amphibious_ReViews

I'm really into getting games for free, so much so that I'll check online communities every once in a while just to learn about deals I may have missed when checking on my own. That's how I learned about the closed beta for Google's "Project Stream" that came with a complimentary copy of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which I then applied for immediately. I was accepted into the beta testing group, and while I only had a few opportunities to sit down with it, Project Stream left me extremely impressed. I was playing a full, triple-A game through my browser with almost no input delay. The possibilities that I had floating in my brain for the future of that technology were incredibly exciting. Eventually, Project Stream graduated out of its beta to become the ill-fated Google Stadia, which I tried so hard to love. I bought multiple games on it and I tried the"Pro" subscription, I just never had a good enough reason to play it over my, more convenient, S

Occasionally, Google will surprise me with a new game to play. I'll be using one of their products for one thing or another, and then find a game that I wasn't expecting. Normally, my encounter rate for these games is pretty spread out, but Hop Mania ended up being the start of a relatively rapid burst of Google games that I discovered around the same time, each housed in a different product. Found within the Google Play Games app, Hop Mania is one of the "offline" games that come built-in, alongside the likes of solitaire and Snake . I don't think I even meant to play it for more than a minute or two, but the familiar gameplay coupled with the eerie atmosphere kept me around for a little longer. Seemingly as a tribute to its inspiration, Hop Mania gives you the choice between a frog and a chicken, the mascots of Frogger and Crossy Road respectively, as your playable character. Then you get two on-screen buttons for movement, allowing you to go either forward or

As the biggest multimedia franchise in the world, Pokémon has a lot riding on the timely release of its mainline games. Everything from cartoons to cards relies on the characters, locations, and pocket monsters introduced in these titles, so a delay of a game would mean the delay of everything else in the pipeline. Obviously, that can't be allowed to happen, so no matter what state a game is in when the release date rolls around, it's gotta come out. In the past, that hasn't been much of an issue for our pals at Game Freak. However, they took a huge gamble on their latest release by switching out the series' familiar linear structure for a brand new open world, and they paid the price. Pokémon Violet is riddled with performance bugs and graphical glitches that gave it a pretty bad name in the video game community. I experienced many of these issues myself and was disappointed by them, but I was far too impressed and engrossed by the rest of the game to really care that

I was beyond excited for TCG Live when it was announced. Modernizing the official Pokémon Trading Card Game client, easing access to competitive cards, and finally bringing it to mobile checked all of my boxes! I wasn't able to join the beta immediately, but eventually caved and started playing via VPN. At the start, I really enjoyed it! It was no longer the same chore it was in TCGO to try and get the deck you want, and the battle pass provided a lot of incentive to keep playing. Unfortunately, the cracks started to show pretty quickly, and after only a few weeks, I couldn't convince myself to keep playing. I actually wanted to wait for the official release before I wrote my review, because I know there's a game I want to play in there somewhere. However, after waiting for almost a year, I couldn't keep it in anymore. The Pokémon TCG Live client is The Pokemon Company International 's attempt to translate the physical Pokémon Trading Card Game for online play

What do you do when one of your favorite mobile game developers releases a unique demo for their upcoming co-op-only game? You charge up one of your old phones and double-fist that sucker, obviously. At least, that's what I did. I love the Rusty Lak e series and the world it's slowly crafting l, but finding another person to play with (without committing to some stranger on Discord ) is a pretty big hurdle at this point in my life, so it was just easier for me to play both of the game roles on my own. Honestly, I might even recommend that for other introverts or lonely folks, since it makes The Past Within Lite feel just like the previous Cube Escape games, just with two screens. Keeping in line with the series motif that "the past is never dead, It's not even past," The Past Within Lite has players begin by choosing whether they will play in the past or the future. Players in a cooperating pair must choose a different time from one another, as puzzles in one t

Xenoblade Chronicles: Future Connected has a reputation for being short, skippable, and simply not as good as Torna: The Golden Country . While I agree that it can't quite stand up to  Xenoblade Chronicles 2 's special episode, which felt far more like a standalone game, I think Future Connected has way more to offer than people tend to give it credit for. It may not have the longest runtime or the deepest game systems, but it still felt like a complete and well-rounded adventure, and I was thoroughly satisfied with it. Future Connected acts as an epilogue to the original Xenoblade Chronicles , but focuses on bringing closure to Melia's study, which was easily the most tragic of the main cast. The focus on Melia led to some creative decisions that, frankly, I loved! The most obvious of which is the playable party of characters. Instead of reintroducing the whole cast of the original game and finding some way to explain what each of them has been doing between games, your

