Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Grumblevolcano
Literally anything could be new content for existing games if the devs wanted. Nomatter how different it is. But it would cost you hundreds of dollars as they feed it in piecemeal. Who the heck wants that.

So that seems largely irrelevant as a point.

And this is not live service. Neither is Mario Kart 8. There's a difference between a game that just happens to sell for a long time and a game that is planned with a steady stream of content for a decade. Simply receiving a port or receiving DLC doesn't make a game live service.

@JaxonH I was giving examples of popular games that are still being supported today, not just live service ones. MK8 obviously isn't a live service game but I would say Splatoon is middle ground (kind of is, kind of isn't). It has limited content at launch which gets gradually increased over time via free updates and has events (Splatfests) that occur throughout its lifespan. Meanwhile length of support (Splatoon had 1 year, Splatoon 2 had 2 years) is shorter than live service games and it doesn't have the very negative side of live service such as battle passes and microtransaction stores.

I wouldn’t say BotW2 looks like an expansion to BotW based on what we’ve seen so far. The new abilities, appearances and systems (especially the whole sky diving thing, without even mentioning the floating islands) feel like game changers.

Honestly after playing Elden Ring, I’m glad they’re reusing assets and systems from BotW. They can really go crazy with what they do in the sequel.

@Grumblevolcano
Nintendo does that a lot nowadays as a tactic to retain engagement and mindshare over time. But it's much smaller in scope, and could best be classified as free DLC for the first X months after release. Still undecided as to whether I like that approach or not.

When a game is left feeling barebones I think it's a net negative. But when a game feels complete at launch, and then gets free content on top of it, I think that's a winning formula. The trap to avoid is leaving the game too barebones to achieve the free content over 6-12 months.

Splatoon 2 got a lot of maps and stuff added after launch, but the price paid was a thinner game at launch, and reviews penalized it. This was extremely unfortunate, since Splatoon 2 is, right now, the single greatest competitive shooter ever released imo. That game deserves the fattest, juiciest 10/10 the number system affords. It's sooo incredibly good.

As a side note, I lost all my Splatoon 2 save data when I bought my OLED, because I forgot to transfer my profile. Then I ghosted my v2 Dragon Quest Switch and gave it to my brother as a birthday gift. I was done playing anyways, but still. It may actually be a blessing in disguise though. I fired it up 15 min ago to get the 100 Plat coins for a mission, and immediately got sucked in. Think I'm gonna play the Octopath Expansion now, which I never got far in.

edit
Amiibo to the rescue!

I forgot I have all the Splatoon amiibo, and had saved my gear to one of them. Which means I can load my gear with all my stacked skills!

Granted, it won't load the gear until you have that specific piece of gear unlocked, so it will take playing the game some and leveling up to get the gear again. But once I do, the skills I had on it (which is where the real grind is at) can be loaded with it no problem.

I mean, it's not as good as if I'd just transferred the profile and save data to begin with, but in the event of borking my save data, this is a clutch rescue.

@Ralizah Yeah I've been pretty much satisfied with Splatoon 2 myself, so I'd agree with you right there. More multiplayer modes would be awesome for sure, especially if they're non-ranked. I tried a couple of those ranked battles in S2 and they were...too stressful for me. lol

@-Green- Agreed. Even from the little we've seen, BotW2 is clearly going to be doing a lot to distinguish itself from its predecessor. I can immediately look at footage of it and know it's not BotW

Same with Horizon Forbidden West, tbh. Even on PS4, the game distinguishes itself from its predecessor both visually and mechanically.

@MarioLover92 Ranked battle is above my skill level. That's fine. It's a good thing to embrace your hardcore fanbase to some degree. I just hope they don't do so at the expense of the casual appeal of these games. The brilliance of the core turf wars mode is that you don't even need to be particularly good at the game to contribute in a meaningful way.

