Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@MarioLover92 GG's man, that was a blast! Glad to see you take home the gold this time round (even if I'm immensely miffed at how targeted I was by Yoshi XD), we should definitely do more of this over the course of next year! (and who knows; maybe I'll grab Superstars down the line as well )

@Fizza No problem, it's been fun! Yeah I'm glad I won this round too... pretty happy about my play with the Boo Repellent, lol. No one's taking my star! That'd be cool to play more rounds in the future. Good game, you did great too.

Also unrelated, not sure if you got my earlier reply, Fizza, but I made a holiday drawing for Christmas earlier... it's at the NL artist thread.

@Tasuki @Ralizah Oh yeah absolutely. The kickstand is a lot more stable on the OLED, and yep... I might have trouble coming back to the V1's screen now, lol.

@MarioLover92 It's seriously hard to look at a V1 after upgrading. It's like, how was I ever okay with this? Of course, it seemed fine until you saw the better screen. It's why I waited until the OLED revision was announced to plan on getting a Steam Deck.

i was going through my switch lite's system management for game save files for digital games and i completely forgot that i bought Saints Row 4 one time from last year or so. Cant believe i forgot all about that game and neglected it all this time. sheesh lol. should play that game sometime. Used to have it for my Playstation 3 a few years ago

@Ralizah
You got an OLED eh? Right on.

I just got a Deck OLED, threw a 2TB ssd in, a 1.5TB micro SD and wow. It's fantastic. 30g lighter somehow despite 50% longer battery. Actually feels more like Switch with battery now.

Got Prime Trilogy installed again, controls mapped, but this time with HD texture and interface text mods. It's FIRE.

Also got Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines installed and working despite it being rated "Borked" and "Unsupported". Gyro aim, unofficial patch installed, all of it.

On Switch with a new 1.5TB card can finally hold a fair few games. Arkham Asylum and City are fantastic on Switch, quality follow ups to Red Dead. Knight isn't playable though. That's a Decker for sure. Baldur's Gate 3... muah! GotY worthy for sure. It's so good I bought BG 1-2, Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment on Switch digitally and on Deck. And it got me playing Divinity Original Sin 2 and Pillars of Eternity on Switch again. Tried Pillars 2 on Deck but, no controller support!!! Despite PS/Xbox versions existing with controller support. That's crazy to me. Just starting Diablo 4. Never would bought with online requirement but bro got me for Christmas so, I'm checking it out on Deck. Prob just go back to Diablo 3 on Switch though, or even 2. Still need to get back to Hogwarts Legacy too. Man...

Persona 5 Tactica is pretty fun and good on Switch. Same for Dragon Quest Monsters 3. Risk of Rain 2 is lots of fun. Star Ocean Second Story R is really good, very nice Switch version. KoF XIII good Switch release. Turok 3 excellent as well. Gyro and all.

I've been enjoying MGS 2 and 3 on Switch also. Little dated but, they're playable still. Really waiting for MGS4 and MGSV on Switch though. I've got 5 on Deck but it doesn't support Mouse and Controller support at same time so gyro requires full KB/M mapping to buttons, kinda lame. Mario RPG and Wonder so excellent but I just haven't had time to dig in yet.

Honestly spent more time in Batman Arkham Asylum and Divinity Original Sin 2 on Switch OLED, and Baldur's Gate 3, Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines and Metroid Prime 2 on Deck OLED, there hasn't been time for anything else.

I still haven't played Pikmin 4, or 1 and 2. That's how far behind I am. That's good though. Just means a ton of great games to choose from still without feeling as if it's all exhausted (backlog is never exhausted but the feeling of "exciting games not yet played much" can feel exhausted). Deck OLED really was a gamechanger as it reinvigorated my love of the Deck similar to how Switch OLED did the same, with lighter weight and sufficient battery now, and OLED screen with access to the games Switch missed or got less desirable ports of... it feels like I want to play it similar to Switch. So library of games just doubled.

Telling you. Once Switch 2 drops next year, alongside Steamdeck OLED... that's gonna be the killer combo for sure. It'll suck acclimating to LCD again for Switch 2, but Switch OLED will still be around for any Switch games. I'll take the LCD downgrade for the generational leap. I'm confident they'll release an OLED variant at some point. Heck, at launch would be nice. A $400 LCD model, and a $450 OLED model with more storage. This is the way.

