Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@link3710 I'm guessing you're somehow someone that wouldnt stress out in a game of Russian roulette . Seriously even as a kid, give mea stupid trap and make me repeat something more than3 times and id rage like a heavy metal rocker. And I'm a subdued person otherwise.

@EvilLucario the streaming thing i really don't get. Even less than the hard games. Again, at the risk of sounding old again it seems to be a thing for the kiddies up through college age. Not sure where the speak came from. I watch treehouse.... But that's the absolute only "streaming" that interests me even slightly. Watching "personalities" is as fun as watching paint dry. I also can't understand why people watch reality tv. 10 minutes of that and feel my brain going numb

I'm wondering if the hard game crowd is also proficient at music. The memorization and sequencing strike be as similar in mindset. I also always sucked at music of any kind. I can compare great things in my head but it can't go anywhere

Glad to see I'm not the only one feeling like that! You and @NEStalgia perfectly phrase how I personally feel towards hard games and Youtube gamers. I also don't really get the whole e-sports thing. I'm still hoping it's just a fad but I'm afraid not

@toiletduck Unfortunately e-sports aren't a fad. Just like multiplayer only games, micro transactions and games as a service, this is the way gaming is going to head more and more with each generation of gamers embracing it more and more. But it is great to see others feeling the same way about hard games, and YouTubers/Twitch streamers.

@FragRed I doubt it. Just like anything else, it'll only increase until the market hits saturation. E-sports are only ever going to be able to attract a portion of the market, far too many people only enjoy games for being games, no matter what generation they are in.

@toiletduck yeah the esports thing is here however but that REALLY had an age cap, like pro real sports, of like 25 tops. Great for kids with toooons of time i guess. Hard games seem like esports for those not good enough for esports

Also i forget that so many people do watch YouTubers to play their hard games and follow strategies..... So theyre not really doing it on their own, they're watching others do it and copying well.

@ReaderRagfish hmm surprising.... i thoughti was into something for the type of person that's good at it.

@subpopz Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about speedrunning? I can't stand livestreaming typically, but I'll watch GDQ every year to see how people approach aspects of the games I'd never see otherwise.

@subpopz interestingly I've never thought of Mario 3 was particularly difficult. I beat it so many times in the day, and it still feels perfectly playable to me. It's all about solid platform timing and not much else. Mm otoh is cheap with almost shmup like bullet storms while platforming that knocks you back, plus bosses that move at absurd speed and fill the screen without time to watch and learn. Much faster than boom boom and the koopalings that had very deliberate patterns and it was easier to accrue lives. You can't really really react to these things in mm, you have to memorize placement and timings and proactively act instead of reacting. I do find blocks level much easier now thati know where everything is beforei get there. But that's technically bad design..... Some people just kind of got fond of that.

Can't comment on souls. Played an hour or two of 3 and the switch demo of 1. I did preorder 1. I like nioh but suck at it. I loathe blood borne. But not because of difficulty but pretentiousness, bad story, map design, and a horrible disconnect at respawn (ds doesn't suffer that. I sometimes wonder if blood borne weren'ta Sony exclusive of it would be that unwanted cousin if souls instead of praised.)

@NEStalgia Huh, I actually did play the guitar and piano when I was a teenager. I wasn't amazing at music though. As a young 21 year old who grew up on playing Mario Lost Levels from Mario DX on GBC and Castlevania, I guess I just have had an affinity to challenging games.

@subpopz I don't know if I personally agree with the notion that a game needs to be hard or have some challenge to be worth my time. Pokemon in particular is one of my favorite series but that is easy as hell as RPG comfort food. Similarly, Castlevania is another, but that is pretty dang challenging with deliberate controls. Difficulty is only one aspect of a game when you also have visual feedback (not graphical fidelity, I mean visual euphoria like after something awesome in fighting games), music, level design (why Mario works so well despite being relatively easier), and other mechanics.

