amphibious_ReViews

It's been a long time coming but I'm finally starting the last canonical Ace Attorney games I have yet to play. I knew a little bit about what to expect going into Ace Attorney Investigations, but nothing concrete. In fact, my only exposure to the games has been screenshots on digital storefronts and the announcement trailer for the collection. After having been focused on the 3D entries in the series for the past few years, it was fun to return to the 2D era again. Although, with the HD sprites enabled, this certainly doesn't feel like a DS game anymore. While not as poignant as the Great Ace Attorney games, not as loaded with twists as the Phoenix Wright stories, Miles Edgeworth has an excellent first entry into this spin-off duology. As the name implies, Ace Attorney Investigations fleshes out the investigation side of the mainline games, entirely forgoing the courtroom. While it makes sense, I was honestly baffled when I finished the first chapter and hadn't done an...

My daughter and I took a step back in complexity after  Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey to play another game from my childhood. Thanks to a couple of DVDs from the library, my daughter has recently taken an interest in the original Dora The Explorer show, so I introduced her to a game I had played many times over. The combination of a recognizable character and the farm animal theming in Dora The Explorer: Barnyard Buddies immediately hooked my little girl. Likely because she only needed to use one button for every action this time around, she was suddenly confident enough to handle the buttons all on her own, relying more on the instructions from Dora than from me. She even took a few turns with the joystick this time! While she knows in her head how the stick works, she is still having a little trouble translating that to actual thumb movements. She's getting close, though, and every new game seems to be another step forward! Dora The Explorer: Barnyard Buddies is structured ...

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...

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...

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...

I have owned a copy of Pokémon Sapphire on the GBA for years, but I got stuck grinding levels for the same battle both times I started it, and ultimately gave up on it. I still wanted to play through the Hoenn region, though, and with the modernizations of the sixth generation, I was planning to do so via Alpha Sapphire. It took a friend who lives abroad to get me to turn my attention back towards the original release. He's working on completing his Pokédex in FireRed, so I lent him my copy of Ruby and agreed to play through Sapphire so we could exchange version exclusives next time he's in town. It surprised me how quickly I got hooked on the game this time around, despite my poor past experiences and my interest in the remake. In fact, I only meant to play it in bits and prieces, but ended up blowing through the whole thing in about a week! Pokémon Sapphire has all of the expected mainline Pokémon tropes, but I was surprised by how many additional gimmicks were stacked on top...

The follow-up to the cult-classic EarthBound , Mother 3 never officially came to the West, but that didn't stop its fans from doing the work themselves. I'm so used to translation efforts for games that I care about petering out before anything playable comes from them, so I was shocked to learn that the fan translation for Mother 3 came out as soon as it did. With an initial Japanese release in 2006, the translation patch came out just two and a half years later and expertly replicated EarthBound's voice and tone. While an official translation would be amazing to see someday, there are certain elements to the game that I think will prevent that from ever happening, and other than a few Easter eggs, I can't see anything that Nintendo would need to change from the fans' amazing work anyway. However, the fan translation wouldn't be very exciting if the game itself wasn't as well-crafted as it was. I loved how Mother 3 approached its narrative. As an evolution ...

As a mid-2000s handheld sequel to a legendary console game, I expected Metroid Prime Hunters to be a neutered imitation of the game that inspired it. In regards to its formula, that's exactly what happened, but I was actually quite surprised by how much I still enjoyed myself while playing it. There are a lot of spin-off games that claim to be canon in their respective series but can easily be passed up. While it takes place between the first two numbered Metroid Prime games, I still expected to feel that way about Hunters before I played it. Now that I've finished it, I think it's important enough that I actually find myself wishing for a port to the Nintendo Switch so other people can play it before Metroid Prime 4 debuts. Whether it was because of hardware constraints or a genuine consideration for the short play sessions that are typical of handheld gamers, Metroid Prime Hunters makes a few big concessions from the usual Metroid formula. Other than a set of special weap...

Circa 2012, I had purchased every Angry Birds game to date. I loved the series, and only really fell off after Angry Birds Star Wars II. Since then, every single mainline game I loved so much has been delisted, but only after being stuffed with ads and micro-transactions. I, like many other classic Angry Birds fans, longed for a return to form, and Rovio finally obliged in 2022 with a full remake of the original game as it was in 2012, before any of the money-hungry updates. It turns out that those updates happened for a reason, as Rovio Classics: Angry Birds was delisted from the Play Store less than a year after its release with Rovio citing a major loss of revenue in all of its other Angry Birds titles due to the remake's popularity. Thankfully, like half of the original games, I bought this one on release day, so I still have access to it. For someone as familiar with the modern mobile gaming landscape as I am, a return to classic Angry Birds was a breath of fresh air. Off the ...

For the longest time, I had thought Metroid Prime would be the first Metroid game I would beat. The trilogy mocked my empty wallet from its pedestal in the WiiU eShop until I got distracted by the Switch and left it behind. I would still look back on it with longing every once in a while, but one day I felt compelled to try Zero Mission and 2D Metroid consumed me. Now, having beaten at least one iteration of every game in the mainline saga, Metroid Prime once again entered my sights. Easily the definitive version, Metroid Prime Remastered graced the Switch and showed me what I've been missing after all these years. I was honestly a bit worried after having played Dread so recently because I wasn't sure how well the search action formula would translate to 3D. I had heard that the backtracking had turned a lot of people off, which was never much of an issue for me in the mainline games, but I still felt a bit anxious about it. I quickly learned that those fears were entirely u...