Actually, my secret fear with Splatoon 3 is that they're going to improve matchmaking options to the degree where it becomes... difficult to do well without voice chat, where you need to coordinate via voice chat to contribute to the success of your team. That's what immediately turns me off games like Overwatch, frankly. I'm not a multiplayer person. That's why I like the way online play in Splatoon feels. For all I know, I could be playing with bots. It's not expected that you coordinate with your team, because it's not generally feasible to do so.

Action evolves too fast- situations are too dynamic, for voice chat to have any notable impact in Splatoon unless you had a team that's extremely well coordinated and skilled, and those types of players are going to spend all their time in the top of Ranked mode.

Furthermore, the randomness of matches sporadically changing each player's team basically eradicates any potential for voice chat coordination in the first place.

I would also point out Splatoon 3 has, even from the limited footage shown thus far, more changes to differentiate it in a meaningful way than most other games mentioned.

We've seen new squid rolls that can be done out of ink, new squid surge up and off walls, we've seen stretch armstrong like traversal that allows inklings to "hookshot" across the map, you can now throw eggs to move eggs toward and into the basket in Salmon Run, we've seen how the spawn area has changed to air platforms with the ability to choose where you launch to prevent spawn camping... to the untrained eye these may seem superfluous, but for anyone with actual experience playing the games, it's easy to see how these mechanics will have significant impact on how the actual minute to minute gameplay unfolds.

That's making no mention of the new Turf War maps, new Horde Mode maps, new single player campaign and associated story, new Ranked modes (which as of yet haven't been shown, but if S2 is any indication there's several to look forward to), and of course new styles, new gear, new skills, new specials, the added achievement labels after matches, ID tags and even the smaller mechanical changes players take for granted, such as the level of gauge meter needed to activate the special, etc.

And, we've barely even seen any footage. We still know so little about the game. As we get closer to release, more details (aka more changes) will be revealed.
It seems much ado about nothing, imo. Especially as it's a multi-player game. Turf Wars are the core bedrock, so it will always be a game about Turf Wars. It'll have changes, sure, but it doesn't have to be revolution. Evolution is far more appropriate for games like this, especially as it's a relatively new franchise and doesn't yet need to reinvent itself. And we see that, even from the initial trailers.

@-Green- true true, but i hope Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild 2 fix and improve it predecessor isseus( specily it weapon system)

With the chaos theme of the game, I was wondering if they'd do Splatoon's take on a battle royale mode as another unranked multiplayer mode. Might be too taxing on the Switch's hardware though.

Anyways, the single player mode being more expansive than before is enough for me to grab Splatoon 3.

@JaxonH Well put! Seeing most of the stuff that made me put down Splatoon 2 in the first place (especially the spawn camping and limited traversal) get addressed is fantastic.

I genuinely think the gameplay is going to be significantly improved in a way that would have been nigh impossible via content updates to Splatoon 2.

@IceClimbers
That's an interesting concept. Splatoon is different from traditional shooters though, since kills aren't the primary objective. So I'm not sure a battle royale would fit the gameplay. I suppose they could just have massive free for alls where everyone is out to get the most ink for themselves, but that seems too chaotic, and where would you spawn if there's 20 different ppl that aren't on teams? Idk, maybe they could figure something out, but I think the current structure fits best.

Where they have room to play, however, is in objectives for ranked battles. We saw that in the last entry with the various objectives- rainmaker, splat zones, the moving tower one... this is where they can flex their creative muscles.

Turf Wars competitive multiplayer, Salmon Run horde mode, and single player campaign should always form the trifecta of core content. Those are the 3 main modes offering competition, co-op, and solo play. But the variations of competitive multi-player objectives add the flavor (much like other shooters have team deathmatch, capture the flag, etc).

I trust the Splatoon team to deliver though, whatever they've chosen to go with. They never miss.

@link3710
I feel like Splatoon 3 will be the game where the franchise really perfects the formula. The first entry was the beta test. Brand new with lots of balancing mishaps- the devs learned a lot from it, I'm sure. The second entry corrected many of those mishaps, added Salmon Run, and dialed in the balancing. Then the Octo Expansion is where we saw them really start to improve the single player.

