Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Nah, I am not getting it. The direct didn't excite me enough to want it.

Fe is more up my alley though, but I want some more info on gameplay before buying.

@JaxonH @Ralizah there's a lot of comparison going on between S/S and BOTW. In a way that makes sense. There's one thing not a lot of people are mentioning when they're 'complaining' there's not enough BOTW in the new pokemon: all the stuff that -is- in pokemon but -isn't- in BOTW (e.g. lots of different pokemon you can catch 😉). Not saying you're the ones complaining or anything, just mentioning that I notice it's a one way comparison most of the time.

I don't think it's anywhere near BOTW, and that's coming from me

This games will sell 15 million guaranteed, and being the first "big" Pokemon game on the telly, probably 20 million. On top of that, there's going to be a third and fourth version probably. This franchise makes so much money, but it's a shame that it still feels like a B-tier game in terms of budget. It pales in comparison to something like Mario Odyssey, Zelda or even Splatoon imo. I'm not saying that it looks like a 3DS game, but at the same time it doesn't feel like a big budget game either.

At least the new Pokemon look good though.

I'm a bit underwhelmed by Nintendo 2nd half of 2019 but getting more info at E3 about the announced games may change that. Right now I'd guess my top 5 GotY 2019 list will end up being:
1. Super Mario Maker 2
2. Halo Reach
3. Astral Chain
4. Team Sonic Racing (while very fun SEGA would need to fix the online issues for this to be higher, getting disconnected and/or system crashing often is not fun)
5. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe/Crash Team Racing

I'm hoping for an interesting E3, cos 2019 isn't doing it for me.

Mario Maker 2 - I'd like to have it but can't justify a full price going by the limited amount (c.20 hours) I've played the original.

Fire Emblem - I'm open to more graphical styles than ever, but I need a game to appeal to me visually one way or another, and this one looks like dog ****.

Luigi's Mansion 3 - give me a reason to expect something different about it.

Astral Chain - just on the fence - looks a bit of a mish-mash of ideas, wondering if there'll be anything defining about it.

Pokemon S&S - still looks like a 3DS game, needs to stretch itself more to get me hyped.

Animal Crossing - not been given any reason to expect much different to New Leaf, which I've struggled to appreciate. Potential's there but the gameplay is too limited from what I've seen.

Dragon Quest is what I'm most hyped about, but I've got most of DQB still to play and a huge backlog of main series games to play before I should be allowing myself to invest further.

Yikes. Fire Emblem may not be a visual spectacle given the type of game it is, but it’s perfectly adequate and still the best looking game in the series to date. To say it looks like **** seems to be either wild hyperbole or an impossible standard has been set. I think the game looks fantastic. Excellent art style with snazzy new redesigned menus and ground level grid lines. This one has a bit of the Tecmo Koei environment textures which, ok, they’re not the best. But as a whole the game does actually look pretty good, especially when you compare to previous entries like Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn.

But saying Pokémon still looks like a 3DS game almost seems like intentional trolling at this point. As if Breath of the Wild still looks like Ocarina of Time 3D. The biggest leap forward the series has ever seen in 20 years, with a release that visually takes even the most beautiful Switch games to task (even Zelda, which I think is probably the only Switch game that might surpass this one in terms of beauty). Visible Pokémon in the Wild with huge, open areas, full camera control, multiplayer raids online... that’s already stretching the game about as far as it can feasibly go.

What Pokémon on 3DS looks like

Not what Pokémon on 3DS looks like

The final of the ARMS Party Crash Bash tournament starts next week (June 14th). Alongside Splatfests ending potentially meaning Splatoon 3, I wonder if the end of this tournament means ARMS 2.

@JaxonH I don't know if it's ever possible for any one Pokemon game to be as polished or make as big of a splash as something like BotW or SMO, just because the series is so vested in gradual change. Which is fine. An annual series with a huge, established metagame doesn't have the luxury of taking five years between entries, or putting out something radically different. People who want some majorly ambitious new Pokemon game, I hate to say, don't understand the type of game it is. I'm impressed with what I've seen so far, though. I was expecting less, so I'm very, very happy with what I've seen. And yeah, saying Pokemon Sw/Sh look like 3DS games is openly ridiculous. I'll even go so far as to say that they're one of the better looking sets of games on the system. The clean, anime-esque character models, vibrant environments, and gorgeous shading really make the world of Sw/Shi pop in a way that previous entries just didn't.

And yeah, Fire Emblem: Three Houses might not be Uncharted 4 visually (and honestly, I wouldn't want it to be: ultra realism is overrated and too resource-intensive), but its look is very much in line with what I imagine a modern successor to the Gamecube and Wii games would look like. More importantly, I'm really happy with the free roaming around the campus. Getting a huge, to-scale environment like that in a Fire Emblem game is a big advancement for the series.