After I beat Xenoblade Chronicles 2 , I immediately bought Xenoblade Chronicles 3D and, just as immediately, proceeded to never play it. I definitely wanted to, but with it stuck on my 3DS , I felt more inclined to play my growing library of Switch games instead. Luckily, the game made the leap a few years later with some pretty impressive quality-of-life and graphical upgrades. Now that I have finished it, I'm glad I got to play the Definitive Edition, but I know this game is a fantastic experience regardless of the platform you choose to play it on. The premise for Xenoblade Chronicles starts out pretty simple. Playing as a young man named Shulk and his growing group of companions, you must try to save the giant titan on which you live from an onslaught of autonomous war machines known as the Mechon. However, no small part of what makes the Xenoblade series so good is the fact that the is so much more going on than you understand at first, and you won't fully understand i

I seem to have a thing for mobile games about cats, and I am a huge fan of Nintendo 's Picross series. Normally those two interests don't overlap, but Meow Tower changed that. Combining the fun of befriending cute cartoon cats and solving intricate number puzzles hooked me immediately. While it's technically not a Picross game, seeing as that is a Nintendo trademark, the nonogram puzzles are still the same, and I loved being able to play them on my phone. Granted, there have been plenty of options to play these kinds of puzzles on the phone for years, but Meow Tower  sets itself apart from the rabble thanks to its stellar aesthetic. The developers behind this game are true artists. While it's a solid, straightforward nonogram game at its core, Meow Tower just looks so much better to play than any of the numerous generic options that crowd the app stores. The bubbly sticker-book style used for the art and menus gives Meow Tower a lot of charm and personality from t

Over the past 25 years, Pokémon's pop-culture dominance has grown astronomically, making it the highest-grossing media franchise of all time by a pretty significant margin. At the start of it all was a humble pair of monster-collecting RPGs that encouraged collaboration and competition between real-life friends, classmates, and coworkers. Now, over two decades later, we have received seven more "generations" of Pokémon games, each leaving that classic formula virtually untouched. Each of them saw massive success, showing just how strong the foundation is, but with repetition often comes boredom. Because the competitive side of Pokémon is so important, major adjustments can't really happen without running the risk of inadvertently damaging a huge draw to the franchise. However, with each successive release that avoids altering the formula, players' interest in retreading old ground fades a little more. Pokémon Legends: Arceus singlehandedly destroys that compla

Undoubtedly Nintendo 's MVP of COVID-19, Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out at the perfect time. While the whole Animal Crossing series is delightful, with cute aesthetics, essentially endless gameplay, and solid life-stimulator gameplay, only this entry released when the closest thing people had to real life was a simulation. The pandemic opened up the perfect little niche for New Horizons to fit into, and helped it to become the second-best-selling game on the Switch practically overnight. I only got around to playing it once people actually started going outside again, but New Horizons still manages to be one of the most fulfilling experiences on the Switch . I found the game's biggest strength to be its heavy dosage (and healthy balance) of both freedom and structure. Instead of starting the game with an existing village like you do in the previous entries, your new home in New Horizons is an overgrown desert island. There's no infrastructure, and the only oth

A few games found an unexpected spotlight during the pandemic, mostly thanks to their ability to bring people together digitally when in-person interactions were less common. However, I was still blindsided by Wordle . Contrary to most other COVID-era hits, it initially seems as single-player as a game can get. The only thing that helps get your friends involved is the spoiler-free share option, but that ended up being a lot more important than I had given it credit for. Now the game is big enough to make news headlines every day, and the rights were even bought by The New York Times for their own collection of daily word games. As a daily Wordler myself, I think it can be a fun challenge, and it's definitely better when playing alongside friends. When I first played Wordle , I was immediately reminded of Mastermind . The idea is generally the same, but instead of a pattern of colors, you are trying to guess a five letter word. You get up to six guesses, and each time you can see

One of the most natural translations to VR is the first-person-shooter. Not only because it's already in the correct perspective, but also because the basic gameplay of aiming and shooting couldn't be simpler. Mighty Games recognized this and released a spin-off of their mobile arcade shooter, Shooty Skies , for virtual reality. While it is fairly simple and has about as much content as a mobile arcade-style game, there's plenty to enjoy here. To play, you grab hold of a tiny animal piloting a tiny fighter jet, and guide them as they take down hordes of strange enemies while avoiding incoming projectiles. With your other hand, you can catch secondary weapons that fly out of defeated enemies, providing support to your little buddy for a short time. Amongst this secondary arsenal is a chainsaw that extends about a yard to hack your foes to pieces, an energy shield that splits your main attack into two while deflecting enemy projectiles, and, my personal favorite, a buddy pla

Remakes in the Pokémon series have been seriously impressive in the past. Many even still consider HeartGold and SoulSilver to be some of the best games in the entire series. Each of the first three remakes in the franchise used an upgraded version of the engine from the most recent mainline titles at the time, incorporated every Pokémon  released up to that point, and added new story content on top of whatever the original had. This led them not only to be improvements of the games they remade but also of the current generation of titles as a whole. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond (and Shining Pearl ) does none of that. I wanted to get all of that out of the way at the start because, although they didn't live up to series standards, I still ended up having a great time with the Sinnoh remakes. I definitely think that this was the wrong direction for these games to go, but I'm not letting myself be too mad, as I ultimately enjoyed what we ended up getting. If you have ever played

