amphibious_ReViews

Since its release, Monument Valley intrigued me. The gorgeous minimalist aesthetic combined with the fascinating Escher-inspired puzzles sat in my periphery for years. However, I guess I was never interested enough to drop any coin on it. I only ended up playing it more than 10 years after its initial release because it was included with my Netflix subscription. While I didn't like it enough to feel compelled to buy it outright now that I let my Netflix subscription lapse, I still had a genuinely good time playing it.   Monument Valley has you directing Princess Ida across little puzzle boxes of physical and gravitational impossibilities to return strange artifacts to their pedestals. You'll be responsible for choosing where Ida should go, as well as manipulating the terrain to discover and create new pathways for her. While most of the puzzles take no more than a few minutes, they frequently introduce new features and obstacles, so they remain engaging.   The eerie impossibil...

The Stanley Parable is an absolute roller coaster of a game. The less you know about it, the more you'll get from it, so reader discretion is advised. While I never played the Half-Life 2 mod that spawned the franchise, I did get the standalone release around a decade ago and absolutely loved it. That was before I was writing reviews, so I don't have any written proof, but my memory is still pretty clear. In fact, I liked it enough that I let my boss play it in the office conference room during a holiday party while we waited for the Jackbox group to coalesce (he's over forty years older than me, but he still got a kick out of it). That appreciation for the game never left me, so when the Ultra Deluxe edition was announced for consoles, I knew it would be in my collection someday. With nearly all of the content from the original (only one section of the game has had a major adjustment), alongside more than 100% more new content, this is easily the definitive Stanley Parable...

For over a decade, I have been a head-over-heels fan of Alex and Lindsay Small-Butera's animated web series, Baman Piderman. The absurdist comedy and eclectic animation drew me in immediately, and I've been a loyal fan ever since. I no longer remember how I learned about Later Alligator, but as soon as I found out that Alex and Lindsay were behind it, I was sold. Like most games I buy, this one lingered in my backlog for years, but I was reminded to play it again after an impromptu Baman Piderman watch party with my family. While Alligator New York City and its inhabitants somehow feel more grounded than anything in Baman Piderman ever did, the same creativity permeates the entire game, and it made me cackle like an overtired witch.   Later Alligator plays like a classic point-and-click adventure game, but it's absolutely stuffed to the brim with mini-games. The silent player character is contracted by Pat, a hat-wearing nervous wreck of a gator, to investigate his family, ...

Most of my gaming in 2025 was with Xenoblade Chronicles X. I picked it up on launch day in March, and didn't finish it until early November. Relative to my usual gaming consumption, I hardly played anything else during that time, devoting most of my attention to this release. I entered the game with the expectations that it was going to be a starkly different experience from the rest of the games in my favorite series, but also that I would still like it just about as much. On both accounts, I was nearly correct.   While some of the standards held by the rest of the series are disregarded here, Xenoblade Chronicles X was not as different from the rest of the games as I had anticipated. Because you control a customized character, the story makes room for you to have some agency, even in cutscenes, so the usual TV-show-like quality of the story is lost. One can (and I have) watch a compilation of all the main story cutscenes from any of the other games and it plays like it was design...

I really saw my eldest daughter's video game literacy grow throughout our time playing this game together. I selected it because I remembered sharing the controls with my younger sister when she was too young to play on her own, and I thought my princess-obsessed daughter might get the same kick out of it. At first, she was interested, but just wanted to watch me play or to point out things on the screen. By the end, she had her hands on the whole controller and was pressing most of the buttons by herself! All I did was provide gentle instruction and hold my big hands over her little ones so I could use the joystick. Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey was clearly designed for a younger audience, so don't take it as criticism when I say that it is simplistic and repetitive. The structure was perfect for helping my daughter feel comfortable. In this game, the worlds of a few Disney Princesses have been invaded by mischievous creatures called Bogs. You take control of a young girl...

This is not a review I was hoping to write yet. I genuinely planned on playing through the entirety of Rhythm Heaven Advance when I started it. I was even prepared to struggle. However, I did expect to get good enough at the game that it wouldn't be a battle. Unfortunately, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that I am one of those rhythm-less white guys who can't manage to clap a beat if his life depended on it. I only made it as far as I did in this game (not far) thanks mostly to memorization, and I was not having any fun. I desperately want to like Rhythm Heaven, but I just don't think I'm the right audience.   Simply put, Rhythm Heaven Advance is a collection of mini-games that ask you to hit specific buttons in a rhythm that you can both hear and see. You'll kick flying garbage as a martial artist, march toy soldiers to the order of their commanding officer, pluck hair off of stubbly vegetables, and more. I only saw five of these mini games before I decided i...

