amphibious_ReViews

I was at a work cookout when this localization was announced via a Nintendo Direct. Being who I am, I had to have a single earbud in so I could listen to the live presentation as we sat at the picnic tables waiting for the food. I've been known to have some giddy reactions to Nintendo Direct announcements before ( Xenoblade Chronicles 3 comes to mind), but that was always in the privacy of my own home. If it weren't for this cookout, I would have been working remote and my response to this announcement would have likely gone unnoticed by anyone but my cats. Instead, I had to explain to my boss why the official translation of a thirteen year old Japanese-only DS game prompted an audible yelp amidst the picnic table banter. Now, a few years after that embarrassing moment, I've finally beaten the game that many consider one of the best in the Ace Attorney franchise. When the official localization to English was announced, I already had the fan translation of the D...

I'm not usually one for reviewing demos, since I don't think a pared-down experience properly exposes you to the game it represents. I've been known to review them anyway if they're a wholly separate experience, not just a vertical slice or content-limited introduction, but the new Tomodachi Life demo does not fit that bill, so what gives? When I downloaded this demo, I was driven by the nostalgia of receiving the "Move-In Version" for the 3DS game over a decade ago. When I first booted it up, I wanted to show my daughter how silly it was, but I intended to be the one who played it. However, she was immediately so interested that I switched over to her profile and handed her the reigns. What followed was a little girl enjoying a short demo so much that it seemed like a full game through her eyes. She got significantly more time out of it than I would have, and still wants to keep playing around with her Mii islanders. In light of that, I thought this absolute...

Spurred on largely by NintendoLife's Alex Olney, I have purchased most of Siactro's library on Switch. All of their games are detrimentally inexpensive, to the point that I would have thought they were shovelware if I hadn't been told otherwise. First on that list is Toree 3D, which includes the levels from its remix on PC, Toree 3D: Jumbled Jam. While I don't think this first game is at all groundbreaking, its controls are tight and the PS1-inspired graphics are pretty attractive. While I don't have much personal experience with Sonic games yet, I think the inspiration is obvious in the gameplay. There's an emphasis on speed and precision in all of the main stages, with a timer on the top of your screen constantly reminding you of how long you are taking. However, like the only Sonic game that I've beaten so far, the focus was split and the game's speed suffered as a result. Especially within the Jumbled Jam remix stages, there were many times where I h...

It's been a long time coming but I'm finally starting the last canonical Ace Attorney games I have yet to play. I knew a little bit about what to expect going into Ace Attorney Investigations, but nothing concrete. In fact, my only exposure to the games has been screenshots on digital storefronts and the announcement trailer for the collection. After having been focused on the 3D entries in the series for the past few years, it was fun to return to the 2D era again. Although, with the HD sprites enabled, this certainly doesn't feel like a DS game anymore. While not as poignant as the Great Ace Attorney games, not as loaded with twists as the Phoenix Wright stories, Miles Edgeworth has an excellent first entry into this spin-off duology. As the name implies, Ace Attorney Investigations fleshes out the investigation side of the mainline games, entirely forgoing the courtroom. While it makes sense, I was honestly baffled when I finished the first chapter and hadn't done an...

Well, I guess they can't all be winners. Enamored by the new(ish) Netflix revival of Teletubbies, my daughter insisted that we play the Teletubbies PSone game as our next Daddy-Daughter Game Night game. I was skeptical, but I gave it a shot for her. Now that we're on the other side of it, my daughter will still occasionally ask to play it again, but neither of us had much fun in the moment. I don't hold kids games to a very high standard, but this one just has too many faults for me to overlook. For a game claiming to be for children, Play with the Teletubbies is needlessly complicated. There's no way that I could see a kid playing this without constant intervention from a parent or older sibling. Something I appreciated about games like Dora the Explorer: Barnyard Buddies was the fact that my daughter could play independently if she wanted, relying on Dora's spoken word to know what to do. The same cannot be said for Teletubbies, unless my girl can figure out how ...

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 ...

I was first turned on to Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown when I heard it described as the spiritual successor to Metroid Dread . Knowing it would probably be ages before I got another mainline Metroid game, I was pretty excited by the prospect of having a similar game so soon. I felt a bit burnt-out on the Metroidvania genre for a while, so I let this one sit on my shelf while I allowed my interest to start simmering again. Picking it up now, I don't know why I ever walked away! The exploration and growth that defines search-action games is so addictive, and the team behind The Lost Crown must be experts. Shaking up the series in more ways than one, this Prince of Persia entry follows Sargon, a member of an elite fighting team known as The Immortals. Instead of being the titular prince himself, Sargon is tasked with rescuing the prince from a cursed mountain following his abduction from the palace. Mount Qaf itself, the setting for most of the game, also acts as the vehicle for ju...