amphibious_ReViews

I'm really into getting games for free, so much so that I'll check online communities every once in a while just to learn about deals I may have missed when checking on my own. That's how I learned about the closed beta for Google's "Project Stream" that came with a complimentary copy of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which I then applied for immediately. I was accepted into the beta testing group, and while I only had a few opportunities to sit down with it, Project Stream left me extremely impressed. I was playing a full, triple-A game through my browser with almost no input delay. The possibilities that I had floating in my brain for the future of that technology were incredibly exciting. Eventually, Project Stream graduated out of its beta to become the ill-fated Google Stadia, which I tried so hard to love. I bought multiple games on it and I tried the"Pro" subscription, I just never had a good enough reason to play it over my, more convenient, S

It was only a few days after Christmas and I was exploring the capabilities of my new retro handheld. I had already experimented with the usual emulation and native-run games, so I started to dive deeper when something caught my eye. A few years previous, I had learned about PICO-8, a fantasy console that interested me, but that I had never gotten around to doing much with. Casually listed amongst the consoles my new handheld could emulate, PICO-8 sat ready to bid for my attention once again. This time, I couldn't resist the invitation, so I downloaded the only game for the "console" that I knew off the top of my head and I didn't put it down until I had beaten it. The original Celeste game is a short, yet challenging, precision platformer. Your goal is to scale a wintry mountain through thirty stages of increasingly complex platforming challenges, mastering your full array of movement capabilities along the way. You'll encounter walls to cling to, gaps to clear,

Occasionally, Google will surprise me with a new game to play. I'll be using one of their products for one thing or another, and then find a game that I wasn't expecting. Normally, my encounter rate for these games is pretty spread out, but Hop Mania ended up being the start of a relatively rapid burst of Google games that I discovered around the same time, each housed in a different product. Found within the Google Play Games app, Hop Mania is one of the "offline" games that come built-in, alongside the likes of solitaire and Snake . I don't think I even meant to play it for more than a minute or two, but the familiar gameplay coupled with the eerie atmosphere kept me around for a little longer. Seemingly as a tribute to its inspiration, Hop Mania gives you the choice between a frog and a chicken, the mascots of Frogger and Crossy Road respectively, as your playable character. Then you get two on-screen buttons for movement, allowing you to go either forward or

I absolutely love the Galaga series. The gameplay is deceptively simple and incredibly rewarding. Every once in a while, I'll check the Play Store to see if there's finally a good way to get my fix, but I'm always disappointed to find that Galaga Wars is still the only option. I recently decided to give it another chance and it immediately reminded me why I stopped playing so quickly the first time around. Galaga has had some amazing mobile releases in the past, like the Tekken crossover, or the 30th-anniversary collection, but Galaga Wars fails miserably at meeting any of the standards set by its predecessors. The saddest thing about this game to me is that it actually has the foundation to be a pretty great mobile interpretation of an arcade classic, but someone decided that intrusive ads and predatory micro-transactions were more important than the integrity of the franchise. It's almost unbelievable how many ways they try to squeeze something out of you. Even the ve