@Tasuki
I love gyro aiming but agree it shouldn't be the only method, unless a game is designed around it and can't function without it. Mostly motion has evolved to gyro aiming as an enhanced method of aiming, back in the Wii era it was still experimental and used gestures alot, and shoehorned it into everything, even when games were worse for it. I'm glad it's matured to where it is today. Steam Input has it right. Just map mouse to gyro with a single button toggle in the controller menu, and there ya go. Gyro aiming (unless the game doesn't allow simultaneous mouse and controller input, which occasionally still happens from time to time). 100% optional for those who want it, but works great for those who do. Would love to see system level control like that on consoles but, that's a benefit of PC. No console will ever offer that on a system level, unfortunately (Steamdeck aside).

@NeonPizza
Forced use of waggle in DKC Returns was a poor choice. Emulators can map it to a button so that's nice. But honestly, at the time when I first played it... I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having a blast using the nunchuk shake to roll. I got pretty good with it. Not my ideal way of playing but, given it was the only way to play, I did have fun with it.

But that era has come and went. I'm glad they won't ever do that again.

@JaxonH Yup. Got mine a few days ago. LOVE it. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. The track pads somehow feel better than on the Steam Controller and approach a mouse-like degree of accuracy (I'm actually using it as the primary aiming method for a boomer shooter called Prodeus atm). Gyro is super easy to implement, especially with the amazing configs people have crafted for various games. Games with HDR like Resident Evil 2 look amazing. They increased the refresh rate to 90HZ and simplified the slider governing that and frame rate in Steam OS.

Add in some mods like the one that puts easily accessible ProtonDB badges on your game pages, or the one that allows you to quickly access SteamGridDB and swap in artwork for game icons and banners, etc. and you're good to go. I also downloaded one that let me change the sound effects and menu music to the ones from the PS Vita purely for the fun of it.

I definitely want to play around with emulation (a portable PS2/GameCube emulator sounds like heaven), but I'm waiting for my 512GB MicroSD card to come in first.

And yes, the battery life is solid. Not Switch OLED solid, but consider the sort of games you can play on it, and all is forgiven. I'm still getting many hours from AAA games like RE2.

Just an ultra-impressive system all-around. I spent a bit too much grabbing new games to play on it recently, but I'll definitely be playing on it a lot. Only complaint I have is that Valve's verification system is pointless. "Verified" titles are requiring me to download new versions of Proton to get to work properly, and various "Playable" and even "Unsupported" titles are working fantastic out of the box. Thankfully, ProtonDB makes this a non-issue.

Really excited to finally play Monster Hunter World and Iceborne soon. It took years, but I finally have my portable version of the game on an OLED handheld.

I don't think I'll go back to an LCD Switch 2 tbh. I mean, maybe if Switch 2 launches with a bunch of amazing exclusives, but I have so many games to play on my current one as is. And I do think they'll wait to do an OLED model again, because it probably sold better than expected and will allow them to extend the life of their next device.

@JaxonH Agree. I know Gyro controls are very popular and I wouldn't want them to take them away but as you said, give us the options. As I said during the Wii era they didn't do that. I get it it was new and the main focus of the Wii but geesh.

@NeonPizza
No, I never really got into VR after my initial 2 month phase with it. I'm pretty much exclusively a Switch and Deck gamer at this point.

I am still glad we get the occasional game like WarioWare Move It that capitalizes on motion in ways beyond just making aiming easier with gyro. But they're occasional, which is why it's OK.

Launch switch and launch Deck look washed out compared to OLED. It sucks but, ya. I had to tolerate it with the Deck until recently and, I'm already preparing for the regression back to LCD with Switch 2.

I do hope they just offer a higher priced OLED model off the bat though. I'd like that. But as Ralizah said, prob gonna save that for a revision. Ah well. At least we have Switch OLED and Deck OLED for everything else.

I think being briefly intrigued by VR and then getting over it is a very common reaction... same thing happened to me.

I kind of hope Nintendo doesn't try to delve too deeply into that area anytime soon; it's just hard to get right. Although part of me thinks e.g.
Pokemon Snap would be a great VR game, an even larger part of me likes to actually see the world in case something comes up or I need to interact with someone else during gaming time. Plus wearing random things on your head is not the most comfortable gaming experience whereas Switch is insanely comfortable to use whether vertical or horizontal.

People over here complaining about the forced waggle in DKCR, and I'm the freak who 100%ed Tropical Freeze on Wii U with a Wiimote + Nunchuk over other control settings lol

@JaxonH There's an app on Decky Loader that gives you good settings to use for various games. I have FSR turned off on RE2 (made the rain look terrible as I recall), but the particular combo of settings I'm using that I followed from recommendations make it look genuinely glorious on the small screen. And it runs at a locked 45FPS pretty much 99% of the time. If you ever decide to play the game again, you can make it look incredible.

