Goodbye NX, hello Switch

[007ELmO]

So, I finally started playing Zelda on the Switch, and this opinion won't surprise anyone, but it's certainly an interesting game. Given that the last Zelda game that I really played was A Link to the Past, this quite the departure, but it still captures the essence of exploration... just on a far larger scale. I do think it's a bit odd to see some of the more survival game mechanics such as various foods (with different effects), cooking, stamina, etc. To a degree, I think there's something to be found in simplicity especially since it helps to lower the bar of entry. A Link to the Past came out when I was seven, and I can only imagine how much more of a challenge it would've been to try to grasp all of the systems at a younger age. Although, I guess that's sort of why Nintendo released A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS as that is meant to be the "simpler game" that's more accessible... especially given the 3DS tends to target kids a little more.

There is one thing that kind of bugs me about the game... the performance. Maybe I'm a bit spoiled given that I play a lot of games on PC with a good graphics card, but it was pretty easy to notice when the framerate started dropping. I'm really tempted to try out the emulated version of the game to see if I can utilize those good gaming PCs to get a better overall gameplay experience.

I play Zelda on my projector and with low motion smoothing on the frame interpolation makes the game feel 60 FPS at almost all times. It does feel like a completely different game after I played on a TV without any smooth motion capabilities, choppy AF. Handheld does not suffer as much since it's running in 720p.

I consider this to be the best zelda ever and probably the best game ever at this point, although it gets old to everyone at some point (I'm at 180 hours).

If you didn't play a link between worlds, you have to, if you liked a link to the past. I considered it the best game in the series after beating it. I know plenty of adults that play 3DS (I don't have one anymore). Nintendo is not discriminatory like other consoles ("adult only" games). Most of their "childish" looking games are for adults, too. They are good at making games accessible to all ages and addicting adult completionists. Example, I beat Super Mario 3D World, world 1 and 2 with a 5 and 7 year old playing with me at the same time. Now asking them to beat those levels themselves and "collect all jiggies"? Forget about it.

Just beat a few character stories in smash brothers with my 4 year old nephew co-oping with me, as well. Got through some mario party mini games with him and my 2 year old niece. Where gaming would be without Nintendo, nobody would know.

Just buy a nice upscaling faux-K projector like an Epson (I have the 5040UBE, wireless 4K signal over 60ghz wifi). The motion smoothing (especially for Nintend) and huge picture trump any other non competitive gameplay. If you plan to compete for money, you need a 240hz monitor, but most of us are casual gamers. The wireless 4K signal is still super low lag too, I think the 5040UBE is one of the lowest input lag projectors on the market, hovering around 17ms. The wireless signal supposedly adds only 1ms to the chain, and I'd believe it from gameplay.

 

[purbeast0]

There is no "big deal" about wireless headphones on Switch. It just doesn't support wireless headphones out of the box so you need an adapter to use em.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Donut County is such dumb fun

 

[EXCellR8]

Been thinking of grabbing a Switch for my GF and I to play 2-player games, since she doesn't like 99% of the games I play on PS or Xbox, but can't justify the purchase at $300 plus the price of games. Assume I know nothing and throw me a bone but do you need two pairs of the controller things to play most games or just the one. Never actually used one.

 

[purbeast0]

It depends on what games you are playing and/or if you can play comfortably with a joycon.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Been thinking of grabbing a Switch for my GF and I to play 2-player games, since she doesn't like 99% of the games I play on PS or Xbox, but can't justify the purchase at $300 plus the price of games. Assume I know nothing and throw me a bone but do you need two pairs of the controller things to play most games or just the one. Never actually used one.

You probably will want a second controller. The split joycons are tiny when used as individual controllers. They're comfortable when you have one in each hand but playing two handed on one feels ridiculous IMO.

If you're looking for couch multiplayer Super Smash Bros Ultimate is the king of that on the Switch. New Super Mario Bros U (which comes out Friday after next) looks like another game that should be awesome in two player concurrent play.

For Smash the PowerA wired controllers are really nice and they were $20 each when my brother picked up a couple for Smash when it launched. The Hori wired controller sucks though because of a laughably bad D-pad. The Switch Pro Controller is ridiculously expensive at $70 though it really holds a charge well. Other than that though it's just an XBox controller supporting motion controls and with an average D-pad (nowhere near as good as the D-pad on NES/SNES original or classic controllers). The joycons are just obscenely priced. They're like $80. I will say the HD Rumble in them is pretty impressive though, it's pretty cool when you're playing Super Mario Odyssey and landing from a high jump gives you a sharp jolt. I don't know if it's still available but there was an edition of Super Mario Party that came with a red/green set of joycons for $100 which was a hell of a deal if you're interested in that game.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I picked up Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom yesterday and this game is great. I turned it on to try it out at 7:30 last night and next thing I know it's 10:30 and I played it for 3 hours straight and it felt like an hour. The game is apparently around 15 hours long too which is great.

