Lego City Undercover Still Has Ridiculous Load Times on Switch

Honestly, this is just unacceptable. I was gonna pick this up, I loved the Wii U version, but now I don't think it's worth it. This reeks of being a lazy port.

IIRC, even the PS4 version has similar load times. Seems more of an issue with the game itself than the platform it's on.

Jeesus. Short load times were the thing I was hoping that this port would fix! Very disappointed that this is not the case, but honestly not surprised.

Yeah, I'm gonna pass on this version now and just finish my Wii U version.

I was going to purchase this, but I knew beforehand how long the load time were on the wii u and one the reasons I was hoping to pick this title up was for shorter load times. Oh well, guess I'm gonna skip this one.

If TT were to inform us within 2 weeks that they have a plan to reduce load times, then I might pick it up via Amazon (to get the discount). Otherwise, I'll wait for the price to drop substantially (as I have the Wii U version, but want to transition my games to Switch).

How disappointing... This was honestly one of the main reasons I never finished the game on Wii u.....

I will probably consider getting it on switch if they fix it, if they don't I'll prolly end up waiting til it hits the bargain bin

They had ONE job to do!

Okay, that's probably not true. I'm sure bringing this game over from Wii U to Switch and PS4 took a lot of effort, but this is the one thing EVERYBODY was asking for when we found out it was coming out on better hardware.

Let's still hold hope that the update can fix this issue a little bit more though guys.

@SwitchVogel Agreed! I was tempted to double-dip with the addition of co-op, but I won't be bothering now until it's $20 or less.

The coop addition is def the biggest selling point, but I'll have to check out how it actually functions first. Hopefully it's not shoehorned in, in a bad way

Jumpin' Jack Flash, it's a pass.

Definitely double-dipping because it's a great game. But on PC, not Switch.

The loading time isn't an issue for me, it's a great game.

Sigh...

I never played the original, nor the not-up-to-scratch 3DS version.
I am very disappointed about the Switch port having a similar, lesser yet still bad issues (loading times), but I'll pick it up. Maybe not on release day though as I am still playing TLoZ BotW, perhaps after or later this month.

Does the Switch version have any improvements? Higher res, better draw distances, textures etc? If not i see no point in paying full AAA price for a four year old game.

Wow. I'm cancelling my preorder if they don't release a statement addressing this.

Great. Well I've already paid for my copy :/ Leaving it sealed to see if this supposed update fixes the load times. So very very disappointed in them. As developers they've become lazier and lazier over the past few years

At the times listed, over the course of the game that's likely to be 1 to 2 hours of time lost just to loading. Sonic 2006, anyone? Yeah, not happening, my free time is meager as it is.

Ridiculous when you compare it with Zelda that has minimal load times anywhere.

I haven't finished the Wii U version anyway so I'll stick with that.

@TheOneInYellow for what it was I quite liked the 3DS version. The fog was off putting but I can't think of any other game that attempted an open world on the 3DS.

The original release was one of the most notoriously unoptimized games in recent years. You have your head in the clouds if you thought WB was going to invest that heavily to clean up a quick port meant to pad out the spring schedule. It's the unfortunate reality.

And Bugs... :
Sometimes no sounds
Flashing screens...

@RadioHedgeFund Go buy GTA in DS

What a bunch of crap. Guess I'm not picking this up. What the hell are they thinking. I love my switch but where are the games. I'm beginning to think there are a bunch of idiots running Nintendo at this point. Wii u ports should be on store shelves with improved everything to fill this gap of nothing. Snake pass was ported in 3 weeks you can't tell me that they could not have thrown out a few ports. Very unsatisfied.

I don't pay £40-£50 for games that I already own, even if they've had a few things added (in this case, local co-op), but I did love this on Wii U and planned to get it when it was around the £15-£20 mark on ps4 to play through again with the trophies (honestly Nintendo, get an achievement system). Hopefully by that time a patch will have been released to deal with the load times, but I suspect it's just down to tt not being overly familiar with making open-world games. In my opinion it takes longer than it should on Lego Avengers and Lego Batman 3 to transition between hubs, although it's disguised better there with more dynamic loading screens that don't actually look like loading screens. But yeah, underlines my decision not to day-1 this game.

Calm down everybody. The loading times are not that bad. Check this one out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh502vf_wmA

Lazy.

I was already unsure whether to pick it up on release day or wait for a sale, but now I think I'm going to pass and put the £40 the game costs here in the UK towards importing a copy of Disgaea 5 Complete from Amazon Japan. That should fill the void once I finish BotW, and last a long while, too.

