Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Grumblevolcano agreed. MK8DX is in a really amazing space right now. It’s kinda the Ultimate mario kart.

The Square Enix 2022 insanity continues, the Life is Strange collection which was delayed for Switch has now been given a September 27th release date.

@link3710 What makes you say Paper Jam was a terrible decision? I have some issues with the game but I don't see why the premise was inherently bad or any more likely to fail than the other games in the series.

Cruis'n Blast is amazing- peak arcade racing and quite possibly the best I've ever played.

Rubber band AI is part of the arcade experience. Hasn't stopped me from winning races and having a blast. In fact, it's what keeps arcade racers from being boring time trial simulations against pre-programmed ghost data (which is all it would be without reactionary AI).

Physics aren't supposed to emulate a racing sim. It's an arcade racer. It feels great. Cars are super responsive, which is all it needs.

Chocobo GP I can understand, but Cruis'n is an arcade masterpiece through and through.

Glad to see Life Is Strange Collection finally get a release date. I'm all over that.

Just realized I haven’t played before the storm. Well guess I better take care of that.

I only own like 2 racing games on Switch... My younger brother owns all of them besides the newer WRC (or whatever they are called lol) games.

@Dogorilla Simple.
1. Mario & Luigi fans are also by and large likely to be haters of modern Paper Mario, and Nintendo had basically stuck up the middle finger at them about daring to want Paper Mario to have RPG elements.
2. At the same time, Mario & Luigi's selling point has always been it's vibrant worlds, goofy cast of characters, and ability to appeal to people with a wide skill range.

Nintendo (well, IS and Nintendo) decided that if they were to do the crossover, they needed to tone down the RPG elements (per interviews: minimize story, no sidequests outside of toad collecting, less combat options), have absolutely no new characters or locations because it would be 'too confusing', reduce the need to read dialogue to a minimum because dialogue was 'not Mario like', and tone down the difficulty to attract new players (in a series that's mostly been on the easy end, NA localization changes aside).

Could it have worked? Maybe. Was it tone deaf to the player base? Definitely. In order to work it needed to attract an entirely new audience, like how modern Paper Mario and classic Paper Mario have almost entirely different fanbases.

@gcunit @JaxonH By the way after the conversation the other week I went ahead and bought the wireless bone conductors after all. Overall I'm pleasantly impressed. The quality of sound is definitely an upgrade as I hoped (bone conductors are newish tech for personal audio, and while it will always sound somewhat like sound in a tunnel through tin, it's definitely a more full-range audio in the new ones vs my 5+ year old ones, it's a few generations newer in the driver tech. SBC isn't the limiting factor overall, when the resolution of the drivers by the nature of the tech is the limited. The latency....yeah...it's latent..... I wouldn't use these things for Splatoon or Bayonetta where every hundredth of a second counts, but for XC3 and the like? It's fine. The delay is, wired, Noah grunts as he jumps. With the SBC delay he grunts at the apex of his jump, so it's significant latency, but for any game where audio timing isn't that important (basically all RPGs etc) it's nice. And the nicety of having a truly unchained switch off the wire and comfort of the upgrade is nice, too. And it works for my handheld streaming Kishi setup. It's not for all situations but it's good for when it is.

Only thing is you're right about Switch disconnecting ....every.single.time it powers off I have to go back to the system BT menu to turn it back on. Still, compared to the wire hanging down all the time handheld, it's nice.

@link3710 I agree most of those design choices were for the worse, but I don't know how much they would have affected sales. I'd have thought most players wouldn't have a strong opinion on the changes to Paper Mario and wouldn't be too put off by the blander world and characters, they'd just want a fun new Mario game. But of course it did sell less than the previous games, so maybe I'm underestimating the general public's savviness when it comes to choosing games.

Anyway, I hope we haven't seen the last of Mario & Luigi. At its best it's up there with classic Paper Mario imo. Though Nintendo may decide it's unnecessary to keep it going alongside both Paper Mario and Mario + Rabbids, and they may have a point sadly.

@Buizel I agree M&L stagnated but I'll never understand why it wasn't more successful. It was a great series. But Nintendo never reached the highs of Mario RPG. I don't understand why they haven't doubled down on rebuilding a Mario RPG franchise. It's not like they shy away from the RPG genre in general or anything. Heck, with Ubi on board they even have a Mario SRPG.....with GUNS. So why there's no real Mario RPG anymore I'll never know.

I tried the one on GBA (Superstar Saga?) and was bored senseless by it, so it's no huge loss for me.

Definitely prefer Paper Mario (even modern PM, if TOK is anything to go by; what it lacked in RPG mechanics it made up for in numerous other ways).

@Dogorilla I could honestly see Sparks of Hope being the last collaboration title. Ubisoft's falling apart, won't be long before they get acquired by another company.

I found a new upcoming game that still not clear what is this game and no trailer at all so far.

It will be released on 13 October 2022 with this description:
My Fantastic Ranch has a unique design that is ideal for developing children's management skills in a fantasy world full of cute creatures.

@Dogorilla Well, I think the thing to keep in mind is that Mario & Luigi never broke into the mainstream. 2-3 million sales means that it was selling to most of the 'core' players, but not really reaching the masses.

Honestly, I'd assume Nintendo won't make another Mario RPG for the next 20+ years, before releasing one as a remaster then shelving the concept again. It's pretty clear the higher ups hate the idea of Mario as an RPG, so we'll never see a good one from them again either way.

@Grumblevolcano I have a feeling either Nintendo will get their hands on Ubisoft Milan, as all they've done now for near a decade of development time is make Mario + Rabbids, or the staff there will go to Nintendo.

At this point, with Rayman most likely being out for the count, all I care about is the Mario + Rabbids team. If Nintendo acquired them, Ubisoft could go to the dogs for all I care.

@Haruki_NLI I'm curious if that happens if Nintendo will acquire the Rayman / Rabbids IPs (I have no idea what the legal bs around separating them would be) as well. It's Nintendo, so I wouldn't be surprised if they just put them to work on in-house IPs instead.

@Haruki_NLI I honestly see them working on the next Assassin's Creed or Tom Clancy game instead. It feels like the trio of Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy franchises are taking over everything else kind of like how Activision is just a CoD, WoW, Diablo and Overwatch studio nowadays.

@Grumblevolcano I will preorder the crossover today.

@Ralizah Immortals: Fenyx Rising was supposed to be pretty good. I would imagine they would do a sequel to that someday.

Whether they eventually get bought or not, I don't see them folding. Assassin's Creed is still pretty big, and Far Cry probably sells fine still. Hopefully Immortals gets to be a series too.