Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@JaxonH DO you own any other consoles? I sometimes clash with folk (even mods) that treat this site as a general gaming site as opposed to a Nintendocentric one. I can cheer about getting FFVII on Switch, while some folk moan that they already played it on X in HD yada yada. Maybe Pushsquare isn't very active. Dunno.

@GrailUK Think he owns literally everything.

Personally in addition to Switch, I have a very high-end PC that can run pretty much anything at 60-144fps. And during Black Friday I'll score myself a PS4 just for some exclusives like Bloodborne.

But I don't see anything too wrong with treating it as a general gaming site since games are games, we just love Nintendo a lot so we're here.

@GrailUK
I do, actually.

I own a PS4 Pro, Xbox One X, Vita, PSVR, PC, Occulus Rift, and Switch, Wii U and 3DS.

I bought all of them day one.

Until Switch released, I did half my gaming on other consoles. Now I practically just play on Switch though. It's got so many great games that I want to play, and I'd rather play games that are on a hybrid system now so that if I get into that game, I can take it with me and play when I'm at work. I've really grown to dislike playing a game that I can only play when I'm home. I'd much rather just avoid it altogether to be honest.

Of course, exceptions are made from time to time. Monster Hunter World was definitely one of those exceptions. But even now I've got an unwrapped copy of Spider-Man, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, heck I don't even think I opened Shenmue 1/2. The games are just piling up and I'm not even opening them anymore because, Switch covers everything I need and then some. There are games on other systems that I would like to play, and I feel like if they were on Switch I would definitely play them. But being on another console where I have to solely play at home... it just doesn't appeal to me enough to get me to want to start playing the games. Not when I could be playing Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, or Xenoblade 2 Torna, or even Final Fantasy XV Pocket (which, I'm halfway through the original FFXV, and yeah I'd still rather be playing the pocket edition on switch... go figure that one out) and not have to break up my playing time into little bitty 2 hour segments when I'm home from work and feel like playing.

And that's not to say I dislike the other consoles because, there's nothing really wrong with them at all. I played them regularly for years. But Switch changed everything for me. Not just by being a hybrid console but by getting so many games I actually love to death that I can't keep up with.

I used to spend a lot of time playing games on Vita and 3DS. A LOT of time. The downside was, I was having to play an extremely dialed back version of those games in order to be able to play when I was at home and on the go, and when I was at home I had to play it on a tiny little handheld in sub HD. Like, I put crazy hours into Vita back in the day. Final Fantasy X, Persona 4, Child of Light, Sonic Racing Transformed, DQ Builders, World of Final Fantasy... Vita was hype. It just never followed through on its potential.

When I bought that system, what I really envisioned was what we are seeing with Switch right now. Actually, Switch has far surpassed even those expectations.

@EvilLucario @JaxonH Fair enough. (When I say clash I don't mean argue, more just have differing perspectives lol) Nothing against other consoles. I hardly have time to play everything on Switch. Why on Earth would I want another console lol.

@Cobalt That's utter nonsense dude. I haven't experienced a single crash or freeze after hours of play. There are minor issues with the game pausing for a second or two when it auto saves and some audio crackling but calling it unplayable is an outright lie. And 15fps? Maybe in the super later game with a massive city you might have some drops like that, but this isn't a shooter or a platformer, so the lower fps isn't a big deal. The game isn't perfect, but a 3/10? Unplayable? Utter nonsense!

@Heavyarms55

@ReaderRagfish Comments are bad, forums here are mostly fine.

I'll wait until we get more than one review for City Skylines I think. All the user testimony I've read so far has been good to great, so it's rather odd.

@ReaderRagfish It ain't immune, true. But it's a hell of a lot better imo.

@Heavyarms55
You can always count on somebody to rummage through the dumpster of foreign, third rate review sites to dig up justification for their "fair and balanced" opinion.

I haven't played the game. But it would have to be a disaster of epic proportion's to earn a legitimate 3/10. And maybe it is. Like I said I haven't played it. But I've heard quite a few people saying they're enjoying it, and you would never hear that about a genuine 3/10 game. That's all I'll say on the matter.

@ReaderRagfish
Ya got me there. I guess PC was understood to be the natural exclusion there. I actually got my gaming PC shortly after Civilization VI released. I wanted one just to play that game. Lo and behold... it's actually coming to Switch now. Incredible.

