Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@JaxonH I was surprised how long that CE stayed freely available. But yeah, stock has evaporated for everything related to that game, lol.

Well, good. The more success stories we have, the more companies will prioritize Switch going forward. Maybe Spike Chunsoft will start realizing what a goldmine the Switch is and port over the Zero Escape trilogy as well!

More assassins creed apparently coming to switch. I have both collections already, and I'd easily grab this one too( pending its true).

Good News for (EU) Customers -
Nintendo has to Refund Preorder Games, since they fall under the EU Law that allows 14 Day Refunds for online Purchases.

The E-Shop in Germany and Norway have updated this Option*, every other EU Country will follow.
(*since it was put in Charge as a Cooperation between them)

The german Verdict can be found here:
https://www.vzbv.de/sites/default/files/2021-12/OLG%20Frankfu...

EDIT:
Short:
The Verdict says, that the Hook at the End of the Purchase is illegal and Nintendo has to omit to use it against Customers to hinder them to refund Games.

I don't agree with that at all. It's unfair to allow consumers 14 days to refund. That is ripe for abuse. Buy a game, play it for 2 weeks, then refund it. This is a clear case of pro-consumerism going too far.

Steam does it best. You get 2 hrs. That's plenty of time to see how the game looks and runs, without being so much time the consumer can abuse it.

@NintendoByNature
Oh ya? Right on! That means gyro aiming, and a hybrid handheld version on top of it! I can't stand the current versions. Console doesn't have Gyro, and the Steam version forces Xbox and keyboard button prompts, which don't mix well with a PS5 controller used for gyro. It makes it crazy confusing trying to figure out which buttons to press, especially with Switch layout ingrained in my memory.

@JaxonH In cases where that happens, usually there's a catch. Like the difference between Steam and GOG's refund policies. I tested both out out of curiosity by buying The Witcher 3 and then refunding it on each platform after playing for a bit (I wanted to see how well the cloud save transfer worked between Switch on both platforms). GOG's policy, which says you can request a refund 30 days after purchase, sounds wildly ripe for abuse.

Steam is almost automated: if you fall within the refund window, it's processed really quickly. But GOG... they want answers about why you want a game refunded. I had to actually respond with written responses when I was refunding Witcher, and didn't feel 100% that they were going to honor my request because of how long the process took.

They did, but despite having a more open refund policy on paper, I feel far more confident in Steam's approach.

That's specifically relating to pre-orders, @JaxonH .... Not games that are actually playable NL has an article on it now: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/12/nintendo-loses-germ...

@NeonPizza I am just happy to see someone else that didn’t like Celeste. I said that and I thought I would need to break out the pepper spray. Indie sacred cows are serious business. Also why I am careful not to mention that I don’t find stardew valley to be that amazing (I like it but I still prefer story of seasons).

@Ryu_Niiyama I really wanted to like Stardew Valley, but something about it didn't work for me, despite really liking some of the older Harvest Moon games.

I actually did enjoy Celeste, but the sky-high praise it gets confuses me. It's a competent indie platformer with decent music and an overwrought central metaphor. Not exactly goty material.

@JaxonH yep! As long as it's true it'll be a good time.

@Ralizah I feel very much the same about both games.

Stardew Valley just felt tedious - I hated how short the days were and I simply didn't enjoy anything I was doing. That said I don't have much experience with the genre so maybe it's just not my thing - the closest game I've really got into is Animal Crossing.

Celeste is a pretty good platformer but that's about it IMO. Its narrative is a lot more bare bones than people make it out to be and I agree that it's no GOTY contender.

I think its genuinely one of the best 2d platformers ever and the soundtrack is one of the most memorable I've heard in the last few years.

Though I don't see how its overwrought. I don't think you're using that word correctly. Maybe you meant overly blunt and obvious? Which it ultimately is, but I feel strongly that how it uses gameplay in its story at points elevated it above merely the actual writing (which I think is good but unspectacular (which to be fair still makes it in contention for the best story in a platformer :V )). I'm also a sucker for a climactic long trek up a mountain or some other impossible climb to prove yourself. Like my favorite part of Xenoblade 1 was the journey up the Mechonis, going hours and hours as an unstoppable team, fighting an army of mechon, just to reach the top. The fact that my hands started hurting towards the end of Celeste only enhanced my experience because of that.

The bonus 9th level of the game is also almost certainly the toughest challenge I've ever accomplished in a game, so that adds to the experience to me in a way too (even though I ultimately feel the secret levels of the game are a often bit too much for me to fully appreciate).

@Buizel tbh I think what has put me off Hades (other than not really liking rougelikes in the first place) is the sneaking suspicion that it'll be yet another highly-praised indie that just doesn't blow me away. I'll grab it when it eventually hits $10, like I did with Celeste, but it's usually the less celebrated indies that I end up digging more.

@kkslider5552000 It's a perfectly acceptable Super Meat Boy/Slime-san style game gameplay-wise, but I wasn't hugely impressed with it otherwise. Level design is probably the area where it most consistently shines, but too often I found the rage platformer aspects conflicted with the exploration and nested narrative focus, which, as I pointed out before, was a bit overdone to my liking.

I think what most rubbed me the wrong way about it was the pixel art: there's good use of color throughout, but the actual characters are so low on detail. There's no excuse for it when you have small teams and even single individuals creating gorgeous pixel art in games like Owlboy and Iconoclasts. Or even something more basic like Stardew Valley.

I guess that didn't bother me because it wasn't that difficult? At least the main story. It was difficult enough that it felt like a struggle for the character, but not so much that it overshadowed the story.

Probably also helps that I avoided all the B side levels and the like until I beat the game. So it was a strong like 8 hour story in a game, and then all the rest was a platforming, challenging extra.

@kkslider5552000 I didn't mean it that way. I meant more in the sense that I don't think the sub-genre of platformer this game belongs to necessarily works well with the sort of level design and omnipresent theming this game is going for. I think it detracts from both, tbh, and they from it, so you end up with this sort of mish-mash game that wants to be this holistic metaphor for someone's psychological journey toward self-acceptance, but it ends up feeling like someone stapled pages from a self-help book into Super Meat Boy and opted for level design that felt at odds with the 'line nearly every inch of every surface with spikes' design of this sort of game.

It's not a bad game. I enjoyed it well enough to play it thoroughly.

But I also think its merits are... overstated.

I mean, we'll have to agree to disagree. Which is fine.

I mean, the only thing I will say, is that I'm self-aware enough to realize that of course I was gonna be into this game. "God I can't believe I love a 2d platformer critics also loved?!" This is not a shocking revelation.

@Link-Hero Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately it just doesn't help the fact that I didn't find the game enjoyable tbh. Also - now that you mention it - I think it was running out of energy that was my main problem rather than the in-game time itself. Hits too close to home - I have these constraints on my real life, I don't necessarily want them in a game. Perhaps it just means the genre isn't for me.

@kkslider5552000 Well, OK, I'll admit I probably wasn't being fair to the soundtrack. It's a highly decent soundtrack. One of the best I've heard in an independent game, actually.

On the subject, I can't be the only person who kinda hears the Resident Evil save room theme in this track, right?

@Ralizah hah! Yea totally sounds similar. Especially the very beginning of both.

eShop of Switch add feature of most played games on the console.

@Giancarlothomaz Yes, we know. If you followed the main page instead of trying to increase your post count, you would see it too.