amphibious_ReViews

While its sequel is an overall marked improvement, I felt like my journey through the StreetPass Mii Plaza wouldn't be complete without revisiting the original Find Mii. It may not be the one that I played the most, but I have a lot more nostalgia for this Find Mii than I was expecting. Something about it reminded me of playing the 3DS's built-in AR games in my brothers' bedroom while I was still discovering what the incredible new handheld could do. Thinking back on those times gives me a nice warm feeling that I just don't get with  Find Mii II . The original Find Mii is a relatively simple affair. There's no potion shop, no pairing up, no helper hare, and no branching paths. It's a linear quest where you use StreetPass-tagged adventurers to move from place to place and defeat the monsters that get in their way. This meant I couldn't cheese my way through with just one or two teams as I did in the sequel, but the journey was so much shorter that I didn...

The follow-up to the cult-classic EarthBound , Mother 3 never officially came to the West, but that didn't stop its fans from doing the work themselves. I'm so used to translation efforts for games that I care about petering out before anything playable comes from them, so I was shocked to learn that the fan translation for Mother 3 came out as soon as it did. With an initial Japanese release in 2006, the translation patch came out just two and a half years later and expertly replicated EarthBound's voice and tone. While an official translation would be amazing to see someday, there are certain elements to the game that I think will prevent that from ever happening, and other than a few Easter eggs, I can't see anything that Nintendo would need to change from the fans' amazing work anyway. However, the fan translation wouldn't be very exciting if the game itself wasn't as well-crafted as it was. I loved how Mother 3 approached its narrative. As an evolution ...

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 the direct follow-up to Apollo Justice's breakout title , with a name like "Dual Destinies" that highlights the two major attorneys, I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into. It didn't take long for me to realize how wrong I was. Even though the previous game served as a soft reboot for the series by introducing new features and beginning the next major story arc, it seemed like Dual Destinies was attempting the reboot route too. This is seen most obviously with the introduction of Athena Cykes, another novice defense attorney who becomes the main focus of the game's story.   I knew that Athena was going to be in this game based on all of the artwork and promotional material, but I figured she was going to be in more of a supporting role, like Maya or Trucy. It quickly became clear that she was actually a third main character alongside Phoenix and Apollo. In fact, she was so central to the story that any major advancements in the narrative from the prev...

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...

I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to complete Find Mii II. Unlocking only after you beat the original Find Mii at least twice, Find Mii II is longer, offers multiple branching paths, requires multiple playthroughs of the same routes for completion, and has a secret second quest that does that all again, just bigger! For a long time, the Find Mii games were the only way to unlock new hats for your Mii to wear in the plaza, so their slow grind was still rewarding, but it truly felt like I was never going to be able to finish it. Thankfully, with the combined powers of NetPass and a 3DS Play Coin hack, I finally collected all of the hats in both quests and can move on with my life. Find Mii II is functionally and aesthetically a very similar game to its predecessor, yet it has enough improvements to effectively replace the original. For comparison, the relationship between PAC-MAN and the far superior Ms. PAC-MAN comes to mind. Just like in the first game, your goal is to save ...

All of the pre-installed games on the 3DS were incredible to me as a kid. They may have just been glorified tech demos, but the fun of experiencing such novel technology cannot be overstated. I spent a lot of time playing Face Raiders and the AR Card games, but Puzzle Swap, a demonstration of collaborative gameplay via StreetPass, was easily my favorite. Originally one of just two games in the StreetPass Mii Plaza, Puzzle Swap has now been joined by a large variety of StreetPass-based games, yet it remains one of my favorites. The simple yet rewarding act of trading puzzle pieces and unlocking 3d dioramas had me hooked from the start. While it was a ton of fun finishing up my remaining puzzles all these years later, the prime Puzzle Swap experience was back when new puzzles were still being released. With every update, you'd get a piece of one of the new puzzles as a starting gift, making it your duty to disseminate your share while you try to collect the rest for yourself. Th...