amphibious_ReViews

As a loyal Club Nintendo member, I received a special download code for the Tomodachi Life "Move-In Version" in my email before the game launched, giving me an exclusive, early taste of the eclectic social simulator and securing my loyalty in an instant. It felt so special to have that opportunity, and I actually genuinely enjoyed the demo, so I ended up pre-ordering the game and becoming massively invested in it for a few months. There was something about watching those little Miis live their lives and form relationships with each other that felt so fulfilling, and I loved the uncanny humor that tied it all together. Eventually, I squeezed just about as much as I could out of the game a few times over, but for a long while, I was having a blast. Tomodachi Life offers an island full of amenities and asks you to populate it with Miis, giving you the means to create a new islander at any time. You can customize a Mii's appearance, voice, and personality, allowing you to

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

When Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp came out, I was blown away by how it managed to look even better than the most recent mainline game at the time, New Leaf . The fundamental structure of the series was obviously modified to allow it to be free-to-play, but it still has all the right pieces to make it feel just like its console counterparts. The developers brought over the models and animations straight from the main series, making this look far more like a true mainline entry rather than just a mobile spinoff, and the Animal Crossing "feeling" is largely there too, with villagers' corny monologues and near-infinite debt ceilings fully in-tact. Pocket Camp differs from its mainline cousins in a few ways in order to support the new pick-up-and-play model. First, you don't actually have access to a whole village in this game. Instead, you manage a campsite and can travel to different islands to collect resources and interact with villagers. These little separated isla

When I first picked up Animal Crossing: New Leaf , I had no idea what to expect. It was my first encounter with the series, and I only decided to get it because I had seen it mentioned positively in articles and videos about separate games. My hopes were high when I first booted it up, and I was completely done within an hour. The slow pace and general lack of direction just didn't mesh with whatever expectations I had formed, and it wasn't until a whole year later that I decided to give it a second chance. Luckily, entering with an open mind that second time gave me the opportunity I needed to truly appreciate what was on offer in this charming little game, and I ended up putting a few dozen more hours into it after that. As with the rest of the series, New Leaf acts as a "life-simulator," letting you do plain, real-life things like furnishing your home, going shopping, planting flowers, or interacting with your neighbors. The big change here is that you are no long

Alter Ego  is a game that wasn't originally even in my line of sight. I have a lot of games waiting to be played, so a DOS game about living a whole new life didn't even cross my mind. However, I was browsing through the Internet Archive 's collection of saved DOS games and I thought this one might be worth a go. I anticipated it to be a short little choose-your-own-adventure style game, and in a way I was right. However, this game isn't short, and the choices I made mattered more than I thought they would. Alter Ego  is a hard-hitting life simulator that pits you with nearly everything life has to offer, even the bits you would have never thought about. You are tasked with balancing your health, reputation, relationships, finances, education, and more while being given very little direction. Every choice and decision impacts your personal "stats," which in turn alter what choices you can make in the future and the consequences of those choices. What I rea