Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

Decided it was time to return to TW3 to see what all this Toussaint business is about. But I don't really want to go through the trouble of setting the game back up on my PC (built a new rig with new parts, aside from my old GPU, since modern GPUs are rarer than gold these days), and I have the Switch version anyway, so I decided to start playing on that version.

Now, I've said before, and I'll maintain, that Witcher 3 is surprisingly good looking on the Switch... in the base campaign, anyway. Blood and Wine on the other hand...

We're exploring Toussaint without glasses, lmao.

@Ralizah The textures are so flat you could say the game was cel-shaded and it would be believable 😂

@nessisonett Nothing to improve the textures (it's Witcher 3 on the modern equivalent of the Game Boy, so I'm not too bothered about that), but I did find that turning off anti-aliasing and that hideous bloom lighting helped tremendously to clean up the image.

Not sure why CDPR thought putting a yellow tint over the game was a good idea, lol.

@Ralizah That does look a lot better. Really not sure why the default settings are ‘blurry yellow mess’. It’s strange, some Switch games look like they would really need some anti-aliasing and others look like your screen’s smudged. Link’s Awakening made me wish more console games came with graphics options because the blur effect didn’t add all that much.

@nessisonett It's weird, because, with the sharpening filter jacked up, the anti-aliasing is fine in the base game. I think Blood and Wine's new lighting engine doesn't play well with the visual downgrades otherwise.

RE: blur, it's really hit-and-miss. Like, I thought the selective blurring in Octopath Traveler was gorgeous looking in conjunction with that game's other visual effects, but the blur effect over parts of the image in Bravely Default 2 is hideous (thankfully, S-E had the foresight to allow the player to turn this off).

But yeah, console games in general would benefit from more customization options. Good luck getting that from Nintendo, though. You're DAMN lucky if they even allow partial remapping of the controls. I'm still kind of amazed that Fire Emblem Warriors actually had quality and performance modes when docked.

So, after a few hours spent with Blood and Wine on Switch now, a few takeaways:

• I'm digging the new region. The art direction is gorgeous, to the point where even in handheld mode, with its terrible textures constantly popping in every time the camera changes position and lowish resolution, I'm still frequently saying: "Wow, this is pretty!" to myself. I did that all the time with the base game on PC. The Witcher 3 may not be the most graphically advanced game on the market, but it is one of the most aesthetically pleasing.
• With that said, I learned the hard way to keep this off the TV. The base game wasn't TOO bad when docked, but Blood and Wine was just hideous. The smaller the screen the better, as it hides the numerous visual inperfections in the game.
• I've got a house! ...kinda. I can already tell I'm going to have a great time in this region.
• I wish there was a way to ditch quests. I'm tired of all these Gwent quests clogging up my menu. I'm never going to complete them, so there's no point in seeing them.

This is a really neat expansion so far.

@Ralizah I thought it was brilliant and Geralt’s sarcastic/dour personality clashes with the over the top, upbeat vibe that everyone else has going on.

Part of the main story towards the end has one of my favourite sequences in the whole game too.

@Thrillho Nice.

I will say, though, it's going to take a lot for its bosses to impress me more than Hearts of Stone's bosses did. The main game's boss encounters were seriously weak, but bosses like The Toad Prince and The Caretaker in that expansion were awesome.

@Ralizah The final boss is a corker so enjoy and I hope to hear your thoughts as you go along!

Playing Mario Party 3 on a 4K TV feels wrong but I forgot how incredibly fun these games were! It’s crazy how cheap I got the N64 trilogy for a few years back and seeing how much they go for now.

So, I'm playing Blood and Wine still, and I get to this part where you can enter an illusionary fairytale realm via a magic book. I was hoping it'd be a quick segment, but there are a ton of objective markers and a notice board, so I'm guessing I'm stuck here for a while. Meh.

On my Switch I've been rotation between Ori and the Blind Forest, Mario Odyssey, and Hades. They've all been nice breaks when Nioh 2 is kicking my ass

@TraCuz- really hoping Hades comes to PlayStation sometime soon. 🙏

@colonelkilgore Same my friend!

Ori and the Blind Forest & Mario Odyssey are both good games, haven't played hades but i have heard good things about it!

@Ralizah That was one of my favourite parts! The characters in there are hilarious as are some of the quests you do.

@RogerRoger @Thrillho I mean, it's funny when it begins, and there's unicorns and you're getting into big boss battles against the three pigs after blowing their house down, and a barely fictionalized version of the Little Match Girl has turned into a hardened drug dealer, and so on, but it shouldn't be part of the main quest. I go into main quests with a different mindset than I go into side-quests. The game literally lifts you out of a thrilling, near-apocalyptic scenario and dumps you into this weird situation for god knows how long, which kills the pacing.

@RogerRoger So, before all this, an army of vampires has descended on a populated city and is massacring everyone on the orders of a Higher Vampire who was tricked by the woman he loved into committing horrible acts. Geralt and a friend are desperately hunting for this woman so they can bring her to the Higher Vampire and stop the full-scale slaughter of human civilians. You discover she's locked in this magic book. And then... poof! Unicorns, little match girl, the whole shebang. It's PROFOUNDLY jarring.

iv been playing Super Mario 3D World + Bowsers Fury on the switch, its fun!

@Pditty1980 Yeah man their great, I'm liking Ori more than I thought I would. I heard all the praise about Will of the Wisps, I was gonna jump straight in but I decided I should honor Ori by playing the origin story.

I had an N64 but I missed out on Gamecube and Wii so I never experienced Sunshine or Galaxy, Mario 64 is one of my favorites of all time and Odyssey is really giving a run for its money. I just finished up New Donk City and I'm in some beach kingdom now. I'm sad that their taking the Mario anniversary pack off the store in March, I'm hoping to be able to pick it up before they remove it.

I got on the Hades train pretty late, I got it a little bit before the game awards because I wanted to see what the hype was about. I've played about 10 hours and early on I can tell why so many people love this game. The combat is really fun and can be challenging, but they're always empowering and rewarding you so it's pretty satisfying to play. I find it impressive how the story is told in between escape attempts and characters even remember things you've done.