Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Well, Super Mario Odyssey won't take you that long, @Dezzy but BotW & XBC2 are both great ... Never played Splatoon 2 but obviously, being online, you can carry on as long as there's anyone else doing it

@BruceCM
So, Splatoon 2 cannot be played Offline by properly ?
I heard you cannot even buy clothes or weapon by playing Offline.

Well, I haven't played it, @Anti-Matter .... But I think it's all online, even the 'story' part Must be some here who know more definitely, though

@Anti-Matter The story part, as well as the Octo expansion is playable offline. Clothes are only usable in online modes, and are only available to purchase while online as the availability changes for everyone on a daily basis. I believe the local multiplayer and training modes are available offline as well, but I haven't tested those personally.

@BruceCM

Yes, I have played BotW extensively on the Wii U already. I bought this version just for the better framerate and resolution to be honest! Lol

@Dezzy enjoy. Great collection of games to start with. If you want Nintendo online for a year. Let me know, I’ll be selling my code that comes with Mario Maker on eBay

Oh, right.... @Dezzy; any other games you're thinking of getting or do you want to ask for recommendations? Tell us sort of stuff you like....

@Dezzy BoTW definitely still has frame rate drops on the Switch, especially in areas like Rito Village and Korok Forest.

I can't remember having many problems with BoTW on the Wii U. I haven't recognized any difference in how the game runs from system to system, TBH. The only reason I double dipped on the Switch was to have it to play portable.

@Dezzy I have to second what @Harmonie said, I honestly barely notice a difference between playing BotW on Switch vs on Wii U. Granted I haven't played the two side by side for a objective view at differences, but subjectively the improvements on the Switch version didn't really stand out to me. The Switch version still noticeably drops frame rate. It's objectively the better version for sure but to me, subjectively, I didn't really notice a difference from playing the Wii U version despite the improvement in resolution and frame rate.

Now handheld mode on the other hand is the real appeal here. There's a night and day difference between playing on the Wii U GamePad and playing on the Switch in handheld mode. Plus of course the ability to play it anywhere.

You'll love Odyssey. It's my favorite Mario game and honestly I like it a tad more than BotW. It's shorter but I have never played a game that felt like pure fun as Odyssey.

I'm starting to think that maybe investors forced Nintendo to create NSO, maybe as a backup money maker in case the Switch turned out to be another commercial failure like Wii U but then forced ahead even when Switch was a success. Look at Mario Maker 2 for example, you can get standard edition for £44.99 or you can get limited edition with a steelbook and 12 months NSO for £54.99 (steelbooks usually add on around £10 to the price) so they're essentially giving away 12 months NSO for free.

@Grumblevolcano It seems obvious that Nintendo doesn't, and never has, cared for the subscription model. Which is surprising given the cash cow it is. And Furukawa being very "investor friendly." Unless it has a low subscriber base and thus is a "failure" of a subscription service so they really can't exploit it. I imagine most Nintendo gamers let alone handheld gamers are traditional single player games, not the "community driven online gaming" crowd that has come to represent gaming in the PC and PC-twins world.

While I wasn't as immediately enthralled by Odyssey as a lot of other people were, I do think it's still an essential purchase for the system and it has the best post-game in the series. I'm pretty sure I spent 50+ hours with the game, and probably a majority of that was spent cleaning up the more engaging endgame moons and bonus kingdoms in the post-game.

Handheld play is gimped, though. Tying certain commands to motion gestures on a hybrid system is the height of stupidity. Have fun flinging your Switch around like an idiot when you need to do the high jump with the frog transformation.

@NEStalgia I think part of that is that as an entertainment company and not a software company that there is still a bit of a view as games as a physical product rather than a service. They are learning, but I think that is a lot of the reason why the industry does one thing and Nintendo does another. They are still selling toys or playing cards that happen to in the form of games. Software as a general business model is often exploitative (go buy a copy of Microsoft Office...not 365 and look at the price I adore MS as a data professional but even I roll my eye at their prices.) Personally since I view games the same as books or my Buzz Lightyear might be part of the reason that I agree with Nintendo most of the time. shrugs.

Here is hoping by the time I'm 60 Nintendo will have "caught up".

@Ryu_Niiyama You're right overall on that...though....they're the absolute last company in entertainment to view entertainment as a product rather than a service. Not TV, movies, music, anyone still does so except Nintendo, and I'd assumed Nintendo was trying to cash in on the times with NSO. We dodged a bullet for now for that, but I'm sure it's short lived.

If I knew 25 years ago what I know now, I surely would not have gone anywhere close to the tech industry.... Though, part of the reason software is exploitative is like most solutions for automation, it actually doesn't really work very well. It sells an impossible promise of making everything easy and automated. In reality it just makes it much faster to make bigger mistakes, and solves one problem by introducing 30 more, most of them worse than the original. Then fortunes are spent by the software vendors scrambling to try to plug the leaks all over the Titanic, which costs fortunes. It's bad enough in the consumer space, but in the enterprise space is extreme. For every one thing you "automate" you invent 5 new problems to have to manually look out for.

Engineers and scientists exist to destroy the world.

Then the few stable products (Oracle, Office, etc) just charge ridiculous sums of money, because it's the only thing that actually DOES solve a problem.

Yet, entertainment really doesn't fit that model very well..... I don't know how it's thriving as "software companies" rather than entertainment companies. OR how that shift started. Even on PC it was still "products" for a long time. It wasn't until 2004 or so it started shifting. Gaben is part of that I suppose. Grrrr, now I hate him even more.

BotW DEFINITELY runs and even to a degree looks better on Switch with its higher resolution. Places like the Great Plateau and Kakariko Village (especially if it's raining) tank the framerate hard on Wii U. Switch handles it better even if there are drops still.

@NEStalgia "Engineers and scientists exist to destroy the world"

No, we don't. That would be investors. It's the bean counters that run research and products into the ground. Cutting corners, rejecting revisions, cutting funding...all for profit.

@Ryu_Niiyama Yeah yeah, I’m still keeping an eye on you, Lena. You may have Wally fooled, but not me. 😛

@HobbitGamer I am certain that I set you up for a fantastic joke. However I must apologize but I don't understand the reference. I know it kills the humor to explain a joke but would you mind throwing me a life preserver?

@Ryu_Niiyama Haha, yeppers. It’s from the Dilbert comic/cartoon. Lena was a lead engineer that was feared for her ruthlessness and had her own legends. Lena and Dilbert were competing to release a product, and she used rally tactics to mindwash everyone but Alice against Dilbert.
Dogbert saved the day for his own humor, though.

@HobbitGamer haha, ah I gotcha. That would be the Integration Specialist here then. She apparently scares a bunch of people here. Not me since she is just a grumpy introvert (I am a polite introvert) so I find it funny. I've never been a newspaper comics kinda gal. I think I'm slightly too young for it to have caught on but old enough that I prefer books as my media consumption of choice...well baring games of course. (Although I spend more time ranting about plot holes than gaming really, ask NEStalgia. You get me on an Assassin's Creed rant and I'll text wall for days. )

I just fix the broken stuff. ...well except when our software vendor breaks stuff. Then I mumble under my breath and wish I could fix the broken stuff. Anyway, the sentiment behind your joke was amusing. So thank you for explaining.