amphibious_ReViews

I've never been very good at fighting games. On more than one occasion, I've tried playing the likes of Mortal Kombat and Injustice , but quickly get put off by the immense learning curve exacerbated by my general lack of talent. I like playing games to have fun, not to "get good," so it's not always easy for me to find my place in the fighting game genre. However, I've been known to try a little harder at learning something new if Pokémon are involved, and I finally experienced firsthand the value of fighting games thanks to the Pokémon -themed Tekken game, Pokkén Tournament .  While I haven't actually played a true Tekken game yet, my understanding is that Pokkén plays the same way, so those familiar with Tekken should feel comfortable jumping in here. For those unfamiliar, combat in Pokkén is one-on-one, with each round of a fight broken into two phases, beginning with the "field phase." The field phase gives the Pokémon access to the

Xenoblade Chronicles: Future Connected has a reputation for being short, skippable, and simply not as good as Torna: The Golden Country . While I agree that it can't quite stand up to  Xenoblade Chronicles 2 's special episode, which felt far more like a standalone game, I think Future Connected has way more to offer than people tend to give it credit for. It may not have the longest runtime or the deepest game systems, but it still felt like a complete and well-rounded adventure, and I was thoroughly satisfied with it. Future Connected acts as an epilogue to the original Xenoblade Chronicles , but focuses on bringing closure to Melia's study, which was easily the most tragic of the main cast. The focus on Melia led to some creative decisions that, frankly, I loved! The most obvious of which is the playable party of characters. Instead of reintroducing the whole cast of the original game and finding some way to explain what each of them has been doing between games, your

I remember my mind being blown when Pokémon Shuffle was announced. It didn't look like anything super special, especially since I already owned Battle Trozei , which seemed very similar. However, this was the first major free title that I had heard of from the franchise, and getting a Pokémon game for free was more than enough to get me hyped. Upon release, I played the 3DS version of Shuffle until I was sick of it. I had a lot of fun at first, but it eventually got to the point that it seemed nearly impossible to progress without caving to the microtransactions, so I moved on. Now, over half a decade later, I was ready to play it again, but I took advantage of the convenience of the mobile phone version this time. Pokémon Shuffle is a pretty vanilla match-3 puzzle game. There are Pokémon elements implemented that tie it especially well to the sixth-generation games, but nothing that particularly makes it stand out. The general structure of the game is built around defeating

Super Mario Run came out when Nintendo was still testing the waters with their mobile offerings, and it shows. The game is entirely without microtransactions, but to play more than the first couple of levels, you'll need to pay a solid $10. That purchase price does net you a full Mario game that was intentionally designed for one-handed play during bite-sized sessions, but it feels grossly out of place on a platform largely dominated by free-to-play titles. I'm used to seeing console ports like the Final Fantasy series having relatively staggering price tags, but games designed exclusively for mobile rarely require purchases as large as that, at least at one time. Fortunately, once you jump that hurdle, the product you receive is actually pretty good. Super Mario Run is built on the familiar New Super Mario Bros. engine but has a few control alterations to make it feel more at home on mobile. As its title implies, this is a "runner" style game, with Mario consta

Pokémon Picross is a strange one. Not to be confused with the free-to-start 3DS  release of the same name, this Gameboy Color game was never actually released. It was almost entirely finished, and the leaked and translated version that I played felt like it was nearly ready to go, but it never actually made it out to the world in any official capacity. While it may have a few quirks, Pokémon Picross feels like it fills the roles of both a  Pokémon game and a  Picross game pretty well, making it a good time for fans of both franchises, such as myself. When it comes to Picross games, this is a fairly standard affair, feeling very similar to the likes of Mario's Picross , save for two Pokémon -focused features. The first is your partner Pokémon . Every few pages of puzzles, the game will show a mini interaction between you and a Pokémon  who can then appear on the puzzle screen as your partner. The difference partners don't change the gameplay at all, but it's a cute fea

After finishing the stellar Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney trilogy, I was skeptical that a follow-up could actually do the series justice (no pun intended). I failed to see how a quasi-reboot could manage to bring back the magic of the original series, especially with some rando as the new protagonist, but I was more than pleasantly surprised. Apollo Justice managed both to bring back the trademark humor of the original trilogy and to bring new life to the gameplay, resulting in a worthy successor, rather than a cheap imitator, of the Ace Attorney legacy. The story follows newbie attorney, Apollo Justice , who just wants to make a name for himself but instead finds his career sidelined by a surprising betrayal and has to drastically adjust his trajectory. What follows is a pretty standard affair for an Ace Attorney game - chapter-based visual-novel-style gameplay stuffed with wacky characters, clever twists, and an overarching plot that neatly ties everything together. It even relies

After I beat Xenoblade Chronicles 2 , I immediately bought Xenoblade Chronicles 3D and, just as immediately, proceeded to never play it. I definitely wanted to, but with it stuck on my 3DS , I felt more inclined to play my growing library of Switch games instead. Luckily, the game made the leap a few years later with some pretty impressive quality-of-life and graphical upgrades. Now that I have finished it, I'm glad I got to play the Definitive Edition, but I know this game is a fantastic experience regardless of the platform you choose to play it on. The premise for Xenoblade Chronicles starts out pretty simple. Playing as a young man named Shulk and his growing group of companions, you must try to save the giant titan on which you live from an onslaught of autonomous war machines known as the Mechon. However, no small part of what makes the Xenoblade series so good is the fact that the is so much more going on than you understand at first, and you won't fully understand i