amphibious_ReViews

  Thanks to the mixed reviews I had already heard , I initially approached Metroid Prime 4 with a cautious optimism. I love the Metroid series, and have historically disagreed with the popular opinion about its games on multiple occasions. However, it was hard to ignore some of the negative reactions I've heard from reviewers I trust. Thankfully, I shared almost none of the opinions that had worried me. I found Metroid Prime 4 to be a technical showcase for my new Switch 2 and was pleasantly surprised by how many spectacular moments left my jaw dropping. That's not to say I didn't have my own complaints. It's just that none of them were serious enough to ruin the game for me. Having not played the second or third Metroid Prime games, I was a little worried about being out of the loop for the story. However, it seems like the handheld entries were actually the required reading this time around, and I had at least played Hunters ! The game starts with Samus assisting the ...

After saving Zelda in Skyward Sword HD , my daughter was thrilled to learn that there was a game where we could actually play as Zelda, saving Link instead. Upon starting it up, I was worried she might be put off by the complete shift in perspective and art style, but that was a non-issue. Instead, she just thought the toy-like characters were cute and was excited to hear me make my silly voices when reading the dialogue out loud again. While she still didn't play this one herself, my little spectator made the whole adventure more enjoyable. I personally had tempered my expectations before starting Echoes of Wisdom. I was intrigued by its premise, but had heard mixed reviews about how fun in actually was to play. Thankfully, this was just another reminder of how much I enjoy 2D Zelda games. I loved the renewed focus on puzzles over combat, challenging me to outthink the game instead of brute-forcing every encounter. Maintaining the art style of the Link's Awakening remake also...

I decided it was time to jump into DOOM II after I had a couple of friends over and we played though the first episode of DOOM in multiplayer. We foolishly thought we were playing through the sequel (due to a misclick in the menu of the DOOM + DOOM II re-release), so I thought I'd just pick back up where we left off. I was immediately confused by the difference in mission structure between the two games, which helped me realize our mistake. I still wanted to play the game though, so I just started fresh. As a disclaimer, I want to warn you that I did play at the lowest difficulty. If I had the time and the attention span, I could have made it harder and just tried to get good. However, as a dad of two littles, my gaming sessions were just too short for that approach to make sense. Regardless, I am more than content with the way I beat the game because I actually got to see every chapter before I felt like I needed to move on. I know that some people live and die by boomer shooters...

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...

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...

I'm not usually one for reviewing demos, since I don't think a pared-down experience properly exposes you to the game it represents. I've been known to review them anyway if they're a wholly separate experience, not just a vertical slice or content-limited introduction, but the new Tomodachi Life demo does not fit that bill, so what gives? When I downloaded this demo, I was driven by the nostalgia of receiving the "Move-In Version" for the 3DS game over a decade ago. When I first booted it up, I wanted to show my daughter how silly it was, but I intended to be the one who played it. However, she was immediately so interested that I switched over to her profile and handed her the reigns. What followed was a little girl enjoying a short demo so much that it seemed like a full game through her eyes. She got significantly more time out of it than I would have, and still wants to keep playing around with her Mii islanders. In light of that, I thought this absolute...

Spurred on largely by NintendoLife's Alex Olney, I have purchased most of Siactro's library on Switch. All of their games are detrimentally inexpensive, to the point that I would have thought they were shovelware if I hadn't been told otherwise. First on that list is Toree 3D, which includes the levels from its remix on PC, Toree 3D: Jumbled Jam. While I don't think this first game is at all groundbreaking, its controls are tight and the PS1-inspired graphics are pretty attractive. While I don't have much personal experience with Sonic games yet, I think the inspiration is obvious in the gameplay. There's an emphasis on speed and precision in all of the main stages, with a timer on the top of your screen constantly reminding you of how long you are taking. However, like the only Sonic game that I've beaten so far, the focus was split and the game's speed suffered as a result. Especially within the Jumbled Jam remix stages, there were many times where I h...

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...

I was first turned on to Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown when I heard it described as the spiritual successor to Metroid Dread . Knowing it would probably be ages before I got another mainline Metroid game, I was pretty excited by the prospect of having a similar game so soon. I felt a bit burnt-out on the Metroidvania genre for a while, so I let this one sit on my shelf while I allowed my interest to start simmering again. Picking it up now, I don't know why I ever walked away! The exploration and growth that defines search-action games is so addictive, and the team behind The Lost Crown must be experts. Shaking up the series in more ways than one, this Prince of Persia entry follows Sargon, a member of an elite fighting team known as The Immortals. Instead of being the titular prince himself, Sargon is tasked with rescuing the prince from a cursed mountain following his abduction from the palace. Mount Qaf itself, the setting for most of the game, also acts as the vehicle for ju...

It was a long road to get me excited about a game like Tunic. Because of my growing love for the Ace Attorney games, I was looking for something that would similarly require deductive skills. Because of the video game music compilations I was listening to at work, Outer Wilds was sitting patiently in the back of my mind, even though I knew almost nothing about it. When Outer Wilds came to Switch and I learned that it was all about making discoveries and using clues to solve mysteries, I had to try it. Soon after, it became a serious contender for my favorite game of all time, and I wanted more. In my obsessive consumption of Outer Wilds discussions on YouTube, I noticed that Tunic would often be mentioned in the same breath. Unfortunately, it didn't have an in-game log like Outer Wilds, so if I wanted to play Tunic the right way, I needed to use a real-life notebook. Up until this point, I have actively avoided games that require me to put pen to paper, but Tunic wouldn't disl...

I don't think I've ever been so blind-sided by a game announcement in my life. I've been surprised by the short time between Xenoblade releases on Switch; I've been hyped for Ace Attorney games finally getting an English localization; this, however, is the first time a formative game from my childhood got a surprise sequel nearly 16 years after the fact. Before I bought it two or three more times on other platforms, the original World of Goo  was gifted to me by my aunt via a CD-RW she put together herself. I was a bit too young and inexperienced to recognize the dubious origin of that Sharpie-labeled disc at the time, but I wasn't too young to pop it in our family PC and stack some goo. Thus, my lifelong appreciation of tiny sentient goo balls began, and I'm thrilled that I was finally able to bear witness to their triumphant return! World of Goo 2 was immediately familiar and nostalgic. From the 2D Boy splash screen to the goo world itself being used as a menu...

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...

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...

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...

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...