Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@Ralizah The original’s legitimately creepy at times. The 2nd one turned it into a slapstick comedy and I’m not sure I really enjoyed the change in tone.

In Paper Mario: OK I got to the point where Peach's Castle transforms, and decided that was a good place to quit for the night.

The Green Streamer boss was a bit nerve wrecking because it's instant death if it hits you, but in practice it wasn't that hard. I enjoyed the bosses that preceded it as well, with the cutout hand having a pretty cool gimmick.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish it up over the weekend.

@RR529 Scissors was a cool boss. I destroyed his sheath early in the fight and kept having to dodge his insta-death attacks. He hit me with one right before I was about to kill him, but, thankfully, I had a 1-Up Mushroom that spared me the indignity of death and allowed me to take him out.

And yeah, the paper cutouts were eerie. TOK is low-key the creepiest game Nintendo has made in ages at times.

@nessisonett What I played of LM3 didn't seem particularly creepy. But, as I said, I only played a tiny portion of it in the middle of the game with my nephew.

I can’t tell if Gollum coming to Switch is impressive or explains why the graphics looked so unimpressive before.

@nessisonett I'm inclined to wait and see how it performs first before I call anything "impressive."

@Ralizah Don’t you know? This totally confirms the Switch Pro 🙃

@nessisonett Thst is a surprise as I thought it was a next gen game only? I still got the copy of Edge where the specifically said that. I appreciate these things can change, but it is a bit weird to then make last gen versions.

@JohnnyShoulder Well yeah, it’s a PS5 and XSeX game but people weren’t exactly enamoured with the ‘next-gen graphics’. Perhaps the Switch version is why!

Also important to note, Switch is a next-gen console. Wii U launched with PS4 and Xbox One and Switch is a successor to that in every way. They just launched their next-gen console way earlier cause it was a flop.

@nessisonett Switch is just their second eighth gen console. It's definitely not next-gen.

Not that what "generation" it is matters much anyway when they've completely abandoned seeking parity with the capabilities of the other big consoles.

@Ralizah It’s absolutely next-gen, it improves on the Wii U in literally every aspect. It’s a marked change from the design philosophy of the Wii U with new games and better graphics. If it was a power difference that marked the change then Wii U wouldn’t have been an eighth gen console and Wii wouldn’t have been a seventh gen console. The PS4 and XBOne have just had a really long lifespan.

@nessisonett It's not next-gen. What generation a console is is largely determined by both the technology inside of it and industry circumstances surrounding the new device. In this case, it was clearly built as a PS4/Xbox One competitor/companion, and runs most games released for that generation of consoles.

If Switch had failed, and Nintendo went back to the drawing board again, would that make a Switch successor a tenth gen device if it released today? And if that failed, and Nintendo still amazingly tried again with something new and improved, would that make their next device an eleventh gen console that was released in the ninth console generation?

New main console doesn't automatically equal next-gen console. The Wii U failed and was terminated early, and Nintendo tried their hand again with a new device.

@nessisonett The switch is the only current generation handheld console. It is less powerful than either of its competitors home consoles. It is very much an indictment of the Wii U that it is comprehensively outperformed by a handheld of the same generation.

Ugh, all this talk about what generation the Switch belongs in reminds me of that NL poster (whom I won't name, and they would never go to Push Square anyways) who always talks about how the Switch is a step back from the Wii U in every respect, and doesn't consider it the successor to the Wii U.

Anyhow, I just finished off the final boss in Paper Mario: TOK, and my arms are still shaking (though that could be because of all the waggle in the second phase)! Pretty epic, though.

