VIDEO GAME: Mega Man X Dive (2020)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Mega Man X Dive Year: 2020 Rating: T Time Played: 23,340 minutes / 389.00 hours Having played almost every single Mega Man X game, the one thing I felt was missing from these games is the variety of player characters. Sure, you can start playing as Zero in Mega Man X4 and as Axl in Mega Man X7. You can even play as Vile in Maverick Hunter X (a Mega Man X remaster). But what if you could play as the Mavericks? Heck, what if you could play as Mega Man from other Mega Man franchises? Mega Man X Dive delivered on this premise. As a free-to-play mobile gatcha game, most of the gameplay was rather shallow once you'd gotten through all of it. The new content wasn't much different from previous events, boss rushes, or speedrun challenges. At a certain point, all I was doing was collecting resources to power up the characters and weapons I had obtained. I'm disappointed that the end-of-service is...
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VIDEO GAME: Super Kirby Clash (2019)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Super Kirby Clash Year: 2019 Rating: E Time Played: 50.50 hours As I have mentioned in other reviews, I have an amount of patience that allows me to play games that try to encourage the use of micro-transactions. These games usually have a currency used for upgrading and a timer to prevent continued play. Super Kirby Clash is Kirby's version of this formula but with an online Player vs. Everyone (PVE) emphasis that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't (as is to be expected with any online games—especially Nintendo's). Still, I played through almost all of this game because it was fun. I think this was another one of those games that comforted me during the height of the COVID pandemic. Quick little boss battles were just long enough to pass the time and just challenging enough to incentivize me to upgrade the equipment of my main battle class (mage, by the way). And while it took quite a long time to fully max out the...
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VIDEO GAME: Genshin Impact (2020)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Genshin ImpactYear: 2020Rating: TTime Played: 350+ hours Having played many free-to-play games, there’s usually a point where you run out of stuff to do and the game ceases to be fun. Usually, this is when the time-based resources run out and you have to wait to keep playing the game. It surprised me how many hours I put into the free-to-play action-adventure game, Genshin Impact before I hit this wall. Even when I reached this point, I still had plenty of diverse activities to do to keep me occupied for hours at a time. With regular story updates, it’s almost overwhelming how much you can get out of this game without paying anything. Part of Genshin Impact’s appeal is its somewhat Breath of the Wild-like open world and visual style. While it leans a bit more on anime influences for its character designs (of which there are plenty of characters to play as in this game), Genshin Impact‘s world might be even...
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VIDEO GAME: Pokémon Quest (2018)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Pokémon Quest Year: 2018 Rating: E Time Played: 105+ hours There are a lot of games I play that are part of the free-to-play structure. Pokémon Quest was one of them. I say was here because there really was no motivation to complete the Pokémon series slogan of catching them all without finally giving in and paying for the items needed to make grinding for these rare Pokémon much easier. If I had given in and paid for the necessary items to make the game completable, I’d be spending nearly $30, and this is not a $30 game. When a game can play itself without player input, it’s hardly even a game. Presented in a pixelated Minecraft style, Pokémon Quest is probably closest to the Rumble side series of Pokémon games. With a few limited moves, the Pokémon you play with in this game are sent into different biomes to take down the Pokémon that live there. While there is some amount of strategy for...
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VIDEO GAME: Pokémon Shuffle (2015)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Pokémon Shuffle Year: 2015 Rating: E Time Played: ~824 hours Considering how much time I’ve sunk into this game, I should probably give it a review. While on its surface, Pokémon Shuffle is merely a branded version of a “match three” puzzle game, the mechanics it adds to this genre gives the game an amount of strategy that is clearly addicting. As a free-to-play gamer, I haven’t put a single dollar into this game (on either the 3DS or mobile versions). Consequently, it takes a very long time to get anything done in this game, at least when it comes to maxing out the stats on the best Pokémon to use. While the game has finally entered a regular cycle of events and specially available Pokémon, there was a time when I was excited to open up the game on Tuesdays to learn what new Pokémon I could catch/power-up each week. At the very least, with the normalization of events, I know I won’t have...
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VIDEO GAME: Pokémon Picross (2015)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Pokémon Picross Year: 2015 Rating: E Time Played: ~78 hours I’ve never been much of a fan of picross-type games. Mostly, the user interface for them required the use of a D-pad, which made solving each puzzle a slow endeavor. Additionally, most of the pictures created via these picross puzzles were not that interesting. This was why I was surprised to find that I enjoyed Pokémon Picross so much. Sure, it might be a picross game at its core, but the addition of the Pokémon brand made it much more entertaining to play than any other picross game I’ve come across. Additionally, the 3DS touch screen and stylus made completing puzzles that much easier than using a D-pad. While the Pokémon content and stylus controls were two reasons I ended up completing this game, I admit that it has one annoying flaw: paywalls. Granted, Pokémon Picross is a free-to-play game, but there are a few points early on where you need a certain amount of...
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