amphibious_ReViews

I first played Pokémon Trozei on a friend's DS while at a sleepover while I was still in elementary school. I didn't have much time with it, but I loved Pokémon and I was into puzzles, so I just couldn't get this game out of my mind. The 3DS received a digital-only sequel that I bought pretty early on, but it never hit quite the same. Now, closing in on two decades later, I finally buckled down and played the whole campaign. I think my conclusion is that I moderately enjoyed Pokémon Trozei. It has a lot going for it, but it definitely wasn't the juggernaut my nine-year-old brain made it out to be. As a puzzle game, Pokémon Trozei had the opportunity to be mind-numbingly basic and it still would have sold on the Pokémon name alone. Instead, Genius Sonority developed a unique take on the falling-block genre that cleverly took advantage of the still-new Nintendo DS hardware. Using the touch screen, you'll be sliding Pokémon in the bottom five rows as you try to make ma...

After obsessively playing the Pokémon Trading Card Game on two different official clients for the longest time, I finally fell out of love with the competitive scene about a year ago. Since then, I've still enjoyed collecting the cards physically, but I don't have much disposable income to direct their way. The recently released Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket introduced an entirely independent TCG with a focus on collecting that scratches that itch without breaking my wallet. Impressively, it's simplified ruleset also allowed me to play competitively without navigating any of the issues I took with the official game. The elevator pitch for PTCGP is that you get to open two packs of Pokémon cards a day at no cost. While the digital cards aren't one-to-one with their physical counterparts, that's still analogous to a minimum $10 investment you're getting for free. While I appreciate that the other two live-service Pokémon TCG clients supported the full rules and...

I had heard that Balatro was addicting. I had heard that Balatro was a time-sink. Yet, for some reason, I took Balatro on vacation with me when I had intended to clear a pile of short games off of my backlog. As I held my daughter's head up on the plane so she could sleep, I needed to find something to play one-handed, so I booted up this unsuspecting game-of-the-year nominee on my Switch Lite. After that, it was all over. I didn't pick up another game for the rest of my vacation, nor for the two weeks that followed. I have been hooked by games before, but I was drowning in Balatro and I couldn't find the surface.   At first glance, it doesn't look like there's much more to Balatro than there is to something like Spider Solitaire. That's a game that had its claws in me way back when I was still using Windows XP, and I assumed this was going to be similarly addictive. There is so much more than a simple card game going on here, though. I'm only recently disco...

I haven't spent at much time with Trivial Pursuit Live as I typically would have with a game I'm reviewing, but that's for a reason. I attempted to enjoy this game as much as possible, which meant playing it sparingly. The first day I tried it out, I played multiple rounds with my family and realized that playing Trivial Pursuit Live any more than once or twice in a blue moon will shine a much-unwanted spotlight on its many blemishes. However, if you leave the recommended buffer between each session, what you get is a fairly competent game show styled spin-off of the most popular trivia board game in history.   Since I received the Hasbro Game Night bundle as a gift around seven years ago, I've probably played Trivial Pursuit Live an average of once per year. In that time, the game was unceremoniously delisted from every storefront but Xbox and replaced by a sequel that I haven't touched. I can think of a few reasons why Ubisoft might have thought a sequel would be ...

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...

When I reviewed the first Great Ace Attorney game , I said it had a story to rival the finale games from both mainline trilogies. While that remains true, it pales in comparison to Resolve. While a bit soapy, this game was a roller coaster from start to finish. The twists and revelations often left me flabbergasted, but led into a conclusion that pulled together all the threads from both games, capping off an incredible duology. Now I know for sure that this will be the starting place I recommend for anyone curious about the Ace Attorney franchise.  Once again playing as Ryunosuke (and Susato, for a chapter), you'll be tackling more court cases and correcting more of Sholmes' investigations. However, there's a greater significance to everything you do in this game, even if it isn't obvious at first. Where most Ace Attorney games have at least one filler case that lacks pertinence to the overarching plot, The Great Ace Attorney 2 maintains its focus from start to finish....

Before I get started, I want to make it clear that this is a review of Infidelity's SNES port of Metroid, not the NES original. As part of his long-running porting project, this version of the game takes advantage of the SNES's increased power to eliminate all slowdown and sprite flickering found in the original. In addition, thanks to the MSU-1 virtual coprocessor, you can select one of four soundtracks to play behind the game (I chose the Japanese Famicom Disk System version). However, my biggest reason for choosing Infidelity's port wasn't the smoother gameplay or the improved music. During the porting process, Infidelity will occasionally add optional quality-of-life improvements to his releases. These upgrades modernized the NES original Metroid just enough to make it fun to play without betraying its spirit. The save system from the Famicon Disk System release was re-implemented here, so you don't have to copy down passwords anymore. A new pause menu accessed ...