Topic: No Man's Sky: Switch 2 edition

I read the article that had the developer Virtuos talking about the capabilities of Switch 2 and they were generally positive but they did say the CPU performance was close to that of the original PS4 and that its ability to be competitive was down to rendering at a very low resolution and upscaling using DLSS. They are a huge developer who have developed so many Switch titles. I think you have to be realistic about the Switch 2 and that is without DLSS it isn't that impressive and with DLSS there are artifacts. It's CPU performance is quite weak. Cyberpunk looks a fairly poor version to me, cut down in many ways and with frame rate issues and that is quite an old game now. It's still very impressive for a portable but that is all really down to DLSS. I always buy Nintendo consoles for the exclusives really and generally buy multi-format titles elsewhere due to performance and value. I see no reason to change this with the Switch 2. In the PC space many graphics cards have great upscaling too and absolutely huge amounts of CPU performance in comparison. I mean what would the Xbox One and PS4 have been capable of if they could have rendered at 640x360p and upscaled to 1080p or beyond. They would have been amazing. I remember the PS4 Pro having checkerboard upscaling which looked pants. The Switch 2 is very weak hardware with decent upscaling technology.

I wonder how long it's gonna take before the Voyagers update arrives on the Switch 2? On Switch 1, the updates typically came a week or so after the other platforms, but now it's already been longer than that. Though IIRC, one of the bigger content updates took something like 2 weeks to arrive to Switch 1 after it'd been released for everyone else.

Yeah this kind of sucks to be honest. Nintendo is really dropping the ball taking this long to verify and approve updates.

Both XBOX and PS5 had the Voyagers update almost two weeks ago, got fixes even and the new Expedition has been live for almost a week.
So this means the Switch players have already lost a week on the new Expedition.

Voyagers has received numerous patches on PC since release, and it's still a buggy mess. It has memory leaks where when you work on a Corvette for too long/make too many changes, crashes your system. Without fail. I've had it crash on my 32gb desktop, and on my Steam Deck.

It has significant performance issues as well. I wouldn't be surprised if this crashes the Switch 2 (and partciularly the Switch 1) far far more often than the current version of the game on these platforms does. And it's already crashed my Switch 2 so many times I gave up on it.

There might be a reason Nintendo is holding it back. And even if not, I think waiting for this update is wise either way. Hello Games are commendable for all their work, but their QA is as always severely lacking.

IIRC, previously when there was a situation like this, Switch players got an extension for the expedition to make up for the time they lost because of the delayed update.

Yeah, but that was before cross-platform saves. If they going to extend the Expedition for Switch players, they now have to extend it for all platforms or it will be break cross-saves for people.

It already does now for people that started a save on Switch, then loaded that save in 6.0 on PC (for example) and now it of course won´t load on the Switch anymore. And this is going to be even more messy when all platforms are on the same version and they only extend the Expedition on one platform.
I expect it would immediately end the Expedition when the save gets loaded on another platform.

This is taking unusually long now. After more than two weeks still no Voyagers update on the Switch 2.

Looks like the Voyagers update is finally available for Switch, let's see how well it works.

Yeah doesn´t help when cross save is broken on Switch currently and my current save stuck on another platform.

So I guess we have to wait another couple weeks for that to work again. So have given up playing the Voyagers Expedition on the Switch2 for now.
I´ll just play it on my PS5 and PS Portal, where my current save is.

Thankfully I stopped using cross-saves after the Switch 2 version of NMS came out, because it looks good enough to me that I don't need to alternate between playing it on the PC and Switch anymore.

It kept crashing my Switch 2 and / or chugging to unbearably low framerates on many planets, so I went back to Steam Deck. I wish I could tune the individual graphic settings on Switch 2 since the default settings are clearly too much for it.

Yep. I could download my cross-save, but I cannot load it, because the Switch 2 just got the 6.0.0 update, while all other platforms are several updates ahead now.

