Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Well I am going to get Ring Fit for my Birthday and my fat ass needs it, haha.

@Pizzamorg
I will get Ring Fit Adventures too, maybe end of December 2021 or early January 2022.
I got some weight during pandemic.

Yeah same, I went from a gym regular to absolute fatty thanks to various lockdowns etc. I am trying to get back into running and doing some home weights, but it is hard to motivate myself on my own. It is easier when I was with friends in the gym. I am hoping since RFA is a game as well exercise, it might be easier to motivate myself.

That's what happens when you avoid most of the good games that come out in a year.

What have I “avoided”?

Go to your local gaming sites, search for the list of reviews. It's pretty simple.

I'll grant you that the AAA space is miserable and dead outside of like 3 companies and this is a year of re-releases to a degree, but those three companies put out some quality stuff, and there's plenty of stuff that I casually notice for a minute that turn out to be pretty quality games. I'm not the best to keep track of this nowadays but I go to enough places where I notice a well reviewed game that looks cool before I forget about it for a billion other things on my mind.

This isn’t for a lack of games played or a lack of knowledge as to what is out of there, I just think almost nothing of note came out in the first half of the year that wasn’t a rerelease or Rise. The second half has been better, but I can’t call it a “great year in gaming” if half of it was a wasteland when you exclude rereleases.

SMT V and Monster Hunter Rise are the only two games I've played this year that I'd be comfortable listing above everything else.

There are also a lot of "I liked it quite a bit" sorta games like MH Stories 2, Gnosia, Bowser's Fury, etc.

2021 is no 2017, but it's still a pretty consistently excellent year on Switch. Probably the most consistently excellent year, to be frank.

2018 was pretty awful, though, and 2020 could have been better. 2019 was mainly good during the second half.

2017 had amazing games on Playstation 4 and Switch, and I believe even Xbox got Cuphead that year, which is very much one of my favorite games on any platform.

Well yes, the major releases were lacking. But quite frankly, I've felt that way for a lot of the past few years. At worst this just felt like 2014 again (except with better Sony games), so I'm used to it.

But otherwise, I dunno. If you really want to play quality games from this year, I'm at number 200 on this Metacritic page for 2021 releases and we're still at 80.

Thinking about it, since 2014 I had a live service game like Destiny (2), World/Iceborne or the Division (2) to focus most of my year on. I didn’t really notice droughts between releases, I just took new releases as they came as a break from my second job of the live service grind. However, this is the first year in about 7 where I didn’t have an active live service game on my rotation soaking up all of my time, so I guess I am just so much more aware of every second between a release.

2021 was the first year where I chose not to buy most new releases. Reason being a mixture of wanting to focus on my backlog and getting mentally tired of following new releases. In spite of that I feel like Nintendo's year was pretty strong, with a good mix of first and third party support. Which is more than what I can say for Sony.

I have no proclivity whatsoever toward big budget AAA. There are some I like, but 80% of the best games I'm interested in are AA titles. The other 20% is split 15% AAA and 5% indies. And while Awards shows may not recognize a port, remaster or expanded release, I do. A fun game is a fun game.

So I was playing Bravely Default 2 back in February and loving it. I was playing Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury and loving it. I was playing Persona 5 Strikers and loving it. 3 bangers in a row very early in the year leading up to the March release of Monster Hunter Rise. Had also played Atelier Ryza 2 in January. 3 months in the year and already had 5 purchased games with 1 GOTY release.

That followed up with New Pokémon Snap and Trails of Cold Steel in April, and I love the Trails of Cold Steel series. May saw SMT3 Nocturne and the Monster Hunter Rise 3.0 update, June had Mario Golf, Tony Hawk, Ninja Gaiden (as well as Legend of Mana and Disgaea 6 but I didn't enjoy those much).

Then July had Monster Hunter Stories 2, Neo The World Ends With You, Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and Zelda Skyward Sword HD, all 4 incredibly good games. There was also Ys IX but, I stopped playing due to performance issues.

August was a bust. But September made up for it with WarioWare, Cruis'n Blast, Ni No Kuni 2, Hotwheels Unleashed, Castlevania Advance Collection, Quake, Axiom Verge 2, DBZ Kakarot, Diablo 2 Remastered, Eastward, and more. Absolute unit of a month.

And October, wow. Metroid Dread and Monkey Ball, Tetris Effect Connected and Switch OLED right off the bat, Disco Elysium, Crysis 2 and 3 Remastered, Dying Light, Fatal Frame, Mario Party, Voice of Cards... what a month.