Oh my goodness. I've really enjoyed all of the Metroid games that I've reviewed thus far, but Metroid Fusion? This one is my favorite. I know that can be a pretty controversial position, especially thanks to some of the formula changes that Fusion introduced, but those changes are actually why I love it! As much as I enjoy the magic of discovery, my general preference with video games is for them to actively direct me to such a degree that I would rarely, if ever, need a walkthrough to maintain my pace. Each of the other three Metroid games that I've reviewed didn't quite achieve that, and many people love them for it. I still really enjoy them anyway, but Metroid Fusion did exactly what I wanted and pivoted away from the "explore to progress" mindset to the "explore for extra goodies" approach that I prefer. In terms of mechanics and its general aesthetic, Fusion feels very similar to its direct predecessor, Super Metroid . Samus still moves with th...

I feel like Samorost 2 flew right by me. I got a free trial for Google Play Pass (like Xbox Game Pass for Android apps) and most of Amanita Designs' games are available on it, so I thought I should probably try the sequel to Samorost 1 while I had the chance. Just like with the first game, the visuals were the star of the show. Unfortunately, they ended up being the only real draw for me this time. I liked the game well enough, but I feel like it could have been more than it was. Samorost 2 follows the familiar little gnome on his journey to save his dog that got kidnapped by a group of aliens. You'll have to solve puzzles and interact with a surprising variety of characters to help him rescue his dog and get home safely. Some of those puzzles are neat, and there were a few that made me feel pretty smart for figuring them out, but there were plenty of others that didn't quite land for me. They didn't sour the experience though, as the good puzzles and bad puzzles alike...

Not only did I find Kirby Tilt'n'Tumble to be one of the most intriguing Kirby spinoffs, but also possibly the most intriguing Gameboy-era game in general. An 8-bit handheld game from the turn of the century that uses real motion controls and is actually playable? I absolutely had to try it for myself. Unfortunately, it wasn't very accessible for the longest time. With the secondhand price being way too much for me to consider, and the emulation options being subpar, I didn't really have much of an option to play it. When Nintendo announced it was coming to the NSO Gameboy app though, I was ecstatic! I would finally have the opportunity to emulate a motion-controlled game on a machine designed for motion controls in an official capacity, so I was confident this would be the best way to play outside of the original hardware. After playing, I'm confident that it's outright the best way to play this game. Kirby's Tilt'n'Tumble is a motion-controlled mar...

Capping off Professor Layton's original trilogy, I went into Unwound Future with expectations set higher than I ever had for the previous two entries. I anticipated there would be improvements to the puzzles and UI similar to the way Diabolical Box improved upon Curious Village , but I was more excited about the story. I had heard that this was a game that could really tug at your heartstrings, and I love it when media makes me feel, so I was more than ready. However, I was surprised when Unwound Future ended up delivering stronger-than-anticipated puzzles, but a cheesier-than-expected narrative. The result was still excellent, and it was definitely my favorite Layton game that I've played so far, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting it to be. First off, Unwound Future easily had the best puzzle variety of the whole original trilogy. I think I could count on one hand how many times I noticed a puzzle repeat concepts within both Unwound Future itself and the series as a...

We had a plethora of Star Wars games on our Xbox when I was a kid. My dad, my younger brother, and I would play through most of them so many times that they literally had nothing left to discover, but then we'd just play them again! There was one exception to this phenomenon, but it wasn't due to disinterest. I loved watching my dad play Republic Commando, but as a kid, I couldn't get further than the first couple of chapters. The coordinated, team-based combat with surprisingly powerful enemies is incredibly intense and deserves a whole TV show on its own. Unfortunately, those surprisingly powerful enemies were too much for little old me to handle, and I was relegated to the audience. My appreciation for the game never dwindled though, and now that I have a little more experience with first-person shooters and games in general, I'm ready. Republic Commando introduces a new type of trooper in the clone army. Commandos have more training, better weapons, additional impla...

Throughout my childhood, I played a lot on the Wii. My family had a couple dozen physical games, but sometimes that didn't feel like enough. That's when I would browse the Wii Shop Channel. I never actually had any points cards, but I'd download a demo now and again and had some staples I always returned to. BIT.TRIP RUNNER and MotoHeroz come to mind, but if I had ever bought a game based on its demo, it would've been Pokémon Rumble. That demo lodged itself so deep in my brain that I have become a fan of the series for life. Now that I've finally played through the whole game, I can see its flaws; yet somehow, it's still as amazing as I had always dreamed it to be. Pokémon Rumble is a simplistic beat-'em-up-style adventure focused on collecting and battling toy Pokémon. Unlike the 3DS entries, there isn't much of a story here, but that just helps to keep it focused, and the game isn't long enough for the omission to really stand out. Instead, your go...