Nintendo really needs to fix their update approval process. It just takes way too long now. 3 weeks for the 6.0.0 update to finally release and now we have to wait god knows how long for the latest updates, so the Switch 2 is at parity with the other platforms. /sigh

@BonzoBanana
Cyberpunk looks great. I've put in 10-15 hours and its dang impressive. Weather, the hardware is good or not.Is completely subjective and depends on what your point of comparison is. Compared to a pc or current gen consoles, of course the CPU isn't that impressive. But games are more GPU centric now and it has a good GPU, and frankly for being a 10W handheld at the price point its at the CPU is perfectly acceptable

Of course PS4 could do amazing things IF it had DLSS, but it didn't. That's the thing. Switch 2 chip has the Tensor Cores that enable DLSS and thats a huge advantage. It's how we're getting games that look just as good as PS4 versions in handheld mode That's not a negative. That's one of its greatest strengths.

For the record the framerate in Cyberpunk is fine. Not perfect but 99% of the time its holding a solid framerate. If you are accustomed to high level p c gaming, then it's obviously not going to be your cup of tea.But for those of us who are perfectly okay with making small trade offs visually for a competent hybrid version, it's one of the most impressive ports on the system. Especially when you consider the massive gulf in power between NSW2 and PC/PS5/XS. diminishing returns truly are closing the gap between handheld and console, which works to our benefit.

Anyways, can you explain the appeal of this game to me? Because I have tried to get into it 3 times now. Most recently with the NSW2 version. And every time I die within fifteen or twenty minutes. It's like I run out of oxygen or some resource.I need and I can't find it anywhere no matter where I look. I just dont "get it". I uninstalled it.I got so frustrated with it. Maybe survival games just aren't my forte.

But I am of the firm belief that any genre can appeal to any gamer, it's just a matter of finding the right game or understanding the mindset you need to have to enjoy it. So far that has eluded me for No Man's Sky. And it kind of angers me because I see everyone rave about how great it is. And yet, I have a terrible time with it every time I attempt to get into it.

Interesting, this hasn't happened to me even though I've played NMS quite a bit on the Switch 2.

As for the very start of the game, yeah, it can be kind of rough since you have so few resources, but personally I've never died because of lack of oxygen or anything. (And I've done this several times.) When you perform the scan by pressing the left joystick, you should always be able to find plants/minerals nearby that have oxygen, carbon and other elements essential for survival. You just gotta be careful no to venture too far from your ship while you're still low on resources. But it'll soon get better.

As for the game's main appeal, well, after you've played it for a few hours and fixed your first spaceship and set up your first home base, after that it's not really a survival game but a sandbox game. Once you've advanced a bit, deaths become pretty rare and the whole thing becomes about exploration, really. And because of the game's nature, you're never gonna run out of stuff to explore.

Sure, there are some pretty well-written pieces of plot and lore, but they're still pretty minimal compared to other games of this size. And the few established NPCs who are not procedurally generated are kinda cool but not very deep. So if you're looking for a game with a gripping narrative and well-rounded characters, this is not that. But if you want to play the ultimate sci-fi sandbox/exploration game with loads and loads of cool, freaky, and even psychedelic things to discover, then that's what NMS is really about.

Voyagers is great, but my 23 hour save file now crashes whenever I try to load it

Is the “tassellation” graphic update out?

Has it been released?

Nintendo needs to get their fingers out of their rear behinds and improve this ridiculous slow update approval process on the Switch 2.

Right now its just pointless playing on the Switch 2 with cross-saves, as the Switch 2 is systematically weeks behind on updates compared to other platforms.

@Jeronan I don't think it's Nintendo in this case, I think Hello Games might've pulled the Switch update before it got out. Since the Corvette update there's been a lot of very major bug fix patches on the other platforms, and it's only started to calm down and become stable more recently. Given that approval takes longer for Switch (but not this long), it would've been a bad idea to release the update and then have Switch players wait a long time for critical, game-breaking bugs to be fixed.

Yes it is on Nintendo. Other platforms approve updates/fixes way quicker than Nintendo does.

This last patch was submitted over one and half week ago and we still haven´t gotten it.