Typically, when an online multiplayer game makes the transition from console to mobile, one of two sacrifices has to be made. Either the game comes over as-is and suffers thanks to unintuitive touchscreen controls, or it gets redesigned as a spin-off, losing some of the oomph of the original, but feeling a lot more at home on the platform. Psyonix chose the second option with Rocket League and created Sideswipe , blowing everyone away with how it still felt like the source material, despite the redesign. As a testament to its quality, within days of its release, professional Rocket League players were raving about Sideswipe and playing it as a legitimate counterpart to the original. As a fresh perspective on a familiar game, Sideswipe picked up steam pretty quickly. When I think of Rocket League , I think of two things - playing "soccar" and customizing my vehicles. While there's more nuance to it than that, I feel like my experience generally boils down to those two

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team was one of my GBA staples. I played that game until there was virtually nothing left to do in it, and then I still played more. The gameplay loop was okay, and I don't think the rescue missions alone would've been enough to keep me coming back, but I absolutely fell in love with the characters and the world, making it easy to dive in every time. Picking up Rescue Team DX was immediately nostalgic; it looked, sounded, and felt just like I remembered from the original, which I would say marks a fantastic first impression for a remake. Just like the originals, the main gameplay could be improved, but the story is a delight and kept me fully engaged. In Rescue Team DX , you play as a human who mysteriously woke up as a Pokémon.  With the help of your new partner, you have to try and figure out why you transformed while also helping the Pokémon you meet during your adventure. With your partner, you form a rescue team that volunteers to en

I've recently tried to stay away from incremental/idle games. I've consistently had the problem of getting sucked in, even though I wasn't actually having any fun. I feel accomplished when I can see the numbers climb, but when the gameplay boils down to tapping an upgrade button and waiting, there's not much of a reason to keep playing. Every time I played one, I would eventually figure that out and move on, but only after having already wasted hours of my time. Purely for the sake of the adorable aesthetic, I gave into  Cats & Soup , but I'm still deciding if it was worth it. While it does some things that other incremental games are too lazy to commit to, like hosting passable minigames or offering a degree of customization, Cats & Soup ultimately ends up being the same as any other game in the genre. The cats are adorable, and they're what drew me to the game; it's obvious that a lot of care went into designing the little critters and their anima

Niantic 's biggest hit came out of a partnership with Nintendo . With the perfect balance of familiar and new mechanics, propelled by its world-famous branding, Pokémon Go has kept the company alive for half a decade. Unfortunately, none of its other games have managed to have the same impact, with one already shut down and another in its end-of-life. While I had big hopes for Pikmin Bloom and its revival of one of Nintendo 's dormant franchises, I foresee it suffering the same fate before long. While the game is definitely cute, there's nothing here with the staying power of Pokémon Go, or even Wizards Unite . Where Niantic 's other games are all about doing things while walking, Pikmin Bloom is pretty much just about walking. You grow new Pikmin by walking, you earn the in-game currency by walking, you activate flowers (the equivalent to Pokéstops or Inns) by walking, and you level up by walking. The goal of the title seems to be to foster a community around the

The folks behind Exploding Kittens have been pretty active over the past few years, releasing numerous new games alongside half a dozen expansions to their original smash hit. Kitty Letter finds itself in that growing library, but it stands out as the only video game (other than the digital version of Exploding Kittens itself). I only downloaded it because it looked like a funnier version of an addictive mobile game my wife used to play. I really had no idea what I was in for. Kitty Letter is a competitive word game with tower-defense-style mechanics. You can play against real people, but I feel like that lowers the experience to that of a simple competitive mobile game but with The Oatmeal art. It's the story mode where this game really shines. Gameplay-wise, it's really just a set of levels designed to ease you into the game's mechanics. However, the narrative is absolutey hysterical. Never before have I enjoyed eating expired, uncooked fish, or writing nasty online

With Minecraft being the marketing juggernaut that it is, there's a lot of crap that gets sold just because it's associated with the brand. Kids love the stuff, and I'm glad they can have fun with it, I just find myself disappointed that such an original game is represented by crappy plastic toys and endless varieties of low-quality apparel. Minecraft Dungeons seems to be a product of that same marketing titan, slapping a coat of Minecraft paint on something completely unrelated to the original work just to sell some units. However, quite unexpectedly, Dungeons manages to stand on its own as a fun little adventure. It's definitely not without its flaws, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game. Unfortunately, my first impression wasn't great. Minecraft Dungeons is a fairly straightforward dungeon-crawler, tasking you with exploring a set of fairly linear maps while defeating enemies in order to reach a boss or an exit at their end. However, before you can