@RadioHedgeFund Good points, and I am glad that you enjoyed the 3DS version.

I may pick that up too but these days I don't have time to play all the games I want, so I have become very frugal.

Lego City Undercover is still on my radar, but I can wait to play it later.

@hendie001 you do know that Nintendo didn't develop this game, or Snake Pass?

Skipping until they release a patch that fix these load times.

@Tsurii
My first PC was an Amstrad, it had to load the games from a cassette (or two), which could take anywhere from five minutes to an hour. I learned patience .

@jiefsourd chinatown wars is a decent game but it's no Vice City.

If you have not played the game, play it. It is probably - still - the best of the LEGO series. Loading times are long. You'll get past it quickly due to how wonderful its gameplay is. Simple as that.

I guess this is just a cheap port.

Oh the drama!! It's the end of times!!! It's still a great game & if you don't want to buy it then don't. The old times never bothered me so any improvement is just a bonus.

Nooooooooo. Just no. They've lost another sale (until they reduce the price anyway).

@BJQ1972 Yes I know that. Nintendo produced the wii u version of lego. I was saying that to show how fast it was ported. did not think the obvious to you.

First. On some more recent videos the loading times seem to be a tad better than on this video. About half less than the WiiU, which is a big improvement in my book. Would have seen much better, but alas....

Second. The Graphics are quite a bit better. Much better Lightning and color saturation overall. It looks fantastic now!

Third. Seeing it's the same on PS4, it just seems a limitation of the engine they are using at TT games and they are unable to squeeze more out of it.

I've never played or owned the Wii U version so will still be getting on Friday as planned

@hendie001 Nintendo 'published' the Wii U version.

@Steel76 I Wonder if it's 720p on PS4 as well or just upscaled to 1080p.
At most I think the latter and that they just didn't have the assets for this game to support full 1080p resolution, since this game was solely developed for the WiiU at that time and build on those hardware limitations.

It's a wonderful game. If you're going to skip it because of loading times, you're stupid.

@Marshi its portable

@BJQ1972 ok nancy

Holy cow! Some ZX Spectrum games load faster.

Oh, hell no!

@Embassy Not worth full price for a four year old game just to be able to play it anywhere.

I'll still get it, its still an improvement over the Wii U version.

I had this on preorder but cancelled after finding out that this is also worth about £12 on PC...that plus the loading times and the inflated Switch price, it's a shame because I wanted this

Still waiting to see whether the entirety of the game is available on the cartridge before considering a purchase. If there's a 13GB download involved in the Switch version (be it optional or otherwise), I'm skipping this. No excuses for not storing all of the data on the cartridge.

@Steel76 I know that, but just still need the proper texture sizes to support that kind of resolution, otherwise it would just look like a mess.

This was a good game.
But no way is it worth the money for a replay on the Switch. I hope your review reflects that little effort has been put into the Switch version to justify the asking price. Anyone who still has a Wii u can pick a copy up for. £20.00.

is very Good game, but a lazy port.
I can't wait bugfix...

Ain't nobody got time for that.

Wasn't going to double-dip on it anyway, so I just find this funny.
Would be interested to see a comparison with the other console versions as well... see if it's just the Nintendo console that got screwed over with optimisation as usual, or just lazyness on the developer's part in general.

@KevinJB1988 If you never played it and already own the Switch, it is really worth getting. No matter the haters.

Just check the more recent videos, the loading times when you're ingame isn't that bad. Much better than the WiiU.
Only the initial load from save game (main menu) seems to be a tad long still (about 35-45 seconds).

Graphics wise the game looks much better now too compared to the WiiU version.

You also get CO-OP now and able to take it on the go!

It's an amazing game. One of a kind and the only real open world Lego game TT has made so far.
(Lego Worlds I don't Count as it's more like a Lego Minecraft kind of game).

getting it on PS4. since my Wii U version no longer works anymore .
the coop feature is an nice addition tho.

@Jeronan I find it to be a good rule of a thumb to ignore anyone who refers to dissenting comments/reviews as "haters" or other, more insulting language. If you can't make your point without crapping on others, you're no better than them.

@Zebetite I am talking about the people that troll these forums and crap on anything Nintendo.
You'd wonder why they even bother coming to a Nintendo fan site in the first place.

There is a difference in being critical or downright hating/trolling.

I too would have liked more improvement, but it is what it is and I honestly believe it's just a limitation of the game and the engine it's build upon.
Lego City Undercover is a massive game. The largest game they ever made. The open world. The amount of content. It's massive.
You get more than your money's worth out of this game.

@hendie001 Ah, the anonymity of the internet. Fantastic response.

