VIDEO GAME: Pokémon Masters (2019)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Pokémon Masters Year: 2019 Rating: E Time Played: 50,800 minutes / 846.5 hours A defining feature of the Pokémon franchise has not only been the amount and variety of Pokémon the player can catch, but how the characters who use these creatures for battles also have unique traits and personalities. While these characters might have more screen time in the anime compared to their in-game representation, they ultimately have a favorite Pokémon that they use for battling. Pokémon Masters fulfills the dream of many fans by allowing us to actually play as high-level trainers. This game is a free-to-play gatcha mobile app, which should tell you all you need to know about it. The gameplay is simple, but the "gotta catch 'em all" mechanic is collecting all the different characters. This includes "Synga Suit," holiday costumes, and a glut of other variants of the fan-favorite characters. There are plenty of ways to upgrade these characters, most of which require you to battle other trainers for...
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VIDEO GAME: Animal Crossing – Pocket Camp (2017)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Animal Crossing: Pocket CampYear: 2017Rating: ETime Played: ~150 hours Before Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out, I had played none of the previous entries in the Animal Crossing franchise. Once I got into New Horizons, I was hooked on the gameplay mechanic and wanted more. Luckily, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp was a free and easy way to continue playing an Animal Crossing game even if I didn’t have my Switch on me. As a free-to-play mobile game, I could log in and do the daily tasks that most Animal Crossing games have, just with the convenience of it being on my phone. While I didn’t play this game at launch, picking it up around 2020, it was clear that some of the standard “predatory” free-to-play practices had been added a few years prior. It locked a lot of the rare or seasonal items behind loot boxes that required real money to purchase. Even some of the “free” items came with extensive time...
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VIDEO GAME: Nintendo Badge Arcade (2015)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Nintendo Badge Arcade Year: 2015 Rating: E Time Played: 6,490 minutes / 108.17 hours Don't let the enormous amount of playtime fool you. Free games on the Nintendo 3DS (like Pokémon Shuffle, Pokémon Rumble World, and Pokémon Picross) rewarded playing regularly, and this one certainly tried its hardest to get me to pay for more playtime. I get why people lose a ton of money on actual claw machines, since this game is basically a digital version of these devices. The desire to collect all the "badges" from each machine kept me playing for a long time—well after the game itself had stopped being updated. The enticement of free plays each day made me value the occasional bonus tries that I'd get for playing the practice machine in the lobby. The problem was, even with extra plays, there were some machines that had badges arranged in such a way that it couldn't be cleared without purchasing more tries. When the extra free tries dried up...
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VIDEO GAME: VirtuaCreature (2021)

by benmweilertNo Comments
VirtuaCreature Year: 2021 Rating: E Time Played: 41.3 hours Back in the ‘90s, the digital pet craze led by the Tamagotchi toys taught kids how to take care of a pixelated animal. These pets needed basic things like food, entertainment, and attention or their mood would deteriorate. They could even “die,” which was a threat that kept kids playing with them regularly throughout the day. While this fad has since faded away, there are still remnants of these digital pets around today. One such example is the game VirtuaCreature—a hybrid between Tamagotchi and Pokémon. The simple graphics of VirtuaCreature brought the vibe of Tamagotchi to my computer and Steam Deck. There is also the option to battle these creatures in a rock-paper-scissors style battle that pulls at least a limited influence from Pokémon. These creatures evolve given enough experience through training and battling, but they also have a mood that can sour if you let them get too hungry/full or lose too many battles. It...
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VIDEO GAME: Deepest Sword (2021)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Deepest Sword Year: 2021 Rating: E Time Played: 41 minutes / 0.68 hours There are plenty of reasons I like Deepest Sword. It’s a simple gameplay gimmick with wide-ranging applications. It’s a quick play-through that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Most of all, it has a cute pixel art aesthetic and amusing dialogue for the dragon at the end of each level. There was a lot of love and care put into a game like this, and it shows. It almost feels nostalgic for the little freeware games I used to play growing up and I can half imagine it sitting on some floppy disk in my parents’ basement. As a physics-based puzzle game, the challenge scales with the size of your weapon. Each level increases the length—and by proxy the weight—of the sword. After the first few levels, I was hooked. While it uses basically the same layout for each level, the limitations of my sword forced me into different paths that led to the...
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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: Pokémon Rumble World (2016)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Pokémon Rumble World Year: 2016 Rating: E10+ Time Played: 10,653 minutes / 177.55 hours When I first got my Nintendo 3DS in 2016, I downloaded all the free games I could. As a Pokémon fan, I was glad to have such titles as Pokémon Picross and Pokémon Shuffle to satiate my need for puzzle games. I also downloaded Pokémon Rumble World. As the free-to-play version of the game, there were a lot of things locked behind currency that took an incredibly long time to access. The game wanted you to spend enough money to buy the game (at full price) so you could access everything. As is the case with any Pokémon game, Pokémon Rumble World focuses on the "catch them all" aspect. Each balloon you unlock lets you visit a randomly selected area with a specific elemental theme (e.g., volcano, beach, castle, factory, etc.). By battling hordes of the Pokémon found in these areas, they occasionally become "wobbly" and are caught once fainted in...
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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: Tetris 99 (2019)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Tetris 99 Year: 2019 Rating: E Time Played: 125+ hours The "Battle Royale" genre of video games took the world by storm a few years ago. While most of these games were shooters like Fortnite, one odd entry resonated with me. Tetris 99 takes the versus mode of this classic video game and pits you against 98 other players to see who has the skills to be the best for that round. I never played much "competitive" Tetris before I picked up this game, so there was a bit of a learning curve. Still, I eventually trained my playstyle to survive long enough to achieve the title of "Tetris Maximus." With over 125 hours clocked in this game, I found it easy to pick up and play. After I rose to the top of the 99 players, I could play in the "Invictus" mode, only for players who had become Tetris Maximus at least once. I usually play in Invictus mode for the challenge, but...
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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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