amphibious_ReViews

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...

When the StreetPass Mii Plaza DLC was first rolling out, players could pick one of two games to receive for free as a demo of sorts. The options were Slot Car Rivals and Market Crashers, and I quickly chose the former because it looked a lot more exciting. Now that I've played both of them and learned that Market Crashers might just be my favorite StreetPass game out of all of the DLC, I know I probably picked incorrectly. However, Slot Car Rivals was still enjoyable in its own right. I can't think of any other racing games that are controlled exclusively with one button, let alone any that are still fun, but this one managed to pull it off! Mimicking the real-world hobby of slot car racing, Slot Car Rivals invites you to race against your StreetPass tags on increasingly complex tracks as you aim to become the champion. Each course has a set of challenges to complete in order to progress. Each of the four circuits has five tracks (although the fifth track in the final circuit i...

As I said in my review of Mii Force , I prefer the StreetPass games that are more passive, rather than those that are action-oriented and demand more focus. Because of that, Battleground Z was the game I dreaded trudging through the most. It was the final game in my lineup, so I had the incentive of getting a new set of Miis from the line and going back to Puzzle Swap as soon as I beat the next level, but I still had to work up the motivation to continue every time. It wasn't even a bad game, and I can see all the cool things they're doing, it just didn't fit with the way I like to consume my StreetPass-fueled media. Battleground Z takes place in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, with you and the people you meet via StreetPass being some of the few survivors. Following the instructions of a genetic scientist who thinks she can cure the zombie virus, you have to battle through various locations to protect survivors and collect zombie DNA for testing. The stages have a lot o...

The announcement of Princess Peach: Showtime intrigued me for a couple of reasons. Of course, I thought it was neat that Peach was getting the chance to star in an original game outside of the established Mario canon. Still, I was more excited that a Nintendo game was coming out that I could experience with my wife, and maybe even my daughter when she's old enough. My wife doesn't like video games very much, but a special one comes around every once in a while that pulls her out of her shell and helps her to appreciate this medium that I love so much. When she first learned about Showtime, she got pretty excited about it, which kept me optimistic until we actually got the game. She played one level, thought it was fine, then never felt interested enough to play again. Instead, I ended up playing through the whole thing on my own and thought it was good enough. The game's developers, Good-Feel, have quite the pedigree with Nintendo. With games like Kirby's Epic Yarn, Yos...

I jumped into the StreetPass Mii Plaza DLC train far too late. By the time I could actually play any of the new games, the 3DS's popularity had waned enough that even one StreetPass tag was cause for elation. That reality forced me to neglect a surprisingly delightful suite of games until about a month ago. Enter NetPass - a custom tool that attempts to recreate the magic of StreetPass through digital lobbies that you can join to "encounter" other 3DS players and collect new StreetPass tags. Using NetPass, I was able to dive headfirst into the Mii Plaza DLC that I've been sitting on for all this time, and I'm loving it! Mii Force is the first game from the collection that I've beaten so far, and I appreciate its novelty, but it's one of my least favorite of the bunch. I prefer the StreetPass games that are laid back, letting me take them at my own pace throughout the day. I'm not so much a fan of the ones that demand focus and quick reactions. As a sho...