Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@nessisonett Potions are like...one of the first items you get. Buy a bottle in Kakariko Village with the Rupees from the village, head into the Lost Woods just north, grab the Mushroom, head east to the Witch's Hut by the River near the Eastern Palace (Dungeon 1).

Boom. Easy to miss but it's most players first thing on the list.

I only missed it because I didn't know about the mushroom.

Needed something to bridge the gap between SM3DW & Pokemon Snap, so I downloaded One Piece Unlimited World R Ultimate (or some such typical lengthy Japanese name) to tide me over.

Just a couple hours into it thus far, but it's been off to a pretty good start I'd say. At it's core it seems to be a pretty rudimentary dungeon crawler (there's a central town from which you can swap out party members, take on quests, & head out into dungeons), but it seems to be elevated by the exotic theming of the franchise's locales (the "dungeons" seem to be islands the crew has visited in the show), surprisingly bombastic & involved boss fights, and some other touches (when in town Luffy can use his arms to "Spider-Man" himself about the place, and you get a fishing rod & bug net to take into dungeons which are used to add a bit more actual gameplay for harvesting their related resources).

@Haruki_NLI Yeah, I have a bottle and have just beaten Blind so I’m sorta close to finishing the game. I also have a mushroom. I guess I’ll go get a potion.

@RogerRoger LMAO

The rest of Sunshine and Super Mario 64 aren't going to be kind to you if you're already rage-quitting. Sunshine's late-stage level The Goopy Inferno is possibly the most infuriating level I've ever encountered in a platformer. Those chuckster levels aren't far behind.

But, yeah, Sunshine just feels GOOD coming off of 64. Now there are still hordes of people who will tell you Mario 64 controls like a dream and Sunshine is clunky nonsense, and if you disagree, it's because you need to "git gud" at Mario 64. Nostalgia is a powerful drug, man.

@Ralizah I have so many horrible memories of The Goopy Inferno. I still find that frustrating never mind when I was about 4.

@nessisonett I'd be insanely impressed by any four-year-old beating even a single level of Mario Sunshine.

@Ralizah I definitely beat a good few levels back then but I had my brother there to beat the harder ones. I’ve never found the physics or anything that difficult to manage because FLUDD can right 99% of mistakes you make.

@nessisonett ALTTP is weird. I find myself writing lists of what I've found and where since so much of the game is optional and rather convoluted in how you get from A to B.

Recently I was playing Carmageddon 2 a really great game.

@Kidfried That would be quite difficult.

See, the Wii was just an accelerometer. It felt a motion and did the thing. It was like a button.

Switch uses gyro, accelerometer and /I think/ the HD Rumble motors play a part but don't quote me on that.

Sony, as of the Dualsense, uses a Magnetometer too, which basically means it's position is synced to well...magnetic fields so it's incredibly hard to lose position. You can, but you need to try.

But here's my counter point, you want them to upgrade their motion controls by...what, making new controllers right now?

Plus you need to remember a lot (and I mean a lot, look at PVZ on Switch it's got about 20 sliders and giggles) allow you to heavily customize motion controls. You can set roll or yaw, lock axis, limit when they are used for just aiming, sniping or looking or a mix of the three, change sensitivity, speed, smoothing, invert them...

So one games implementation does not reflect the quality of the technology.

Plus, we all know what will happen with motion controls on PS5. It'll get a couple of use cases and that's your lot.

@Kidfried Id rather have a feature I paid for in this increasingly expensive controller that actually gets used so it's not a waste of space and parts driving the cost up for no gain

In all seriousness, I doubt PlayStation motion controls will get much use in future, until Xbox gets off their behinds and smells the roses that motion is actually a nice thing to have even as an option. Over there, its not even a thing at all.

And given the developer parity between the systems for third parties, I mean they are borderline homogenous now, if one isn't using it, doubt the other will. Adaptive Triggers seem to be the exception right now, at least at the moment.

Of course, developers are going out of their way to add motion controls for Switch versions explicitly. I mean heck, turns out the Frostbite engine from EA can do it. I don't even think THEY knew that

I've never had an issue with the motion aiming in BotW or Splatoon 2.

PS5 would be VERY attractive if devs standardized optional motion aiming in games developed for that system, but we all know the userbase is going to demand dual analog aiming exclusively for anything that's not a VR/tech demo sorta experience, so, yeah, any decent motion controls in PS5 games will likely be relegated to launch year stuff.

Nintendo can and should ditch any of the Wii-esque nonsense, though, like the gesturing in Mario Odyssey that slightly gimps the player when playing in handheld mode.

I took an oath to not buy the Mario 3-d All Star collection, but I ended up getting it, lol. The only game I have played is Mario 64 (the only Mario game I have played except Mario Land 1,2 and Bros DX). The camera as aged BADLY. This analogue camera stuff was annoying back in the day and now it is almost intolerable. They should have reworked it. On more positive things the game remains charming and fun. I would like an upscaled widescreen version.

@belmont Sunshine and (especially) Galaxy fare far better in this regard.

Galaxy has aged beautifully. You can barely tell it's not a modern Nintendo release.

@Ralizah To be fair, that might speak more to Nintendo’s somewhat lesser ambitions compared to other devs that a game from 2007 is barely distinguishable from a modern game on Switch 😂

@nessisonett A little of column A, a little of column B.

Galaxy's gameplay and art design have aged beautifully. Nintendo's hardware evolution has been lateral since the launch of the Wii; successive hardware obviously gets a bit stronger each time, but the consoles are more focused on evolving how the player interacts with the hardware than with just replacing weak hardware with stronger hardware. And, yeah, Nintendo's games are polished and beautiful, but rarely budget-busting AAA blockbusters (the closest they've come to that is Breath of the Wild).

I think that approach will likely be changing, though. A LOT of people think the Switch format is the logical endpoint of this sort of experimental approach with hardware design, and any major deviation from that is going to engender an enormous backlash.

I don't really see how they could, to be honest. Nintendo knows its portable hardware is what brings home the bacon, and they seem to realize themselves that moving ahead with separate handhelds and home consoles is untenable for a large variety of reasons.

@nessisonett Galaxy was extremely refined for its time, but I also think that by 2007 gaming had started to enter its modern phase, so lots of games from back then still compare reasonably well with newer releases. I don't think Nintendo are unambitious exactly, but they struck gold with that game. Odyssey itself plays quite exceptionally and has a lot of new ideas and enhancements, so in my view does in some respects feel more modern than Galaxy.

@Kidfried The wrath of Lakitu knows no bounds! Mario 64's aged quite poorly, especially compared to modern Mario platformers. I think part of the problem playing it on Switch is that Mario's movement is finely tuned to the N64's analogue stick, and on top of that the Switch's right stick is not a good substitute for the C buttons, so everything is a bit wonkier than it would be on original hardware. My impression after 64 and Sunshine is that there was nowhere near enough time spent developing the remaster. SM64 is just a quick emulation job. The only star I couldn't get is a late-game flying-through-clouds one. It's hideous!

Star Wars: Republic Commando dropped at the right time. I've recently finished up watching the Mandalorian, so I downloaded Republic Commando while I'm still in a Star Wars mood.

Not a fan of clicking in the left stick to crouch (you have to hold it down for as long as you want to crouch, which presents issues since you have to move the stick around to... move), but other than that it seems like a fun time so far, even if a bit dated graphically.

Finally beat the Ice Palace in A Link to the Past. Basically the Water Temple of this game. I hate it with a passion.

@Kidfried Yeah, Mario 64 might be insanely annoying at times but there’s a certain charm. I still have a fondness for it despite Lakitu and Tick Tock Clock.