Oh, I also own a GPD Win 2. How could I leave that one off the list??? I just got it a month or two ago when it released. It's a windows 10 based clamshell hand held in a 3DS form factor with dual analog and button set. I can literally run Wolfenstein New Order on high settings (though I prefer low or medium for better battery life). It runs Final Fantasy XIII trilogy perfectly. Batman Arkham Asylum and City (haven't tried Knight). Bioshock Infinite. Dragon Age 1 and 2. Portal 1 and 2. Ni No Kuni 2. It can run DOOM better than Switch. It's a beast of a handheld, and can run every GameCube and Wii game in 720p without breaking a sweat. Portable Metroid Prime and F Zero GX, finally!!!

I’m torn on the complaints thing.

Personally I’ve gone from being regularly called a troll for criticising Wii U-era Nintendo to a fanboy because I think they’ve done so much to right with the Switch and now I’m a ‘whiner’ again, part of ‘the mob’ because I don think the Online Service is good enough. Too many people instantly start from pro-Nintendo (or Sony, or MS, or Valve or whoever) or anti-Nintendo (or Sony etc....) and can’t move from there. So an opposing viewpoint will instantly be seen as gratuitous complaining when that may not be the case.

Port complaining is the thing I don’t get. On here it’s the same posters with the same complaint time and again. It makes me feel old. I started out on the Amstrad CPC where everything was a port but all that mattered was the quality of the port and the game. I remember the likes of Lemmings, Chaos Engine and Theme Park being welcomed to the SNES with open arms. Same for the N64 and Resident Evil 2, V-Rally, Duke Nukem etc. It’s a very modern gaming thing but some people are obsessed by ports. I don’t get it.

@Octane The ban justifications are gold. My favorite one was a lifetime ban for something along the lines of "suggesting we're an intolerant hivemind who ban people for no good reason." Zero self-awareness.

@electrolite77

Dunno, MAYBE back then, ports on the SNES for example, they were in middle of EXCLUSIVES...
Today, the problem is not to have ports but to have the MAJORITY of the "new" games being ports.

To stay with the SNES, when Lemmings, chaos Engine or theme park were in the middle of A link to the past, Castlevania IV, F-Zero, Contra Spirit, Actraiser, Chrono Trigger, MarioKart, Donkey Kong Country and zillion others, there was no problem.

@electrolite77
See, online complaints are the one area I feel it's justified, to where we're all pretty much on the same wavelength. We might not all agree on what the online service should look like- for example, I believe it for my $20 I should have cloud saves for every single game and any game that is excluded should store it's data on the server, I believe we should have a messaging system and party chat for any game across the board.

That's it. I don't care about the NES games or the special offers or dedicated servers or any of that nonsense. Just give me the things I listed above and I'll be 100% satisfied. You might not agree with those exact things but I think we can all agree that we are not satisfied in one respect or another.

That being said, I'm not going to continue to parrot my complaints 24/7. It is what it is, and that's just what it is. Start a petition or tweet them, but continuing to rage about a $20 a year online service only aggravates people to the point they get sick of hearing it. At the end of the day it's $20 a year and I'll get cloud saves for 99% of my games so I'm still going to subscribe. That to me is worth $20, regardless of whether they should provide save back ups locally or not. That's a separate discussion. But at the end of the day, right now I have no back ups, and at the end of the day, I'm willing to pay $20 to have those back ups. Right or wrong.

So yeah I can totally appreciate discontent with the online service because it's totally warranted. But the port complaining has got to stop. Port is not a dirty word. Port simply means you're putting a game on a system that previously did not have said game. That's a good thing. We don't have Final Fantasy games on Switch. Or, we didn't anyways. But I like Final Fantasy. I want to play Final Fantasy. I want handheld hybrid Final Fantasy... Porting them means we will have Final Fantasy games to play on the Switch. How in any universe is that not an exceptionally awesome thing??? Or a game that comes half a year late. So, because it's 6 months late, you'd rather just not have it at all? You haven't played it yet and it's never been released on a handheld before and it only released half a year ago... but you're going to complain about getting that game on Switch for people to enjoy, and for people to finally get a handheld version of... what? We currently cannot play Civilization on Switch. Not good. Porting the latest entry means we can now play said game series on Switch. Very good. But according to some, not so. It's bad. If they had their way, we'd have no YS VIII to play, no DOOM or Skyrim or Wolfenstein 2, no DB Fighter Z, no Civ 6, no Diablo 3, no Crash Bandicoot Trilogy, no Dragon Quest XI... no Mario Kart 8, no DKC Tropical Freeze, no Bayonetta 2, no New Super Mario Bros U. We would have so many fewer games, which means we would have so much less enjoyment out of our consoles. It's just irrational.

