this by adding an additional game mode not present in it's predecessor. Although it is almost identical in gameplay, it does have different bosses and challenges to mix things up. Both modes have energy bars attached th

Utilizing the fancy Super FX chip in the game cartridge, Star Fox brought true 3D to a system that shouldn't have been capable of it. For that alone, this game is novel and exciting. The next console generation brought native 3D to the table, and with it a quasi-remake of this game with the same story and massive gameplay improvements. However, there is a strange magic to playing something three-dimensional on the SNES . Star Fox is an on-rails space shooter where you play as an anthropomorphic fox attempting to stop an evil mastermind and save the galaxy. Each level is pretty straightforward, tasking players with dodging obstacles, defeating enemies, and protecting allies before taking on a large robotic boss. The game mixes things up a little by providing players with different levels depending on the difficulty they choose, so you have to be skilled to see everything. I definitely found the game to be challenging, but I thought it was well-balanced as a whole, and the environ

The Tetris series has more than it's fair share of spinoffs, so it's never much of a surprise when a new one is announced. However, I don't think anyone saw this one coming. Tetris 99 released while the battle royale genre, led by the likes of PUBG and Fortnite , was absolutely exploding. Every online shooter was trying to capitalize on the last-man-standing action. Then Nintendo blindsided the world by announcing this gem as a free title exclusive to subscribers to their online service. Competitive Tetris games have been around for awhile, so the basic concept wasn't profound, but the fact that Tetris was diving into the battle royale scene was enough to draw plenty of attention. I picked up Tetris 99 right away, because I like Tetris , I was intrigued by the concept, and the price was right. After trying to get my Tetris fix from the Puyo Puyo Tetri s demo, this was a welcome change. It complemented my style of playing in short, intense bursts, and the multipl

  Robotron 2084 places the player in the middle of arena-like battlefields surrounded by dozens of evil robots and a few helpless humans. Your job is to protect the last survivors and destroy the waves of robots for as long as possible. Like all arcade games, Robotron is designed to give you a taste of glory, and then kick your butt for your quarters. To keep a long story short, it does it's job well. When I first picked the game up, I was immediately reminded of my childhood favorite, Smash TV . Both share a similar hard-as-nails, arena-focused, run-and-gun style, and, although it is more basic, I had fun playing Robotron . However, I did find myself wishing for something more. Fortunately, I have options, just not from this title. Playing Robotron 2084 was a fun few minutes, but that's all it really took for me to get what this game had to offer. I appreciated that it contributed to the genre that birthed games like Smash TV, but it's no longer the best option. It'

Picross is a prolific series of nonogram puzzle games, and I'm constantly surprised that they're able to come up with hundreds of new puzzles for each title. Although it's not the first entry in the series, Picross DS can be credited with bringing the series back to the West after Mario's Picross flopped, and I'm grateful that it did! Picross has become a go-to series for me thanks to the simple pick-up-and-play style, and the addicting buzz from solving each puzzle. Picross DS is loaded with cute grid-based drawings to uncover, and it has enough content to last for ages. I think part of it's success can be attributed to it's accessibility. The game guides players from easier puzzles to harder ones, allowing them to learn the ropes and develop strategies as they progress. It also allows play via the buttons or the touch screen, depending on player preference. As I prefer using buttons, I'm glad that touch screen play wasn't forced as it was with

Easily the definitive NES entry in it's series, Super Mario Bros. 3 improves upon just about every aspect of it's predecessors. Sprites have gone from obvious blocks of pixels to something resembling actual drawings. New powerups and a wider range of enemies provide more variety to the gameplay. An overworld provides a unique level of control over the adventure, which has an improved plot with new kingdoms to save and additional antagonists to defeat. I also found myself smiling at how clever some of the levels were designed, which I hadn't really done with Mario's other 8-bit adventures. Functionally, Mario 3 has a lot in common with the first game in the series, and players who are used to stomping on koopas or picking up mushrooms will feel right at home here. However, the designers seemed to have a full grasp on the capabilities of their hardware by the time this game was made, and it shows. No longer are there only four levels in each of the eight worlds, as m