The guy at Best Buy looked at me crazy when I said I wanted to pick up a new Switch game and it wasn't Smash Brothers. He said those were selling like hotcakes and he showed me the stack behind the counter and they had like 200+ of them still. I have no interest in that game though.

I just started playing Monster Boy a bit yesterday. I'm really skeptical of Switch 2D side-scrollers since it seems like that's 90% of the library and almost none of them seem up to the standards of the NES / SNES / Genesis / Saturn / PC Engine games that were so amazing in the genre. But I figured what the hell, the bright color palette sold me on getting it. And it's really good. It's the kind of game I could have seen being a blockbuster on the Saturn (well in a parallel universe where Sega didn't botch the US launch).

 

[zerocool84]

Got my Genki today. I'm waiting for some new headphones to come before I test it out though.

I had some Jaybird X4's that I lost at the airport last week and I went out and bought another pair. Those had a slight noticeable delay with the other bluetooth adapter I had and then I did some research and they weren't APTX or anything, so I'm guessing they would have the same issue on the Genki. So I grabbed some $35 bluetooth headphones on Amazon that are APTX-LL and BT 5.0 which should cause like 40ms sound lag which isn't noticeable apparently. So if the $35 bluetooth headphones sound somewhat comparable to my Jaybird X4's I think I'm going to return the X4's since they are $135 after tax.

I received my Genki last Friday and while I haven't personally been able to test it out because my wife is hogging the Switch, she says she doesn't notice any audio lag or problems with it at all.

 

[purbeast0]

I just started playing Monster Boy a bit yesterday. I'm really skeptical of Switch 2D side-scrollers since it seems like that's 90% of the library and almost none of them seem up to the standards of the NES / SNES / Genesis / Saturn / PC Engine games that were so amazing in the genre. But I figured what the hell, the bright color palette sold me on getting it. And it's really good. It's the kind of game I could have seen being a blockbuster on the Saturn (well in a parallel universe where Sega didn't botch the US launch).

I finished it yesterday. My total play time was 15 hours and 42 minutes. It's a long and awesome game. And it's quite challenging too. The only thing I don't like is that once you beat it you can't go back into the "completed" world and get the rest of the stuff. You can only load up your last save point and then just continue from there, which I did to try and unlock some more stuff. I still need to get a few gold item parts as well as unlock some chests.

I received my Genki last Friday and while I haven't personally been able to test it out because my wife is hogging the Switch, she says she doesn't notice any audio lag or problems with it at all.

The lag completely depends on your headphones and the codec they use. The Jaybird X series all use the codec that will have like a 250ms lag, which is basically unacceptable to me for gaming. I have since then picked up 3 other pairs of headphones from cheap $35 ones to other $70 ones, both which use APTX-LL (low latency, which has 40ms lag) and they are great for Switch. I tried my wife's X3's and there is very noticeable lag and it's just not fun for gaming.

I may check out the $130 sennheiser ones but for now, the $35 ones I have I may just keep. They don't sound as good as the Jaybird's but I mean I really only use my headphones at the gym and don't really need super duper best quality. The $35 ones are clearly more bassy though but they are still crisp. I just wish I could adjust the equalization settings on them but it's not possible.

I have like 3 pairs I need to return right now. Some Jaybird X4's still sealed, these $70 ones I got on Amazon that don't get loud enough for me and I can't get a good seal, and then if I do return these $35 ones too if I decide to try the Sennheiser ones.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I finished it yesterday. My total play time was 15 hours and 42 minutes. It's a long and awesome game. And it's quite challenging too. The only thing I don't like is that once you beat it you can't go back into the "completed" world and get the rest of the stuff. You can only load up your last save point and then just continue from there, which I did to try and unlock some more stuff. I still need to get a few gold item parts as well as unlock some chests.

I hope the difficulty increase is kind of gradual. Last year I played one of the Shantae games on 3DS and it went from being about as tough as a Kirby game for the first 95% to having platforming harder than the end of Guacamelee at the snap of a finger.

 

[007ELmO]

Super Mario Party is a lot of fun 2-4 players, but you can't use a pro controller, you must use a single joycon.

 

[007ELmO]

There is no "big deal" about wireless headphones on Switch. It just doesn't support wireless headphones out of the box so you need an adapter to use em.

I guess I'm not in an environment to ever need to use headphones with it, I really meant I wonder how much better the audio quality is over headphones than the handheld audio, too lazy to try, the audio sounds fine to me lol.

 

[purbeast0]

Ended up 100%'ing Monster Boy over the weekend. Game was fantastic although a bit buggy. It crashed on me multiple times and there is a bug where sound effects stop and it won't work until you close the application and restart it. You can also see on the map there is a green circle that shouldn't be there since I found the item in that area, and there is a question mark that also shouldn't be on the map (you can't really see that one though). So great game with some bugs.

 

[purbeast0]

Yoshi's Crafted World has a release date finally - March 29th, as shown at the end of this trailer.