We're getting a ton of new games. I could make quite the impressive list right now. And I think everyone here knows that's the truth. The ported games are in addition to- above and beyond. They are not taking the place of new games that we would have gotten had the ports not come. We simply would have gotten nothing at all in their place. Switch released mid-generation, which means there are hundreds of games that released before it was on the market, and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for those games not to come to Switch simply because it released after they came out. It's library would be sorely lacking all generation if it did not catch up on all those games it missed. And I'm not just talking about games it missed this generation- I'm talking games never seen on a Nintendo platform, ever. I'm talking games never seen on a handheld device, ever. These games warrant being ported. It's a less powerful home console and as such, only a portion of new games being made will be a good fit for the system. What to fill that gap with??? Hmmm. I know! There is an entire generation and a half of incredible, highly rated games that can run and would look excellent and that people would love and want a hybrid version of... those games all deserve to be on Switch.

That's what happens when you make a really powerful handheld- everybody wants every good game brought over to that handheld because it's the first time in history those games can be played on a freaking handheld. If people weren't interested they wouldn't be selling.

@JaxonH I'll only understand port complaints if they're the ONLY thing we get. Even then, a good game is a good game. No one cared about the GBA not even getting its own unique Mario game, only 4 Mario ports, after all. But the Switch is getting a **** ton of new games too. 2019 is looking mighty fantastic.

@EvilLucario
Even if it was only ports, I'd be giddy as a schoolgirl. Because as you say, a good game is a good game is a good game. I haven't played every single game in existence- in fact I've only played a very small portion of games in existence. Porting games allows gamers to play some of the best video games ever created that they otherwise would not have access to. In fact you're going to get far more bang for your buck with a ported game than a new game. Because a 10/10 new game is no better than a 10/10 ported game. But what are the odds that new game coming out is going to be a 10 out of 10? Chances are it releases and, oops, it's a 6/10. Or maybe it's even a 7 or 8 out of 10. But a ported game? A ported game is handpicked creme de la creme. If you averaged the Metacritic score of all the ported games, and compared to the average Metacritic score of new games, I think the results would be startling.

That being said, new games + ports is definitely the best scenario, and we are getting exactly that. Of course we are getting just as many ports as new games. The resources required to port a game are astronomically lower than making a new one. You can crank 6-8 ports out in the time it would take to make one new game. So naturally there's going to be more of them, especially on a system that released late and missed a lot of games, and especially on a Nintendo console that's finally a viable option for many 3rd party gems that never made it over previously, and doubly especially for the first handheld that can actually run these 7th gen and 8th gen games.

Like, come on. Someone tells me there's 25 ports coming and I smile from ear to ear. I only wish it was more! I wish it were 50 ports coming.... 100 ports coming. More good games is more good games. And have absolutely nothing to do with the new games that are coming.

I don't even make a distinction between the two. Either it's a good game or it's a bad game. The only 2 kinds of game that exist. And if it's a good game, you can believe either A a bunch of people haven't played it and want it ported, B have played it, loved it, and want a handheld hybrid version. Of course there's always some people who played it and won't want to play it again- that's true. But you can't ignore the masses of people who do want the game just because some people don't

Wait WHO TOLD YO- oh wait you're talking about other site.

@JaxonH Oh yeah definitely. It's just that when I get a new system, I also expect new games to play and look forward to, even if they end up bad. So as long as I have enough new games to look forward to, I'm all for ports.

And currently I have more than enough new games to look forward to, so I'm very content.

@EvilLucario
I remember when I bought my Vita. You know the game that I envisioned playing on that system? The one that kind of sold me on the whole idea of it? Portal 2. A game that had been out for years. That's what I imagined playing one day when I bought that system. I never got it. But that's the one I'd hoped for.

You know what I imagined playing when I bought Switch (besides Zelda)? Metroid Prime Trilogy. Games that have been out for a decade. But I wanted them portably on a hybrid console, and still do. It wasn't some imagined new game that I envisioned when I bought the system... but ports of games I love.

Ports are extremely powerful. Final Fantasy X and XII on Switch rank up there in the "dream come true" category.

@JaxonH I ask for ports too, but mostly for other people to play the games than myself playing since even though I love portability, my current setup and situation is just extremely easy for docked play so I'm not as mobile with my Switch these days, so if I want to replay a game I can just reach into my old systems.

So I don't quite share the same view of how ports would really enhance a system's library (at least for games I already own), but nonetheless they are still very welcome.