This is where it really gets good. This is like the Captain America: Civil War of Cube Escape games. It's not the grand culmination that we can look forward to in Infinity War , but everything we have seen so far is starting to come together and make some sense. Plus, new revelations about the game's universe are abundant (and gladly accepted!). With the best puzzle structure so far, and a story that creates as many new questions as it answers, Case 23 is an absolutely phononenal title. Playing as detective Dale Vandermeer, you are tasked with investigating a murder (the victim happening to be the protagonist of Seasons ), but you soon figure out there is something much more serious going on. That's when the real juice of the Rusty Lake universe starts being revealed. Recognizable locales, characters, and motifs appear, all within a bundle of well-designed puzzles and a delightfully eerie story. Case 23 embodies exactly what I love about the Cube Escape series, and it

Dig Dug is a straightforward game about digging tunnels and popping baddies. Like it's arcade peers, the concept is simple enough to pick up pretty quickly, but the difficulty is no joke, and strategy is necessary if you want to make it more than two levels in. Separating it from  many other Namco titles at the time is the delightful bright colors and fun designs. Little touches like the changing dirt colors and the little flowers growing above-ground make progression that much more enjoyable. Lucky for the little enemies, I'm not the greatest exterminator, so I don't tend to make it far when playing, but I do have fun for the little bit that I survive. Losing so constantly puts a damper on my enjoyment, but I'm not committed enough to the game to work on my strategy, so I won't knock it for it's difficulty. I do have to give my kudos for the design though. It's rare for games from this era to excite me with their grpahics so much, but there's somethin

As a Japan-exclusive Famicom title, Wagyan Land was a strange discovery for me. Combining platforming levels with word-puzzle-centered bosses, this game is truly unique amongst its 8-bit peers. The platforming sections were also pretty fun, as the player can only stun enemies in the beginning, meaning dodging is everything. Unfortunately, my Japanese is still extremely limited, making the boss battles impossible without the rewind feature. The boss battles were also only ever one of two similar mini-games, making them stale in a way that the platforming segments never were. When adventuring through the levels, Wagyan Land did a great job of providing variety in environment, enemies, and structure. The addition of collectibles that make you temporarily invincible during a level and special upgrades at the end of certain stages mixed up the gameplay even more. Ultimately, Wagyan Land is actually a pretty short game, but it provides a unique experience that I haven't seen from any

Tetris established itself as one of the greatest puzzle games ever made very early in it's life, and it has held that position with minimal competition ever since. In addition to the addicting gameplay, Tetris's  success may be attributed to the fact   it is extremely prolific, being playable on almost anything, from consoles to calculators. It also maintains interest by regularly releasing spin-offs that shake up the gameplay. However, they all generally maintain the structure of the original. Tasking players with fitting falling blocks together in horizontal lines, the basic gameplay is deceptively simple, but strategy is required, especially when the game starts to speed up. I have developed a technique that works for me, but I'm always trying to get better, which makes Tetris  engaging, even after playing it for ages. I have a lot of fun with  Tetris , especially competitively, but even when it's broken down to it's most simple form, it's addicting. Plus,

Hard-as-nails platformers don't often find a home on touchscreens due to the need for precise controls, but that didn't stop Ubisoft from giving it a shot. The controls are surprisingly tight, and the try-die-repeat loop is actually pretty fun, as long as you don't have Internet access. Otherwise, the ads become unbelievably invasive, forcing a 5-30 second pause between gameplay at almost every death (in a game where death is designed to happen a lot). To make matters worse, reports from other players claim that paying to remove ads doesn't actually work. I was able to actually play the game once I turned data off, and I ended up enjoying it for a bit. Escape encouraged me to learn the patterns and structures of levels, and I felt myself improve as I played, which was quite fulfilling. However, after 30 levels, I started to notice reused level pieces; after 60, I stopped feeling challenged; after 70, I was bored. Prince of Persia: Escape offers an enjoyable time-w