And those HDR explosions! OMG

I've accepted I'm just never going back to the Prime games on my Wii, so yeah, when the time comes, I'll absolutely shoot you an email about setting those up, thank you. At least for the second and third games. I'll get Prime Remastered when I eventually feel like replaying the original.

I sort of miss the slower pace of the older games, so I'm looking forward to World. Don't get me wrong, I love Rise, but there's a charm to actually feeling like a normal person hunting down a monster.

You said you got Soul Hackers 2 working? Everything I've seen online says that game is a buggy mess on Deck. Was that not your experience?

As for Returnal, I saw this video, and it seems like maybe Returnal is running a little better on the Deck OLED?

Yeah, I wish the badges worked on the store pages for unpurchased games, too. Still, it's amazing being able to just look it up on my Deck for what I already own.

Any emulators/systems you've had bad luck with?

@NeonPizza Yeah, it's amazing how much a good screen can improve a console. I don't know how I ever played on my V1 now. Ignorance is bliss. Deck OLED also has a brilliant screen, and I'm only going back to PC for games that genuinely run terribly or not at all.

I'm sure you can get OLED TVs that look comparable/better, but I'm a cheapskate and prefer the smaller, built-in ones included with these consoles.

@XandertheWise it's not that big a deal. People like to have discussions. Carry on.

Would it be better if people wrote 12 short posts in a row instead? 😝

I would say just skip what you don't want to read... it takes a fraction of a second to scroll down. We're on page 3,486 of this thread, so we've already passed composition and gone for full-on novel anyways. 😆

I don't mind the walls of text, but holy cow do I wonder how some of you guys afford so much money for games and consoles lol

@Ralizah
Oh very nice. Ya I installed that one but I didn't have it back when I played RE2. Sometimes games don't have any settings reports, like with Serious Sam 4 and Pillars of Eternity 2. But it's good when it does.

I haven't played Returnal cause I didn't buy it due to reports of performance issues, just going by what I read for Deck compatibility. I haven't played much of Soul Hackers 2 but mainly I just read some bugs and crashes tinkering with settings. Use GE for compatibility.

That's impressive. I'll be sure to note the settings of that video for Returnal. They did note they're using sub-720p resolution but, FSR can help with that. It looks good to me.

Gotta grab all those 50-90% off sales. My last game cost like $1.50.

Although, honestly, with food prices what they are lately, buying even a newer game isn't all that different than going to a restaurant. Just gotta decide which things to spend entertainment budgets on for those lucky enough to have some extra money.

@FishyS
With my gaming scope now limited to Steamdeck OLED and Switch OLED, costs have come down for me. No more buying PS5 games physical then digital then triple dipping on Steam.

Plus with Steam I now wishlist and wait for $10-30 price points to bite. I got Serious Sam 3 for $5, Tokyo Ghosthunter for $18, etc. Occasionally I'll buy day one (Baldurs Gate 3) but even then isthereanydeal can usually find them for 20% Off day one ($48 preorders).

With Switch I'm wrapping up my physical purchases, as Switch 2 will usher in my fully digital only era. No more room for physical games. Nor any interest. So that'll dramatically cut costs even further.

I'm spending half on games nowadays as I was a few years ago. Down from $6k/year to around $3k/year, and once Switch 2 drops I suspect that'll drop even further to $2k/year. Which is like, less than $100 per payday on games. A FAR cry from the $400-500 I've budgeted this past generation

I eagerly await Switch 2 so I can officially cut ties with double dipping on physical Switch releases. Tired of spending so much on games.

2024 is gonna be $100/paycheck on games, that's it. A much more modest and reasonable allocation toward the hobby.

I allow myself at the absolute most the equivalent of one full retail release a month. Then for hardware the equivalent of "one PCs" worth of hardware spend a year. And that's across movies/games/music. Usually I don't hit it...

I did blow through it in 2022 when I got myself a OLED TV, Sonos Beam and Quest 2. Probably double the budget there. But 2023 I only got a 4060Ti an Anbernic 35XX+ and a G920 Wheel, which probably works out to be maybe $200-500 under? Also there was a huge hole in my gaming spend when TotK launched because I was more than entertained for a while there. 2023 was a bit frugal all things considered

I assume Switch 2 this year is going to carve out a fair amount of my gaming budget. Especially given I'm going to want a few games at launch