Assuming Animal Crossing looks good, my BIG games the rest of the year will be: Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Pokemon Sw/Sh, Dragon Quest XI S, Animal Crossing, and Shantae 5. There's also a lot of games I'm interested in, but not sure how much I'll end up loving: Astral Chain, Luigi's Mansion 3, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Death Stranding, AI: The Somnium Files, etc. They're ALL interesting to me, though. It's rare to get a year with this many big releases I'm interested in.

Mario Maker 2 is... well, I'm sure it'll be fantastic for what it is. I'm sure I'll pick it up eventually, too. But it's nothing I'm excited for. Community-built levels are no substitute for actual Mario levels in a real Mario game. When I played the Wii U original, it seemed like the majority of them were troll levels, overly difficult, gimmicks, or else just poorly-made, and I don't expect that to change with this entry. And I've discovered that good level design isn't one of my strengths, so the creativity engine aspect of the game isn't hugely interesting for me, either.

Link's Awakening on Switch is adorable looking, but I'm not excited about paying full price for a short Game Boy game. It's also one of my least favorite games in the series, and several aspects of the game design openly irritated me when I played it. Given that it was my first Zelda game, it might explain why it took me such a long time to play the rest of the series (I didn't REALLY try another game in the series until Ocarina of Time 3D in 2011).

The Marvel game... yeah, I'm probably never playing that. Not a huge superhero fan to begin with, and this one looks like a game I'd play on my Android phone. I just don't see the appeal. At all.

@JaxonH This looks way better...

than this:

I just think there's so much potential, but it feels like they're playing it safe. I thought BOTW was kinda empty and sparse, but this takes the cake. Again, there's a ton of untapped potential, but I don't think Game Freak will ever go that far. It's alright, but I don't think it looks amazing or anything like that. And I don't know why it needs to be so low budget at times, this is going to make its money back guaranteed; even if they throw a 50 million at it.

@Octane I agree. Pokémon fans like us will throw money at it whether we like it or not, but still we have to point the flaws when we see them.
The world looks empty. Especially this zone with the free camera.

The world being empty is very standard for open world games, one of the reasons why everything shouldn't be striving for open world.

@Grumblevolcano They could at least put some decoration like more trees etc. But not even that.

Emptiness is fine. It depends on how it's utilized. BotW has a lot of open space, but it feels very freeing in that game. Both because there's always something to find or do and because the environments are stunning and can be interacted with.

Other games don't work out as well. Fallout 4 just felt boring and empty. As much as I loved NieR: Automata, that game should never have had an open world to explore, because there's pretty much nothing to see or do other than kill enemies and pick up loot drops.

I'll wait and see how Pokemon actually utilizes its space before I render a verdict.

@Octane
Remember, the game (Pokemon Sword/Shield) is not the final footage.
Still 5 months to go to optimize the game aspetcs.

@Octane
Kinda seems a fallacious argument though, since I never said it looked better than Zelda. I said it looked better than most Switch games except Zelda.

Even so, I wouldn’t say it looks way better. It looks better. But way better? Not seeing it. They have different art styles, but each is beautiful in its own way.

I also don’t understand complaints of empty. As if a 7-Eleven is supposed to be around every corner. It’s Pokémon in the wild environments so that’s what you would expect to see. Large environments with Pokémon roaming around. Seems like a natural fit. We certainly don’t need an Ubisoft game design approach here. Just put Pokémon in the world. Job done.

I also think it looks really high budget compared to past games. This is like the opposite of low budget to me. This game looks phenomenal compared to the ones that have come before, and it even takes Yokai Watch 4 to task, and that game had already raised the bar considerably.

I really don’t understand people nowadays. They can show an amazing incredible gorgeous game and people are like eh, looks like crap. Looks empty. Looks low budget. Looks like a 3DS game. More and more I feel like I just don’t fit in with the gaming community when I hear stuff like that, because that is the exact opposite of what I see.

It's pretty crazy how, over the course of a generation, Pokemon has gone from being a sprite-based, low-res handheld game to a fully 3D home console game with big, open worldy environments.

Pokémon S/S looks fantastic.

Let the haters hate, some people just can't be happy.

I think it looks great too. I can't wait till November 15

Boom! From the screenshots definitely seems to be a departure from the previous ones.

Going to be a tough choice on whether to go ps4 or switch but I'm glad it's coming! (apparently )

@redd214 I hope this is NOT true! This look like a poor clone of Torchlight.