While I'm a little disappointed by this, I'm not entirely surprised. However, I'll still be getting it. Mainly for the co-op. For me it was sorely missed on WiiU because my boys and I enjoy playing Lego games together. So I feel I'll get my moneys worth even if I played the original to death. I do hope they still have the Nintendo references on Switch. They were fun.

@Jeronan To me it sounded like you were saying that about the people here who are rightfully irritated by loading times of this caliber on a cartridge-based system in 2017.

And you kind of answered your own question. Why come to a fansite to troll? Because trolls do that.

Will it even have good load times on PS4? Lazy as ****.

Then again this might be what the day one patch will be about and load times won't be an issue at all but why not print the game that way?

How is this game on other platforms?

@Zebetite Loading from Cartridge is always going to be slow. If People expect the same kind of performance like the expensive highend sd cards, then they are delusional.
People are already complaining about the so called Switch tax, well expect to pay 100 bucks for a game, if you want high end performance from a game cartridge.

Thanks to the information of this article, I will now buy this game digitial and put it on my SD card (or maybe even internal Storage) to reduce loading times even further.

I have seen some recent youtube videos With load times much better than shown in this article's video, so it seems to be load times from cartridge, since it was recorded on a Convention.

to be fair.....
every time i warp in Zelda BOTW it takes 20-30seconds to load... whats new?

i have a cartridge BOTW, is it quicker if downloaded??

I wonder are the load times also on PC version if those are the same bad load times on PS4, Switch and Wii U.

@wariosmith Really? Mine takes about 5-10 seconds at most

@hendie001 lol @ you blaming Nintendo for a bad port of a game which was not developed by them. The PS4 version had bad load times also. You gonna blame Sony for that? Lol

@Nik-Davies It Depends where you warping to / from.

Usually warping out of a shrine or to the other end of the map can take a bit longer to load. 10-20 seconds sometimes.

Loading from a save game can sometimes take a bit of time too. Especially first time loading into the game.

@jenkje If you're talking about the first loading screen, the youtuber clearly said "we'll be right back with the video" before cutting the loading screen directly to the start of the game.

I wished the change to cartridges with the switch would take me back to the Snes days, instant gaming. That'll be the day, I thought we were getting better at doing things!!

@Nik-Davies i get time to read at least 4 bits of 'advice' on every warp....

@dew12333 The games at that time were a mere couple megabytes at most in size.
Now we are talking about multiple GB's in size and loading all that from a game cartridge is going to take time.
Loading from disc is even slower, hence why on other consoles like the PS4 you forced to install games on HDD before you can even start playing.

Reminds me of the ps1.

People, calm down !
Loading a HUGE City with So Many details will take a lot of times.
It will NOT Loaded in 1 or 2 seconds.
Stop complaining for such a trivial matters like that.
At least, Switch version is 10-11 seconds faster than Wii U. Is waiting for 50 seconds so hard to do ?
I will buy this game despite of this trivial matter.
This is also a Patience Test for all of you.

I remember the game for a lot of things but not for the loading times. Maybe the loading times were awful but at least not that often.
Now Skyrim on the ps 3 was just ridiculous.

This is a clear case of bad optimization. The game was inherently badly optimized from the ground up, it would take a miracle (or an insanely huge load of work, which they wouldn't do for a port like this) to optimize it so it loads quickly. Remember, this is a very early Wii U open world game by a 3rd party developer; even Breath of the Wild has long loading times, and that's a 1st part Nintendo title (who are notorious for their extremely well-done programming and compression) that came out at the very end of Wii U's life. I wouldn't have expected Lego City to be much improved, especially seeing as it's now a port across several different systems (them being more powerful doesn't mean much in cases of bad optimization).

Sounds like a lazy port. Hope they improved the frame rate. This was a great game.

What I see in the video is that the Switch version loads significantly faster and looks better than Wii U. Plus the mini-build thing on the loading screen gives you at least something to look at while you wait. Glass half full

This was my one big factor in double-dipping, too. Ugh.

@Anti-Matter Counterargument: But the load times are so frequent.

There's no real reason now to pick this port up. Load times were the 1 thing this game needed most improvement but it hasn't happened. Portability? Don't care!

@Jeronan Disagree that "loading from cartidge is always going to be slow." Carts and SD storage are fundamentally similar technologies when it comes to the raw operation of reading data. Whichever edges out the other is going to come down to interface and system bottlenecks that aren't easy for us as consumers to see.

One or the other may win in practice on the Switch, but a blanket judgment of carts always being slower than SD is misguided.