I just preordered it on Amazon. It's $55 and a 5% coupon too bringing the total just over $53.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Final Fantasy X and X-2 just got a release date of April 16th, and Final Fantasy XII on April 30th. I was hoping VII and IX would come first since I can play X, X-2, and XII remasters on PC but I don't want to play VII and IX on the big screen since PS1 games look pretty bad graphically. But on a small handheld screen I'd imagine VII and IX look much better.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I think that's so awesome that instead of making a USB Gamecube controller, Nintendo just made a Gamecube controller adapter and produced real Gamecube controllers again. I just got a BC Wii about a month ago so that's great to be able to buy a brand new official Nintendo Gamecube controller to use with it. And it's even better than the original since it has an almost 10 foot cord. Pretty good deal for $30 too since when looking for used Gamecube controllers I was getting quoted $25 at my local flea market.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

This could almost be a copy/paste of something I said prior to getting a Switch lol.

A major reason that playing games like GTA or 3D games on handheld in previous generations is that they never felt like "real" games, if that makes sense. They felt like gimped versions of their "real" counterpart games. So playing a game like Odyssey or Zelda on the Switch in portable mode is something that hasn't really been experienced until now. It's kind of hard to explain without experiencing it. With PSP/Vita and 3DS, playing "real" games always felt gimped a bit. They always just felt like they were "portable" games.

A comparison I would make is kind of like how I feel gimped as hell trying to browse the web on my phone. I'd much rather do anything like that on my PC just because it's easier and I don't feel handicapped. That is kind of how I always felt playing things like God of War, Hot Shots, GTA, etc, on PSP/Vita. I always just felt handicapped on the little handheld playing a game that just felt like it wasn't meant to be played that way, and was gimped from the full version counterparts on consoles. But that just isn't the case with the Switch.

After a couple of months owning the system, I gotta say you were absolutely right and I play it handheld way more than I thought I would before and when I got my system. I still find it too bulky and seemingly fragile to use as a portable and my New 3DS XL is still my go to system to take with me on the go since it's built like a tank and I can stuff it in my pocket, but I have found myself playing it handheld quite a bit when I want to wind down before going to sleep. I didn't figure I'd like Bayonetta on a handheld but I was just playing it and it was awesome. I have come around on BOTW and now enjoy it handheld too, and Monster Boy is great handheld. I don't like Super Mario Odyssey handheld at all since I can't use motion controls for Cappy. Plus I love to hear that soundtrack on my stereo. Pokemon Let's Go I exclusively play handheld. Strangely enough I really do not enjoy New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe in handheld for more than a level at a time but play it for extended periods when docked. That's the kind of game I figured I would most prefer handheld but nope, I strongly prefer it on the big screen. I use the Pro Controller for it but I think the big thing is the game seems a little busy for the small screen.

 

[purbeast0]

Glad to see you are enjoying it. And yeah hand held mode is great I've been playing it quite a bit on my couch the past few nights while having sports on TV. Intermissions I pop it on then pop it off once it's back, or i"ll play it while the game is on too for a little bit. I never used motion controls in Mario Odyssey in general so I didn't really have any issue playing hand held. The music in the game is great though.

I got NSMBU on Friday and so far I'm enjoying it. I never played it on Wii U so it's all new to me. It's more challenging than I expected, which is a nice change of pace, although I do find the controls quite a bit frustrating sometimes because they are kind of floaty, a bit more than expected for a 2D Mario game. Also having to use the analog in handheld mode (versus the dpad with Pro controller) I feel is part of the problem.

 

[JTsyo]

Super Mario Party is a lot of fun 2-4 players, but you can't use a pro controller, you must use a single joycon.

I been looking for the bundle with the joy-cons to come back in stock but it looks like that's not happening.

 

[purbeast0]

I played Mario Party 2 weekends ago and that game is very 'meh'. There is way too much time wasted in the game too with people moving around the board and rolling dice, etc. It just takes forever. They really need to add a 'speed mode' or something where you can skip and bypass all of that stuff.

 

[RearAdmiral]

I played Mario Party 2 weekends ago and that game is very 'meh'. There is way too much time wasted in the game too with people moving around the board and rolling dice, etc. It just takes forever. They really need to add a 'speed mode' or something where you can skip and bypass all of that stuff.

There are ways to just play the mini games if that is what you are into. They can have a larger game wrapped around them, in one of the games you fill up a board with mini game wins and try to get the most spaces.

 

[purbeast0]

Metroid Prime 4 current development has been scrapped and being started from scratch again.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Metroid Prime 4 current development has been scrapped and being started from scratch again.

It's definitely disappointing to hear, but much less disappointing than a bad game would have been. Nintendo doesn't put out crap though. If only Bethesda would have taken the same approach.

 

[purbeast0]

I snagged Katamari Damacy REROLL today since I saw GameStop had a restock of them. I wasn't the biggest fan of the previous ones but I figure for $30 I'll get some time out of it. I also think that my 3 (almost 4) year old son may actually be able to play this game and he'll definitely enjoy watching it.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Nintendo says Final Fantasy VII is coming soon in the description for this new ad

I have been really wanting to play this for a while but on a handheld since PS1 games look much better on a small screen these days.