This 3rd entry is where I think Splatoon reaches ultimate form- usually 3 iterations is enough to dial in near perfection. This will be the last entry of this generation, and will serve as the model blueprint moving forward into the 10th generation with Switch 2. They'll be releasing this game into an install base of over 110 million, near the peak of Switch's popularity, and, after already establishing a rabid fanbase, particularly in Japan.

I'm not sure if it'll match Splatoon 2's numbers, simply because there's a LOT more games out now on Switch competing for consumer dollars (even this year alone is insane) and it'll have less years on the market before the generation ends. But regardless, I do expect this to be the best Splatoon's ever been. And I think Splatoon fans are going to be very happy with this entry for years to come.

Just think of all the content they've amassed now having 2 prior games to source from. Combining new maps with fan faves from not just one but two prior entries- this game should sport the largest spread of maps of any Splatoon game to date. In fact, there's no reason to omit any of them. They should make it a point to add all the maps from the prior two games, perhaps as free DLC spread out over the first year or something. Make this the ultimate Splatoon experience.

is this thread still active?

I don't doubt that Splatoon 3 will have enough new content to justify buying it, I'm just a bit confused about why they're taking so long to show it. It's been over a year since that initial trailer that seemed to show a new story mode, and Nintendo hasn't mentioned that again since, so we still don't know what that will be like and how expansive it will be.

All we've seen is some new Salmon Run features, some new weapons and a couple of new stages. And all that will be good to have but they're the kind of things that were added to Splatoon 2 for free in the two years or so after launch. I love Splatoon so I'll almost certainly buy the game anyway but it's difficult to be excited for it when we barely know anything about it. Hopefully there'll be a Splatoon Direct soon that will reveal lots of new content and put this debate to rest.

@IceClimbers @JaxonH Splatoon 3 going the Battle Royale route would explain why the focus of promo currently is on the content you'd expect from a new Splatoon (single player campaign, PvE, traditional PvP). Battle Royale is infamous for being seen as the cause of traditional stuff either being heavily reduced or completely removed (e.g. Titanfall 3 cancelled, Fortnite Save the World shut down, CoD getting less content outside of Warzone, Halo Infinite getting only 1 Arena map and 1 BTB map in the space of a year) so Nintendo would need to get across to players that the traditional Splatoon experience is not going to be compromised.

My guess is it’s related to release schedule. It may have been planned to launch earlier so they revealed it when they did, but changes/unforeseen circumstances led to it and other game releases being moved around. With it being several months until release and other big titles in between, I would imagine they’re just planning to keep details closer to their chest until later. Giving more attention to nearer titles and to give a more focused advertising blitz for S3 when it’s closer to launch.

Metroid Dread is a masterpiece, best game of the franchise so far,hard as hell, but play smoothy as buttler.

@Giancarlothomaz
I take it you're finally playing Metroid Dread? I definitely agree that it's the best of the 2D entries. It really is a masterpiece.

@Grumblevolcano
That's a fair point. I'm still not convinced they're going to attempt a battle royale mode, as I struggle to see how it would work for Splatoon, but if anyone can figure it out, it's Nintendo.

@JaxonH yes i started playing this masterpiece yesterday, already defeated Corpius e Kraid, in Burenia now to get the Flash Shift, i play to do a 100%playtrough on the game and also buy Kirby and the Forgotten Land(also doing a 100% playtrough).

Zombie Army 4 releases Tuesday, and the first review has dropped from SwitchCorner.

They say it's an immaculate port- very impressive graphics, good resolution, no framerate issues, gyro aiming, almost no load times outside of chapter selection, and season 1 DLC included.

And, the game only takes up a measly 6GB of storage in total!

Amazon had a price error where the physical version was up for preorder for $19.99 instead of the MSRP $39.99 so of course I was all over that.

But I'm still buying digitally. This looks like another must have from Rebellion. Side by side with Sniper Elite 4- two of the best Switch ports ever made.

Rebellion has put other developers to shame. Absolute utter shame.

Has anyone played Diablo 3 on the Switch? I am mostly interested in solo offline play, is it worth it or is online play much better?