As for the D-Pad, I've been playing Mario 1/3 and Zelda 1 with the Joy-Cons and I feel just fine. Actually, for platformers like Mario and Sonic, I prefer the Joy-Cons because the separated buttons insure you never do accidental diagonal inputs. But if playing something like Blaster Master Zero which does require lots of diagonal inputs... yeah I guess that sucks ass.

As for the things about YouTube and Twitch, it may indeed be an age gap between people like me and you guys. But most of the time I like to follow personalities who are nice people and also have (mostly) the same taste as I do. It's a nice way to pass the time when driving to university or whatever, listening to someone talk about games. And in fact me and a group of friends are planning to start up a podcast talking about mostly JRPGs and other Japanese games, but all centered around games, so we'll be joining that oversaturated pile of people ourselves lol.

@subpopz That makes more sense, actually wholeheartedly agree with that. Engagement is really the key for a good game.

Although for platformers, Yoshi's Woolly World is an extremely chill platformer that made up for its chill nature with a very pleasing aesthetic and level design. It was extremely easy, but the feel of it really makes it come alive to a great game.

@subpopz Agreed. I adore the Kirby series, but it needs a good chunk of content and replay value to make it worthwhile. Which, post Dream Land, most games have met those requirements. Star Allies issue wasn't in the difficult, it was the AIs doing all the work for you. It made it far too mindless. I'm finally starting to really enjoy the game with the new DLC content, they seem to be cranking up the difficulty to compensate for the allies, but the base game is just... not balanced at all.

Which is a shame, the game is so fluid and fun to play when the allies aren't doing all the work for you.

Mega Man doesn't do it for me either. I should like his games as platformers are my favourite genre and I enjoy retro games even if I've no nostalgia for them. I can handle a challenge too but Mega Man's challenge I just don't find enjoyable, not in the slightest. I've tried numerous times to get into the series as I've always thought one day it would click with me but nope.

@OorWullie Well it depends on what you don't like about Mega Man. I'm not big on Mega Man classic and Mega Man X, but Mega Man Zero is fantastic and something I go back to constantly. For me, while Zero is much more difficult than classic and X, the combat is much more satisfying and the entire game just feels better than Mega Man X in almost every way, at least imo.

@link3710 thankfully I purchased it used for $17 at GameStop, on a special sale for Elite members, it's a fun game but God awful short, I mean even trying to find all of the secrets in each level, I beat the game in three hours, I thought it was a joke, then it opened up two new secret world, but yet still, poof, they blew by faster than a chiuawa in a category 5 tornado

the only reason I didn't trade it back to GS is they would only give me like $5, I think the various GBA ones were more fulfilling

@jhewitt3476 Beat Kirby to 100% in three hours? Wow, I think if all I had to do was walking to the right side, go through the correct doors en beat the boss as fast as possible in each level, I'd still need +6 hours to complete the game. I think it's bit meatier than you're suggesting here

@toiletduck no, I beat the base stages and most hidden switches and puzzle pieces in 3, the extra revealed content after beating story mode 100% 1 more hour (3&4 hour)
I was playing a relaxed game in a hard core mindset, so yah, maybe I blew through it, but it was still far too short either way, I might have been ok if the individual levels themselves were larger/longer, but they were just far too small to have less than 12/world

I finished DOOM, very good overall but disappointing final boss (about as disappointing as the BotW final boss). Not at 100% completion (missed out on a load of secrets) but I'll do that another time, still got lots of backlog and I need Bayonetta 1+2 finished before December 6th.

@jhewitt3476 Looking at the speed run boards, you came close to making it on the list with that time. That's honestly kind of impressive. I know it took me 5-6 hours for the main story, and 6-7 on extras so far.

