Topic: Is Nintendo resting on its laurels?

The only ones resting on their laurels are the complainers on here. Go buy and support NIN. If you don't like NIN don't buy or better don't post about it-it just makes you look bad.

@Cobalt It's not PR to point out that millions of people are using the Switch. It's pure, solid, independently verifiable sales data. Going from there to the proposition that many of them are using it in portable mode is slightly harder to verify but not at all unlikely. Nintendo says people are using it on the go, I've used it on the go, I've seen other people using it on the go, others in this forum have confirmed that they use it on the go, and multiple independent polls have shown it. Not PR, just observations that confirm that the vast majority of people are finding the portable aspect satisfactory.

Anyone who's read a few of my comments knows that if I was doing Nintendo PR I would be fired almost immediately. I skipped the Wii U completely and only bought a Wii secondhand and several years late, and I'm not a huge fan of Super Mario Odyssey. When I don't like a Nintendo product, I say it loud and clear.

Ironically, I've also gotten into vicious arguments with fans of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because I find various aspects of the game a huge turnoff. Let's just say that the term SJW has been used against me a number of times. I regret nothing I've ever said, because I believe in what I say and yes, I do believe in social justice.

So no, I'm not playing a special PR version of XC2. That said, from a technical standpoint the game is beautiful and ambitious, and if it coughs and stutters in handheld mode it's still pretty damn amazing that you can play a game of that size and quality on a handheld in the first place. I've played XC3D on the New 3DS. It's smooth, all right, and it's fun, but it's a ginormous drop in quality from the console version, to the point where the character models literally look like you're watching them through Vaseline. Compare that to XC2 on Switch handheld, and it's a completely different world. I find the handheld experience more than acceptable, thank you.

On playing in sunlight, I'm not arguing about that. You just plain can't. On the other hand, I don't have any other electronics that work any better in the sunlight, certainly not well enough for serious gaming, so is this really something we should be calling the Switch out for?

@Cobalt
Can you outline what you think makes Mario 64 better than Odyssey? I also am not a huge Odyssey fan, but I can't quite put my finger on why. I finished it, but I have very little desire to go back and find everything. I don't know if it's the environments, the controls, or what... just didn't hit the sweet spot for me for some reason.

But I'm also not a big BotW fan. I put hundreds of hours into it, but I would take an older Zelda game (2D or 3D) ANY day.

So those things combined make me just think I'm a fan of older game design. Nothing wrong with that except for the unfortunate reality that I probably won't like a whole lot of games these days lol

@rallydefault What's the older game design though? I've been thinking about that too. Now, I'm not a fan of Zelda, but that's because it's almost a completely different game. I liked Oddysey, but I too have no desire to collect every moon. Maybe it's just the sheer number of them. Because I do think that the game itself is pretty close to Sunshine and 64.

@rallydefault It could be that you prefer the linearity in Mario 64. While you had variety in the order you could visit levels, for the most part you could only complete the stars of each painting in a particular order because obtaining certain stars changed the level to allow you to access other areas. Meanwhile with Mario Odyssey, it's mostly about collecting random moons scattered around each Kingdom (just doing the story moons isn't enough to progress) so in a sense is more like BotW's shrine or Korok seed mechanics than Mario 64's stars.

Perhaps Odyssey needed some other common collectible rather than having all be one type?

@Yorumi

Quantity over quality ! That's just perfect to describe Super Mario Odyssey ! We think the same way.

@skywake said : "The Switch already has an objectively bigger library of well reviewed games than 3DS, Vita and Wii U."

A review is always more subjective by essence than objective.

Another point to add, the autonomy is better on WiiU than Switch(almost double) and if you go with the 2550mAh battery then you basically triple the autonomy of the Switch.

@Yorumi Maybe... I do agree that if there's 999 of them, it makes every individual moon less important, especially since some are found by butt-stomping random spots.

@Grumblevolcano I think you're describing Sunshine. In 64 you could do most stars in the first episode. Not all of them, but several were always available right from the start. It gives you a little more freedom, but I also liked the ever-changing levels in Sunshine. Every episode was a little different.

@TheLZdragon They were also the purple coins(?).

I don't know how Nine Inch Nails is relevant, but ok :V

@kkslider5552000

You dunno Reznor Fils-aimé ? Strange...

@Octane Maybe I haven't experimented enough, the last time I played 64 was in 2015 when it came to Wii U VC.

... How is Wii U is more autonomy than Switch when you have to be tethered to the main system? (And have wifi?)