When I first heard about Pokémon Café Mix , I thought that it looked like a cute little game, but was probably just another Pokémon Shuffle . For context, Shuffle was an early free-to-play Pokémon puzzle game that was heavily pay-to-win, making it a pretty disappointing title. However, I'm a sucker for free, so I thought I may as well try  Café Mix , despite my low expectations. After playing it, I think it may be the most enjoyable free Pokémon game after Go ! The puzzle format is a physics-based gimmick-oriented icon-matching game. Put simply, it's Tsum Tsum meets Candy Crush . I found this game to be so delightful because the puzzles are structured in such a way that they provide a challenge, but are never unfair. As of this review, I'm almost 200 stages in without having used a single power-up, save for the one required in a training stage. For contrast, after a few dozen levels in Shuffle , I was using more than one paid item per stage. Café Mix is also absolutely

Probably the strangest mainline Mario title, Super Mario Bros. 2 gave America an unforgettable romp through Mario's deadly dreams. Starting as the Japan exclusive Doki Doki Panic , Mario 2 dropped the classic goombas and koopas in favor of  now-familiar baddies like birdos and shy guys that weren't even meant for the Mario universe. Mario's defeat-an-enemy-by-jumping-on-it superpower is also gone, replaced instead by the ability to pick up and throw almost everything. But most exciting, you can actually play as four different characters, each with their own abilities! Now, Nintendo claimed that they released this title in the US because it was easier than what we now know as The Lost Levels , but I'm not sure I got that. The game was definitely still difficult, which was exacerbated by the length of the levels. Plus the evil masks that chase you when you pick up a key are real jerks and I hate them. Despite my issues with the difficulty, this was a fun, albeit unorth

I think Harvey's Box is a hilarious representation of the Rusty Lake Universe. However, where Arles suffered in world-building, this title suffers in puzzles. Playing as the pet of the protagonist from the first two games was understandably delightful, but the puzzles often felt like they were trying to be annoying. That's not to say every puzzle was terrible. There was still plenty of Cube Escape magic to enjoy, and the now-familiar eerie atmosphere is still extremely engrossing. With the weakest puzzles in the series thus far, Harvey's Box is not the best in terms of gameplay, but it helps to develop the world in a unique way that I think can't be missed. It was also pretty short, as Cube Escape games tend to be, so the struggle with a few bad puzzles won't last too long. Overall it was an enjoyable little game, and it has my recommendation. The game can be played online here (as of 9/4/20): http://www.rustylake.com/room-escape-games/cube-escape-harveys-box.

Bioshock combines an eerie atmosphere, an engaging plot, morality-based decision-making, and phenomenal gameplay to create a hugely creative and enjoyable FPS experience. I found myself constantly being pulled deeper into the underwater dystopia of Rapture, and I almost wanted to stay as much as I wanted to escape! The gameplay centers around shooting your way through the surviving gene-splicing lunatic residents of the submerged city, but the real fun comes when you start splicing your own genes. Known as "plasmids," Bioshock gives players the opportunity to use inhuman powers to melt walls of ice, disarm traps, swarm enemies with bees, and more! However, most of the better plasmids need to be purchased using the genetic currency, "adam," which can only be collected from the mutated little girls of Rapture known as "little sisters." Bioshock challenges players to decide whether they want to rescue the girls and receive a small portion of adam, or mur

Being pretty much THE reason to own a Nokia phone in the 90's, Snake  has truly earned itself a place in gaming history. When it comes to the gameplay, the mechanics are simple; you are tasked with directing a moving snake around an enclosed arena so that it can eat and grow without running into a wall or its own grotesquely long body. The game starts out pretty easy, as the snake is short enough to be very easy to dodge. However, as it progresses, more strategy is required to avoid hitting the snake's tail while still traversing the small playing field. That mechanic is what I think makes Snake  unique amongst other arcade-style games. Games like Tetris or Pac-Man  force players to act faster by increasing the game's speed. Snake  forces the players to act faster by punishing their success with a longer snake. The speed never changes, but the playing field effectively shrinks. I never really spend a lot of time playing Snake  in any one play session, but the intelligent