@EvilLucario I played all the Castlevanias (well 2 left me frustrated after I was right at a save point and had to turn it off and lost all my progress after I was already frustrated and just never went back.) But Lost Levels was always something I saw as impossible and imagined nobody could actually play it

@subpopz Mario 3 still seems fine to me even with NES:O and joycons... shrug. But I do agree, I was amazed how much MM11 controlled better with the Pro....but it just wasn't the pro, it was the big screen too (and/or maybe something about the Switch rendering? It seemed more fluid docked...) And I do have the obscenely priced set of NES controllers on the way (I couldn't resist....wish they were wired in some ways, though. I won't use them enough to justify the battery wear.) Now if only I could use my NES advantage it'll be just like the old days. I have the HORI HRAP...maybe that works in a pinch.

I haven't played Celeste (or Super Meat Boy, or Dead Cells, before you ask ) so I can't comment on those.

MM11 really does rely on memorization though. It's amazing how you can blast through a room by knowing where to shoot before something pops out and how much easier that makes it, and/or knowing to speed through a set of conveyors/platforms/etc the moment you enter the room without stopping to shoot by knowing exactly where to go in advance. Not being able to observe and react and/or plan really isn't a great platformer design. I suppose I can see how some people got hooked on it, especially back in the day, but...it really is pretty cheap with all the projectiles. And the fact that projectiles don't have fixed trajectories but are adjusted to aim for you, such as the axe throwers in the construction yard.

What's telling is that the super easy noob mode doesn't really make the game much easier. It makes it easier to get through by brute forcing from checkpoints with double damage and infinite lives, but the game itself is still tough as nails because of the systems, and even on noob mode bosses devastate you until you figure out some way to handle them. What the mode does give you is a chance to memorize the game to replay it normally later.

I see the hook though, but I think MM is a different kind of "hard" than Souls filled with cheap deaths, bullet hell, and that really awful stun/knockback when you get hit that easily throws you off ledges through no direct fault of your own, and with only 2 starting lives that makes it that much cheaper. Bosses with screen filling attacks and no safe space to observe patterns means learning a boss consists of nothing other than re-doing a level endlessly just to get to see him for a few seconds a few times (unless you play on noob mode.) These days people probably do watch Youtube to see how these things are done and learn from others what to do which really changes the script on what "hard" is....back in the day you had to figure it out on your own by trying it over and over. That's how I'm still playing this, but it's now visibly antiquated and frustrating to do (outside of noob mode.) Once you DO memorize a level it can be fun to try to do.....I think it's kind of a series that's "accidentally good." As an actual platform it fails on all levels. Yet as a biproduct it created a way to play that I can see how it might actually be fun. Now that's intentional in the design but I suspect back in the 80's it was an accidental success of what otherwise was technically a terrible game. Having done noob mode, and having done one or two levels several times I'm finding those levels kind of fun to try (but the boss, not so much.)

@ReaderRagfish I haven't played Super Meat Boy, but if it's as you described, that sounds not only "not hard" but "easy"....if something lets me instantly respawn and keep retrying a challenge infinitely, there's no challenge in a game I can't beat. Anything that doesn't let me retry instantly is rage inducing (that includes Hollow Knight....I'd love to keep retrying that first boss, but having to slog from the checkpoint just makes me ready to snap a controller by the time I have 3 seconds to try to learn his patterns.) Making me do a whole level again? No....and the stress knowing I HAVE to get it right this time or restart makes me that much less likely to get it right. But what you describe of Meat Boy does sound the opposite of "hard."

@NEStalgia Lost Levels is actually my least favorite Mario game because there are instances where its challenge can err on the side of bullcrap, but I still really like the game.

Castlevania II isn't really BAD bad, just obtuse as hell and not very interesting.

@subpopz You're not in the minority about the D-Pad, there are a bunch of people who complain about the Joy-Con D-Pad who don't split Joy-Cons for local multiplayer and etc. It's just for me I really like segmented buttons. But there are ton of other people that think otherwise.

@subpopz You could get one of those Joy-cons with a d-pad then? They only work in handheld mode, but it sounds like that's better for you anyways.