@Grumblevolcano You can free the Chain Chomp in Bob-omb Battlefield in every mission, but you can only race the Koopa in the specific episode. It depends on what the objective is.

From what I understand they added so many moons in SMO to allow players of all skill levels to find something to achieve in whatever amount of free time they could give the game.

So basically their intention was "go at your own pace", not "gotta find them all in one sitting".

It's like the koroks in that sense.

Nine Inch Nails is always relevant. 👹

@Octane That's one of the few I knew already and I know a few in Sunshine like how you can defeat Petey Piranha before collecting the 1st shine sprite in Bianco Hills.

@Grumblevolcano @Octane
Good question - I've been thinking about this. What is "older" game design?

I think @Grumblevolcano has part of it correct. For me, and I'm not afraid to say this, I enjoy linearity in games. I'm weird. But yea, I like when a game tells a solid story from start to finish and sort of ushers you through it. I know I'm not in the majority with that opinion, but that's just the type of gamer I am.

So, I think most "older" games were linear, mostly because of technology limits. But I do think that modern games are REALLY overdoing things. I mean, remember back in the day when we thought a game like Donkey Kong 64 or Banjo Kazooie were overdoing it on collectibles? Well fast-forward to now and stuff like Odyssey and BotW, which both have endless things to collect and craft and hoard and ugh... I can't do it lol

I miss collectibles MEANING something. Like in Ocarina, if you were going to go out of your way to get Biggoron's Sword (which you totally did NOT have to do), it actually affected your damage and combat tactics by giving you more damage but no shield. It wasn't just some cosmetic item added to fluff game time. Same thing with even the Skulltulla tokens. If you were going to take your time to get all those things, you didn't just unlock "Polka-Dot Link Costume" that does absolutely nothing in effect; no, the devs actually rewarded you and changed your game by enlarging your wallet or even giving you the rumble stone thing (on the N64). I mean, dang - that's pretty cool.

Like someone else said, I think I just disagree with a lot of modern game design that seems to stress "quantity over quality."

It just seemed, "back then," in a lot of games, if stuff was added by the devs it was purposeful and rewarded the player in a real way rather than these empty gameplay loops we see today to just collect meaningless things.

@Grumblevolcano I think that's the only one lol. Though there are a few secret shines and the 100 coin shine you can do at any time.

@rallydefault Oh yeah, same here. I don't mind linear games at all. It allows for a more fine-tuned experience if it's done right.

Agree about the quantity vs quality part. It seems like a lot of publishers care more about the time players spend with their game than the quality of that time spent. Probably related to the fact that quite a lot of gamers offer micro-transactions of some sort.

@rallydefault Well, games like Odyssey and BotW are less about just 100% completion and more about just doing what you want then stopping. You don't have to get all 900 Korok seeds or 880 Moons, you just do what you want then stop at that. To a certain degree the same applies to earlier 3D Zeldas and Marios, but even then they still had some expectations for 100% completion, Sunshine's postcard not-withstanding.

And people have been wanting non-linear games since the beginning. Zelda 1 and Metroid 1 were the forerunners of that, and other games like Mega Man experimented with mixing linearity with non-linearity. Then it really started to blossom with games like Super Metroid and Deus Ex.

It came to a head in the PS3/360/Wii generation where people were bashing linear games until they wisened up at how utterly dumb that was in this current generation, but people have always been a big fan of non-linear games since the NES.

Describing "older" game design is a lot more nuanced than simply "collectables meant more back then". Take something like Doom 2016, which ditched a lot of modern shooter mechanics like regenerating health and even reloading in favor to recapture the essence of classic Doom, but remixed with modern game designs like maps and upgrade systems. Even BotW, as much of a tech demo it can seem at times, is literally just Zelda 1 but supercharged into 3D. Odyssey has called back to 64/Sunshine's more sandboxy approaches, but it still mixes in Galaxy's more varied level design and linearity, which you can see if you just go after the main moons. And there's more examples like Bayonetta really just being 3D, supercharged "side-scrolling" beat-em-ups with complex combat and arcade-like gameplay as well.

I say all that as someone who also does prefer a lot of older games over new games (most of the time, some of my favorite games lately have been from the past few years like Bayonetta 2 and Xenoblade X), but you'll also have to consider that sometimes, the two viewpoints run opposite to what they intend to do, so imo it's better to judge it based on what said game is doing versus what it's not doing, unless it's critical to its genre and/or gameplay like, say, God of War 2018's awful camera system being a complete step-back from Bayonetta/Devil May Cry's rotatable camera or even classic God of War's fixed camera in terms of combat fluidity.