amphibious_ReViews

I'm really into getting games for free, so much so that I'll check online communities every once in a while just to learn about deals I may have missed when checking on my own. That's how I learned about the closed beta for Google's "Project Stream" that came with a complimentary copy of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which I then applied for immediately. I was accepted into the beta testing group, and while I only had a few opportunities to sit down with it, Project Stream left me extremely impressed. I was playing a full, triple-A game through my browser with almost no input delay. The possibilities that I had floating in my brain for the future of that technology were incredibly exciting. Eventually, Project Stream graduated out of its beta to become the ill-fated Google Stadia, which I tried so hard to love. I bought multiple games on it and I tried the"Pro" subscription, I just never had a good enough reason to play it over my, more convenient, S

It was only a few days after Christmas and I was exploring the capabilities of my new retro handheld. I had already experimented with the usual emulation and native-run games, so I started to dive deeper when something caught my eye. A few years previous, I had learned about PICO-8, a fantasy console that interested me, but that I had never gotten around to doing much with. Casually listed amongst the consoles my new handheld could emulate, PICO-8 sat ready to bid for my attention once again. This time, I couldn't resist the invitation, so I downloaded the only game for the "console" that I knew off the top of my head and I didn't put it down until I had beaten it. The original Celeste game is a short, yet challenging, precision platformer. Your goal is to scale a wintry mountain through thirty stages of increasingly complex platforming challenges, mastering your full array of movement capabilities along the way. You'll encounter walls to cling to, gaps to clear,

Occasionally, Google will surprise me with a new game to play. I'll be using one of their products for one thing or another, and then find a game that I wasn't expecting. Normally, my encounter rate for these games is pretty spread out, but Hop Mania ended up being the start of a relatively rapid burst of Google games that I discovered around the same time, each housed in a different product. Found within the Google Play Games app, Hop Mania is one of the "offline" games that come built-in, alongside the likes of solitaire and Snake . I don't think I even meant to play it for more than a minute or two, but the familiar gameplay coupled with the eerie atmosphere kept me around for a little longer. Seemingly as a tribute to its inspiration, Hop Mania gives you the choice between a frog and a chicken, the mascots of Frogger and Crossy Road respectively, as your playable character. Then you get two on-screen buttons for movement, allowing you to go either forward or

I absolutely love the Galaga series. The gameplay is deceptively simple and incredibly rewarding. Every once in a while, I'll check the Play Store to see if there's finally a good way to get my fix, but I'm always disappointed to find that Galaga Wars is still the only option. I recently decided to give it another chance and it immediately reminded me why I stopped playing so quickly the first time around. Galaga has had some amazing mobile releases in the past, like the Tekken crossover, or the 30th-anniversary collection, but Galaga Wars fails miserably at meeting any of the standards set by its predecessors. The saddest thing about this game to me is that it actually has the foundation to be a pretty great mobile interpretation of an arcade classic, but someone decided that intrusive ads and predatory micro-transactions were more important than the integrity of the franchise. It's almost unbelievable how many ways they try to squeeze something out of you. Even the ve

As the biggest multimedia franchise in the world, Pokémon has a lot riding on the timely release of its mainline games. Everything from cartoons to cards relies on the characters, locations, and pocket monsters introduced in these titles, so a delay of a game would mean the delay of everything else in the pipeline. Obviously, that can't be allowed to happen, so no matter what state a game is in when the release date rolls around, it's gotta come out. In the past, that hasn't been much of an issue for our pals at Game Freak. However, they took a huge gamble on their latest release by switching out the series' familiar linear structure for a brand new open world, and they paid the price. Pokémon Violet is riddled with performance bugs and graphical glitches that gave it a pretty bad name in the video game community. I experienced many of these issues myself and was disappointed by them, but I was far too impressed and engrossed by the rest of the game to really care that

Brought to us by the talent behind World of Goo , Little Inferno manages to capture the same demented, yet emotionally complex, style of entertainment again. I'll be honest, it was because of that pedigree that I first bought the game for my iPod Touch , and despite going into it blind, I had a great time from start to finish! Fast forward nearly a decade and I'm starting to crave the games of my childhood again, with Little Inferno at the forefront of that nostalgia. While I could say it was to be as true to my original experience as possible, I actually whipped out an old iPhone 4S to play this because I was too cheap to buy the game again. I'll need to repurchase it eventually so I can play that awesome new Christmas DLC, but the iPhone was good enough for now. Little Inferno is a game about burning your stuff, buying new stuff, and burning that too. In an effort to throw a rug over the constantly worsening climate crisis right outside your door, you receive a Little

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