amphibious_ReViews

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...