I knew that I was going to like the next Final Fantasy in my backlog, but it took me a long while to finally take the plunge. Most of the Final Fantasy's I've beaten in the past have taken a good long while to finish, always in part due to a mid-game motivation slump. To try and avoid that, I wanted to start playing when I knew I had the time to finish it properly. Now, I have good and bad news. The bad news is that I horribly misjudged this game's runtime and didn't even make it to the second half before Xenoblade Chronicles X came out and inevitably split my attention. The good news is that I still beat it, and it managed to become my favorite in the series so far! Final Fantasy VI, like the other even-numbered 2D entries in the series, places a high priority on the game's narrative. However, it also implements some degree of the mechanical freedom seen in FFIII and FFV 's job system. I didn't go back to my previous reviews to confirm this claim, but in m...

It took long enough to finally beat Dadish 3, but I think taking it in chunks was the best approach for me. I don't know what it is, but every once in a while, I just want to work through a punishing platformer. I need to be in the right headspace, but when I am, I crave the rush of finally beating a tough level. Like the other entries in the series, Dadish 3 isn't the most punishing game I've played in the genre, but it is challenging enough to fill that niche for me when I need it. I would also say that this is the most polished and feature-rich game in the series, making it the definitive Dadish experience in my mind.   As expected, Dadish 3 puts you in control of the titular parental root vegetable as he attempts to rescue his delinquent children yet again. This time, it seems like the suspiciously-named Lord Kanrud has something to do with their absence, so you'll need to take him down too. The gameplay is the same as the other 2D Dadish games, but there are a plet...

Blue's Big Musical marks the start of a review series I hope to continue for a long time. I'm calling it "Daddy-Daughter Game Night," and it will consist exclusively of games that I'm playing with my kiddos. While Blue's Clues will always hold a special place in my heart, I doubt I would have even found out this game existed if my eldest daughter didn't love the show too. I sought out any Blue's Clues games I could find to play with her, and this was the standout in terms of both accessibility and show-accuracy. Starting off my new review series strong, both my daughter and I had a ton of fun snuggling up and finding clues together. As it was designed with kids in mind, Blue's Big Musical is unsurprisingly pretty simple. You are granted control of Blue as she and Steve work together to set up a musical in their back yard. Other than the mini-games, most of what you are doing is moving Blue to the left and right and interacting with the characters a...

This is it folks. We've made it. The grand finale. Just over a year ago, spurred on by the release of NetPass, an online resurrection of the 3DS's native StreetPass feature, I decided to beat every game in the StreetPass Mii Plaza. That journey concludes here with Feed Mii. While it took me the most real-life days to beat out of the bunch, it was one of the shortest games in terms of how long I actually played per session. It's thanks to that and the clever premise behind the game that it was one of my favorites in the plaza. Long before I embarked on my Mii Plaza quest, I was playing Puzzle Swap and Find Mii . These two games came packed-in with the software, whereas all the rest were introduced later as paid DLC. Because it was free, I would be surprised if anyone with a 3DS hadn't also invested at least some of their time into Find Mii. That's where this game comes in. Running with the assumption that the heroes in Find Mii were not adventuring on an empty stoma...

Returning to my StreetPass Mii Plaza quest after a multi-month hiatus, I decided I had to adjust my play style for Monster Manor. This game, while initially one of the more engaging choices in the collection, was the primary reason I took a break from StreetPass at the start of the new year. I was consistently spending the most amount of time on Monster Manor with every pass through the plaza, but the gameplay never changed and the finish line always seemed so far out of reach. There is a fake ending about halfway through the base adventure, and if it was a real conclusion, I would have been okay. Instead, my frustration with Monster Manor peaked and my interest quickly started to fade. My restructured strategy felt a little sloppy, but it did speed the game up a bit, giving me the strength to see it through to the end. Monster Manor is an exploration-style game that finds you trapped in a haunted tower. Your challenge is to find the way to the top so you can defeat the master of the m...