November and December are no slouches either with GTA Trilogy, KOTOR, SMTV, Pokémon BD/SP and Danganronpa Trilogy.

And that's not even counting all the other games on other platforms, from Returnal, Ratchet, Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite,, Resident Evil Village, Scarlet Nexus, Tales of Arise, Deathloop, Psychonauts 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, Life Is Strange True Colors (I'm waiting on Switch version), Mass Effect Collection, etc.

I suppose if someone predominantly plays games on power platforms, I can understand the perspective of a lame year. But for someone like me who primarily games on Switch with a dash of PC/PS5 here and there as needed, and doesn't value AA games or remasters as "lesser than" big budget, realism-focused AAA games, it's basically been an onslaught all year long.

Come to think of it, I didn't play a lot of brand new games in the first half of the year (just New Pokemon Snap, which was cute if nothing particularly notable), but I didn't mind as I had tons of remakes/re-releases (Xenoblade: DE, Mario 3D World, Star Wars: Republic Commando, Asha in Monster World, Famicom Detective Club: the Missing Heir, the Ninja Gaiden Sigma games) and older releases (Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, Sakura Wars, Ratchet & Clank, Ace Combat 7) to play or finish off, all of which were first time playthroughs for me.

I've played a few more genuinely new games since then though, with stuff like Tales of Arise, Metroid Dread, & SMTV. And even then, some of the remasters I've played came out this year (like Fatal Frame V, in addition to some of the others already mentioned). So good year overall for me.

To make it clear, I wasn’t trying to suggest rereleases are “less than”, ME Legendary is above and beyond the best three games I have played this year. I just think it muddles the conversation. I think it is better to leave those out of it when it comes to a GOTY conversation and focus just on what actually came out originally in the year of conversation. I think that makes more sense. And with that context in mind, the year didn’t really start picking up for me until June time with Stories 2 (as I played Rise later in the year). The first five months were busts for me.

@RR529
Oh man, I’ve alwaaaaay got 5 years worth of backlog at any given time. Droughts don’t exist for me. There is at least 150 games I’ve started on Switch and have been meaning to get back to, but stopped playing because something else came out which caught my attention.

Could probably go the rest of the generation without a single new game announced beyond what we know about already, and I’d still be busy catching up by the time next gen launches.

Not that that’s a desirable outcome. There’s something to be said for playing a game at its release and partaking in the hype with everyone else, sharing in the discussions. I have no problem playing a game years later because it’s not like it gets less fun by the day. But sharing in the excitement does add a little something extra to the experience. So I’m always thrilled when more games release. It’s kind of addicting actually. The anticipation of new games is almost as entertaining as playing the games themselves.

I find sharing the hype is great up to and including release day, but then after that it's better to duck out. Too many spoilers, people shoving how quickly they're progressing down your throat, or being a buzzkill. So I tend to just withdraw and enjoy it in my own time. With work and kids I can't keep up with the free and singles so I'm better off not trying.

There's some fire sales going on in the eShop. Absolute bangers for cheap- Borderlands Collection, XCOM 2, South Park, etc etc. Worth checking out. Can make out like a bandit.

Might be hard to find time to play now, what with all the games that released in the past month. But there's gonna be that 45 day span between Danganronpa December 3rd and Pokémon Legends Arceus mid January. Definitely wanna have some quality games on deck to last the trip.

Can't believe I got mainline SMT, a new Monster Hunter, and TWO Ace Attorney games in the same year!

2021 has been pretty sick on the games front on Switch, even if Nintendo hasn't been a big part of that.

As I've said before, I got everything I could've wanted this year, practically. Shame I was often too busy with non-2021 games, because Pokemon Snap, Great Ace Attorney, TWEWY, No More Heroes 3 and Metroid Dread in one year feels impossible. Barring maybe NMH3, I had no reason to think I'd play these games on Switch, let alone all of them in one year until they all got announced. That's even ignoring putting out some of the few remakes I'd want to buy for full price (technically including the main reason I'll buy a PS5 someday) or weird surprises like Famicom Detective Club. It's a real dreams come true time for me. Honestly that might be why my reaction to NSO's terrible no good pricing was to just get a better deal rather than ignoring it. I wasn't gonna let Nintendo's own stupidity get in the way of me getting everything I wanted.

Meanwhile, I keep hunting for casual and kids games for both Switch and PS4.
During year 2021, I picked the 3rd party casual and kids games on PS4 version as i want to boost the quantity of my PS4 games library.