amphibious_ReViews

When I booted The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD up for the first time on my Switch 2, I had not expressly intended it to be a part of my Daddy-Daughter Game Night series. My eldest was playing more Tomodachi Life at the time, so I figured she was focused on that, yet I hadn't even cleared the introduction before she saw giant birds on my screen and was locked in. About a third of my time with the game from then on was spent with her as my cheerleader, pointing out interesting things on the screen and listening with rapt attention as I read the game's dialogue with storybook voices. I have heard many times over the years about how frustrated people were with both the controls and the structure of Skyward Sword. As a kid, I was able to play my brother's copy of the Wii original a few times, and I only ever loved it, so I thought I was just immune to such frustrations. Now, playing the HD version as an adult with a lot more experience (and, arguably, less patience) with vi...

Stardew Valley is the kind of game that you can play forever. No matter what you've accomplished in it, there's always something more to pursue. While that sounds pretty neat, it is also the primary reason that I was too intimidated to start playing, instead letting it rot in my Switch library for nearly a decade. I purchased the game back in 2017 when it first launched on the console, and then I let it lie untouched in my periphery until a friend from work insisted that I finally try it. Over 85 hours of gameplay later, I managed to extricate myself from what I now consider to be an all-timer. Stardew Valley is what happens when you let a fan of classic farming sims create a love letter to the genre. With only a passing fling with Friends of Mineral Town under my belt, I have precious little experience with this side of the cozy gaming spectrum, so I wasn't able to fully appreciate all of the decisions that made Stardew Valley. However, the way it kept my mind in a chokeho...

I was at a work cookout when this localization was announced via a Nintendo Direct. Being who I am, I had to have a single earbud in so I could listen to the live presentation as we sat at the picnic tables waiting for the food. I've been known to have some giddy reactions to Nintendo Direct announcements before ( Xenoblade Chronicles 3 comes to mind), but that was always in the privacy of my own home. If it weren't for this cookout, I would have been working remote and my response to this announcement would have likely gone unnoticed by anyone but my cats. Instead, I had to explain to my boss why the official translation of a thirteen year old Japanese-only DS game prompted an audible yelp amidst the picnic table banter. Now, a few years after that embarrassing moment, I've finally beaten the game that many consider one of the best in the Ace Attorney franchise. When the official localization to English was announced, I already had the fan translation of the D...

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, ...

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 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....

I can't remember anymore if this was my first Picross game, but it absolutely played a huge role in my love for the series. While the free-to-start model has some obvious drawbacks, it's likely the only reason I was willing to pick Pokémon Picross up in the first place, so it paid off. If you max out on purchasable picrites, the otherwise drip-fed premium currency, then most of the free-to-start influences are nullified, significantly improving the experience. That's how I played this time around, and I think it became my favorite entry in the entire Picross franchise. Around a decade and a half after the announcement and subsequent cancellation of Pokémon Picross for the Game Boy Color, Jupiter Corporation was given a chance to redeem their lost game with a successor on the 3DS. While its price-point and its Pokémon branding surely garnered it plenty of extra attention, Pokémon Picross for the 3DS also had a distinct gameplay advantage compared to it's 20+ predecessor...

I was a little worried when starting The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures. I expected to enjoy it, but I had grown so attached to the characters in the mainline series that I was worried about starting with a brand new batch. Thankfully, the game quickly squashed my concerns. The entire cast in this game is excellent and the story blew me away. The third games in each mainline Ace Attorney trilogy have some of my favorites narratives in the whole medium, thanks in no small part to the foundations established by their preceding entries. This is only the first game in a spinoff series, yet I frequently found myself thinking it could rival those incredible titles. Playing as Phoenix Wright's ancestor, Ryunosuke Naruhodo, you'll investigate crimes and defend your clients in court, just like you'd expect from the Ace Attorney series. Taking place close to the turn of the 20th century in both Japan and England, there are some notable differences to both major phases of gameplay com...

I have a mixed relationship with Ultimate Angler. On one hand, it is one of the better StreetPass games, both in terms of its gameplay and its visuals. However, the randomness implemented in multiple layers of the game had a habit of stunting my progress and I almost quit the game multiple times. I did end up finishing all of the main content, save for collecting every species of fish, but it wasn't always a fun road to get there. At the start of Ultimate Angler, you can unlock up to nine islands, giving you a wide selection of locations to fish, each requiring different bait to catch their local species. This is when the game is at its best. There is always a clear path for making progress, and you're all but guaranteed to be catching something new with every play session. As you finish islands, this selection narrows and progress can become frustratingly slow. Completing islands is the name of the game though, so there's no avoiding it. Ultimate Angler's story has you...

I will need some time to let my thoughts about the StreetPass games ruminate, but I think Market Crashers might be my favorite of the DLC. I wouldn't have thought a game about the stock market would keep my interest, yet it was always one of the most exciting to get to. This also ended up being the only DLC game in the plaza that I fully completed (so far, at least). My appreciation for Market Crashers isn't just random chance, though. Instead, it's thanks to an excellent combination of clever design and enticing rewards. I think something Market Crashers does better than any other StreetPass game is balance its playtime. By their very nature, each game in the plaza is pretty simplistic, and without the StreetPass aspect, they would come off pretty thin. Market Crashers embraces this limitation better than any of it's peers by delivering an experience short enough that I'm always excited for the next play session, yet long enough that it still feels substantial.   T...

Flower Town was one of the few StreetPass Mii Plaza games that I actually wanted to keep playing after I had beaten it and along with Puzzle Swap , the relaxing, collection-focused structure of this game easily made it one of my top three in the plaza. I had originally hoped to get one of each flower variety in my journal before quitting, but the later stretch of the game slowed down significantly, and I decided to stop playing before my opinion soured. While I didn't finish as much as I wanted to, I still really enjoyed everything Flower Town had to offer. While the game's premise is simple, it's supplemented by a wide breadth of complementary mechanics. Each time you open the game with a new set of StreetPass tags, the Miis you bring along will water your current flower one by one. Watering will start by helping a seed to grow into a blooming flower, but will later grant the opportunity for your flower to cross-pollinate with those of your tags. When done correctly, you s...

Outer Wilds was a game that I built a lot of expectations around. Over the past year or so, I've been upping my consumption of content from the indie game YouTube scene. It didn't matter which creator I was watching, though. One game kept coming up. Often described as a "Metroidbrainia" or a "knowledge-based game," Outer Wilds seemed right up my alley. I didn't want any spoilers, so I always skipped past anything but the most surface-level discussions, yet I was so convinced I would enjoy it that I pre-ordered a physical copy for Nintendo Switch at my local GameStop. While I could have saved money and started playing sooner by buying it digitally during one of the frequent eShop sales, I knew that this was a game I would want to be able to display on my shelf and share with friends. Now that I have finally beaten it, I'm happy to report that Outer Wilds: Archaeologist Edition is one of the most incredible games I have ever played. Boiled down to its ...