I first played Pokémon Trozei on a friend's DS while at a sleepover while I was still in elementary school. I didn't have much time with it, but I loved Pokémon and I was into puzzles, so I just couldn't get this game out of my mind. The 3DS received a digital-only sequel that I bought pretty early on, but it never hit quite the same. Now, closing in on two decades later, I finally buckled down and played the whole campaign. I think my conclusion is that I moderately enjoyed Pokémon Trozei. It has a lot going for it, but it definitely wasn't the juggernaut my nine-year-old brain made it out to be. As a puzzle game, Pokémon Trozei had the opportunity to be mind-numbingly basic and it still would have sold on the Pokémon name alone. Instead, Genius Sonority developed a unique take on the falling-block genre that cleverly took advantage of the still-new Nintendo DS hardware. Using the touch screen, you'll be sliding Pokémon in the bottom five rows as you try to make ma...

After obsessively playing the Pokémon Trading Card Game on two different official clients for the longest time, I finally fell out of love with the competitive scene about a year ago. Since then, I've still enjoyed collecting the cards physically, but I don't have much disposable income to direct their way. The recently released Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket introduced an entirely independent TCG with a focus on collecting that scratches that itch without breaking my wallet. Impressively, it's simplified ruleset also allowed me to play competitively without navigating any of the issues I took with the official game. The elevator pitch for PTCGP is that you get to open two packs of Pokémon cards a day at no cost. While the digital cards aren't one-to-one with their physical counterparts, that's still analogous to a minimum $10 investment you're getting for free. While I appreciate that the other two live-service Pokémon TCG clients supported the full rules and...

I had heard that Balatro was addicting. I had heard that Balatro was a time-sink. Yet, for some reason, I took Balatro on vacation with me when I had intended to clear a pile of short games off of my backlog. As I held my daughter's head up on the plane so she could sleep, I needed to find something to play one-handed, so I booted up this unsuspecting game-of-the-year nominee on my Switch Lite. After that, it was all over. I didn't pick up another game for the rest of my vacation, nor for the two weeks that followed. I have been hooked by games before, but I was drowning in Balatro and I couldn't find the surface.   At first glance, it doesn't look like there's much more to Balatro than there is to something like Spider Solitaire. That's a game that had its claws in me way back when I was still using Windows XP, and I assumed this was going to be similarly addictive. There is so much more than a simple card game going on here, though. I'm only recently disco...

I haven't spent at much time with Trivial Pursuit Live as I typically would have with a game I'm reviewing, but that's for a reason. I attempted to enjoy this game as much as possible, which meant playing it sparingly. The first day I tried it out, I played multiple rounds with my family and realized that playing Trivial Pursuit Live any more than once or twice in a blue moon will shine a much-unwanted spotlight on its many blemishes. However, if you leave the recommended buffer between each session, what you get is a fairly competent game show styled spin-off of the most popular trivia board game in history.   Since I received the Hasbro Game Night bundle as a gift around seven years ago, I've probably played Trivial Pursuit Live an average of once per year. In that time, the game was unceremoniously delisted from every storefront but Xbox and replaced by a sequel that I haven't touched. I can think of a few reasons why Ubisoft might have thought a sequel would be ...

I got Cadence of Hyrule years ago, and its initial announcement actually the catalyst that led me to buy the original Crypt of the NecroDancer. I played Crypt as soon as I bought it, but never got very far. However, thanks to a perpetually growing backlog, it took me until recently to actually play Cadence. Now that I've beaten it (and went back in for seconds), I can say with confidence what a fool I was for sleeping on this game. Simultaneously a surprise indie sequel, a glorious 2D Zelda revival, and a reference-stuffed celebration of both franchises, Cadence of Hyrule was a true delight to play through. The game's map, while procedurally generated for each new playthrough, is still Hyrule kingdom. Representing the series as a whole, it's stuffed with familiar locations, like Kakariko Village from A Link to the Past  and Gerudo Desert from Ocarina of Time . The shakeup here is that the world is built on a grid, and you can only move through its spaces in cardinal directi...

When I reviewed the first Great Ace Attorney game , I said it had a story to rival the finale games from both mainline trilogies. While that remains true, it pales in comparison to Resolve. While a bit soapy, this game was a roller coaster from start to finish. The twists and revelations often left me flabbergasted, but led into a conclusion that pulled together all the threads from both games, capping off an incredible duology. Now I know for sure that this will be the starting place I recommend for anyone curious about the Ace Attorney franchise.  Once again playing as Ryunosuke (and Susato, for a chapter), you'll be tackling more court cases and correcting more of Sholmes' investigations. However, there's a greater significance to everything you do in this game, even if it isn't obvious at first. Where most Ace Attorney games have at least one filler case that lacks pertinence to the overarching plot, The Great Ace Attorney 2 maintains its focus from start to finish....