@RR529 I think you could definitely make a case that in certain respects, Nintendo’s approach with the Switch has been a bit of a step back. The lack of Virtual Console, for one. Plus the move towards GaaS elements hints that their mobile games are creeping into their console games. However, the third party support massively outweighs most downsides for your average player who only owns a Switch. The portability’s also a big draw considering I could barely even leave the room with the Gamepad. I just think the Switch created a great opportunity for Nintendo and they’re slowly turning me off with the lack of concrete news. If they really do make BotW2 and Metroid Prime 4 exclusive to the rumoured Pro, I’m done. The Switch would officially be the worst valued purchase I’d ever made if it was obsolete in the space of 3 years. Now these rumours haven’t been confirmed but many are acting like they are and that they’re a good thing, which does my head in. I don’t know why anybody would be pleased about having to drop £300-£350 on a mid-gen refresh.

@nessisonett Plenty of PS/Xbox fans happily purchased PS4 Pro/Xbox One X. If you primarily play on one console, it's easy to justify the expenditure. And, if price is a concern, you can even sell your older console to help with the cost of the new device.

Anyway, there's not a chance that BotW2 or Prime 4 would be exclusive to a Pro model.

Hell, the only notable exclusive the New 3DS got was a port of Xenoblade Chronicles, and that was mostly just to show off the capability of their new handheld.

Besides that, there was one game (Hyrule Warriors Legends) that might as well have been a New 3DS exclusive (performance on OG 3DS was awful), and a bunch of games that ran fine on the older hardware but enjoyed enhancements on the N3DS.

@nessisonett, oh yeah, Wii U was definitely better for back compat gaming (both because of the VC & built in Wii support), and Switch definitely has some build quality issues in regards to the stuck drift, so I'm not saying it's perfect.

It's just that the conversation reminded me of the Wii U diehards you get on NL (though there's not as many as there used to be) who try to write off all the Switch does well in additions to it's downsides (including the overall first party output. "It's best games are Wii U ports, including BotW. It's true exclusives are all rehashes, or a step back, from the Wii U/3DS entries that aren't worth getting excited about, or just don't count for some arbitrary reason, such as Astral Chain").

@Ralizah To be fair, I do own a PS4 Pro because I got it at a crazy trade-in discount and it was the same price as getting a controller and Modern Warfare which it came with. I just feel like every other Nintendo console had strict improvements over the first few years in its exclusives in terms of ambition and scope, which Switch doesn’t seem to have. BotW, Mario Odyssey and FE Three Houses were the most ambitious games on the console imo and two of them were in the first year. Nothing I’ve seen coming out recently or in the future seems to be utilising the tech better than what’s already been. If Nintendo need state of the art tech to compete, something’s gone wrong or they have a lack of imagination because they’ve competed with worse tech for 20 years now.
In 2005, 3 years after the GameCube launched in PAL territories, we got Resident Evil 4, Pokemon XD, Star Fox Assault and Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, all games that blew launch titles out of the water graphically and through complexity.
Even the Wii U got Splatoon, Xenoblade Chronicles X and Yoshi’s Wooly World in 2015, three years after release. Those games were a noticeable step up from launch titles. Switch has been a strange ride which makes me wonder if Nintendo actually handle success well.

@Ralizah To be fair, even though the Wii U was by technicality a "current-gen" console, it still felt like a minorly souped up last gen console

The Switch felt like more of a proper response to the PS4 and Xbox One considering it actually recieves a lot of the same current gen multiplats nowadays that the Wii U just missed out on. The power gap between the Switch and its competitors was a lot less pronounced even though it was still definitely noticeable, and it helped that it does still end up nabbing a lot of big name 3rd party titles from this generation like The Outer Worlds, DOOM, Wolf 2 and Witcher 3, which I could just never see happening on the Wii U, hence why I just think it's a glorified 7th gen console that happened to be released during the 8th gen

The Wii U was the last traditional console that ran most games directly from the disk rather than needing to install. Whilst there are merits to this approach modern multi platform games are created with the assumption that they will be installed and patched.

The Switch can't really be classed as being in the same league as the PS5 and XSeX, the ports of current gen games are always inferior in some way technically and that is going to be even worse if it gets ports of games designed specifically for PS5 and XSeX.

From Wikipedia:

I mean you could class Switch as a next gen console, but i think you be wrong to and would only be kidding yourself.