amphibious_ReViews

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...

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...

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 ...

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 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...

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 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...

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 ...

Mii Trek was one of the StreetPass games that I truly looked forward to. The simplicity of directing my adventuring Miis and the excitement of making important discoveries made this a perfect successor to both Find Mii and Puzzle Swap . There's really not much to Mii Trek, and it feels like some of its major features were shoehorned in to help pad the game out, but I think it actually fits nicely within the StreetPass Mii Plaza for precisely those reasons. You're placed in the role of an archeologist seeking ancient artifacts, and your StreetPass tags make up your team for each expedition. Each of those tags contributes to the team's stamina meter, presumably based on the number of steps they had taken when they were tagged according to their 3DS pedometer. Since all of my tags were received exclusively through NetPass, most of the people joining me weren't walking with their 3DSs and contributed the minimum 500 steps (which gets you just about nowhere). This made the ...

When The Skywalker Saga was announced, I was excited, but I was a little wary of the possibility of going back through the same levels I've played dozens of times already in The Complete Saga and the original two LEGO Star Wars games. As soon as screenshots and footage started appearing, all of those fears were gone. I still didn't know much about it at the time, but it certainly wasn't just an expanded version of the game I've played to death. Now that I've played it, I can gladly say that the spirit of those older classics remains but the play-experience carves out its own identity, creating something familiar, yet refreshingly independent. The Skywalker Saga marks a major evolution in the Traveller's Tales LEGO formula. The world is still highly destructible, studs are still the main currency, and there is still an intense focus on collectibles and unlockables, but the gameplay itself has experienced a significant shift from the previous twenty-or-so mainlin...

Almost assuredly inspired by the "Yoshi Commits Tax Fraud" meme, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a comedy adventure that I was genuinely surprised by. I wasn't sure what to expect when I started the game, as I was drawn in purely by its name and hadn't actually done any research before diving in. What I got at the start felt like a Flash game from 2012, and I was honestly a bit disappointed. I stuck it out for a while longer though, and found that there was actually a lot more to Turnip Boy's world, and I became surprisingly invested. Now, I just wish there was more game and more answers. The little root veggie won me over. Turnip Boy is a delightful little protagonist with a penchant for tearing up documents. This gets him in trouble at the start of the game when he rips up his property tax bill and gets a visit from Mayor Onion himself. On an unceasing power trip, Mayor Onion essentially makes Turnip Boy into his slave, saying he needs to work off his debt or ...

After six long years, the sequel to Breath of the Wild finally came out. There was a gap of four years between the game's announcement and its release that saw the launch of a remake, a remaster, and two official spinoffs from the same franchise. In fact, there was less time between the launch of Breath of the Wild and the launches of either release of Skyward Sword than there was between the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. So, was it worth the wait? My answer would be a doubtless, unequivocal, resounding yes! When I finished Breath of the Wild, I thought "How are they possibly going to top that?" but when I first plummeted into the depths of Tears of the Kingdom, I realized "Oh, that's how." There's so much to say about this game. People who haven't played it complain that it's just a glorified DLC for Breath of the Wild, and while it may reuse assets, concepts, and much of the map, I think it's pretty clear that the two are sti...

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...

A Link to the Past is often referred to as the best 2D Zelda game. While I agree that this is where the series really started to understand what it wanted to be, I don't think people are remembering the game for what it actually is. Anybody familiar with a non- Breath-of-the-wild  modern  Zelda title will feel comfortable in A Link to the Past from the very start, as an impressive amount of what this game does end up becoming a trope for the series. However, the unbelievable amount of cryptic and unnecessary gatekeeping that you'll encounter as you progress is a reminder that this is truly a game for a different era. A Link to the Past is a fairly standard adventure game with some puzzle elements, tasking you with traveling throughout the kingdom of Hyrule in order to rescue Princess Zelda from the dark wizard Aghanim and restore peace. At the start of the game, the world is pretty blocked off, and there's a fairly straightforward path that you're supposed to follo...

The original  LEGO Star Wars games were a huge part of my childhood. Alongside my brother and my dad, I completed both of them, unlocking every character, finding every collectible, and finishing every challenge. As a testament to their quality, I kept on playing them, even hours after there was nothing new left to do. My love of the first two games made  The Complete Saga  an appealing title. Not only did it offer the entirety of both games in one seamless package, it included a bunch of brand new content to keep me engaged. I'll admit, I never actually hit 100% in this game, but I do own it on four different platforms, so I have plenty of places to go if I need a quick hit of nostalgia, or just some humorous Star Wars fun. LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga takes you through the first six Star Wars films, retold in an abridged format by humorous, non-speaking Minifigures. Each movie is represented by around half a dozen stages. These levels take some necessary libert...

When A Link Between Worlds came onto the scene, its biggest claim to fame was the fact that it revisited the Hyrule of A Link to the Past . However, I have yet to play through that game, so my experience with its iteration of Hyrule was brand new when I played A Link Between Worlds . This led me to focus a lot more on how this game breaks conventions, crafting a revitalized approach to the Zelda formula while still feeling familiar and approachable. A Link Between Worlds ' story is a pretty standard Zelda affair. Everything is peachy in the start, giving you a chance to learn the world and the mechanics, but then the villain shows up and does villain things, and you are the only one who can stop him. While the game advertises the ability to flatten yourself against a wall as its neon gimmick, that isn't what sets this title apart. Where most other Zelda games require you to challenge the dungeons in a predetermined order, using the items you find to progress further in the ...