@Fuz You don't need to be a cook to know if a meal doesn't taste as good as it could've. Since when did a valid criticism become an angry mob out to get TT?

Slow load times mean you can plan your toilet trips.

lets be honest, loading times are not good on WiiU neither on Switch (or on any other console) will be.. but at all quality of game is (for me) good and to get Undercover on go is perfect. It will really help to get any mini-game while loading (like in Splatoon lobby). I finished Chase on WiiU, I'll finish it on Switch also.

@MagicEmperor
Well, if you go inside and outside from Police Station or other buildings frequently, it will take another seconds again.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
Hi, still being so Negative again with Portability ?

@Discostew pretty much what i was going to say but you would think that when porting to a new system they would try to fix these issues

It's a fantastic, massive gane that I eventually 100% on Wii U, my son and I played it like mad last Summer. Load times were a pain but they weren't that frequent, and if they're improved here then all the better.

That's surprising as I would have thought just loading from an SD would cut load times considerably v's disc. Maybe the improvement here is just from that aspect...?

I love this game, I really do. But I'd be lying if I said the load times didn't affect my enjoyment of it. That being said, a great game is a great game so I'll def be buying it.

This is probably my son's favourite game on the Wii U. Him and I played this a lot and reached 98% or so. Coop is big plus. I actually bought Lego Super Heroes which had the coop feature, but the game didn't had the same feel as Lego City. Shame we don't have a Switch or I would be buying it so I could play with my son. The loading times everyone complaints is not a problem for me.

@Fuz yeah probably unfair to call developers lazy. There does seem to be issues with the original coding though. The load times are bad on all platforms so it looks like TT developers couldn't get past the original coding.

@Anti-Matter No. Good luck to whoever cares about that feature. I'm just saying I don't.

This was a fantastic game on the WiiU, my first copy died on its disc... Ended up buying it again digitally.

It's not a lazy port, it's just the way the engine and game works. It's the same speed on all consoles. As ram goes up, it takes longer to load everything into ram.

For anyone that hasn't played this, it's going to be the 2nd best game on the Switch until more games arrive. And there is probably more than 100hrs of game play here to get to 100%. Easily the best Lego game to date.

If this gets down to $30 AU, I'll buy this again for the Switch when I get one. It will totally keep the kids occupied.

Ahh dayum was gonna be a day one but I'll leave it till I see it cheap. Still got puyo puyo and some game about go carts or something to come this month.

@Discostew yeah they clearly did not optimise the code in any meaningful way. Seems a bit of a shameless money grab of a port.

It is disappointing it's not a more dramatic improvement but it is a significant improvement. If you haven't watched the video you should. Funny thing about load times is they don't bother you until they do. By which I mean there is a threshold where you barely notice or care (probably 30 seconds or so for many people) and then every second after feels like it's taking forever. This looks like its lowering that time closer to the bar. In that one instance it eliminated a load screen altogether.

Not amazing but a definite improvement. Will be better for everyone who hasn't played. Not double dipping on this one, though, gotta save double dip money for Mario Kart

That sucks they haven't improved that, but it won't stop me. I've done LittleBigPlanet 3 and GTAV on PS3, so I can deal with loading screens.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
The other big reason to pick up the game is co-op play and that was why I was considering a double dip at one time. Was always a bit off to have a LEGO game without co-op (even though this is probably the best LEGO game there is).

Load times are improved, though, and just maybe I'd be more inclined to buy again if the load times became near instantaneous but even then I paid full price for the original day one and can't quite stomach it ... and already have a Switch backlog on top of my Wii U backlog on top of my Wii backlog on top of my PC/Mac backlog and iOS backlog. Lol

@SMW Why do so many people say they didn't improve load times when they are clearly improved? Curious what led you to say that.

@wariosmith Right. That's about the threshold for many people I think. Zelda load times are just about perfect in that once they reach that 30 seconds you really start to feel it but it doesn't happen much. Every second after that first 30 starts to feel much longer.

That's why shaving off ~10 seconds from load times as the Switch version of this game does can feel much better in practice than you might think. For most people I'm guessing anyway.

Not too bad, seems like the biggest gripe is the initial load screen but the switch has sleep mode so you can just continue the game with little to no down time. I'm buying this the moment I can on the eshop.

@Fath Excuse me? There is a huge difference in quality between various micro SD cards and their read/write speeds.

You can't compare a cheap class 4 micro SD card with a high-end class 10 UHS-1 micro SD card.
There is a huge difference in read/write speeds between those and also in price.

And since the Switch doesn't even support the full performance capabilities of UHS-1 standard, don't expect better performance from the cartridge itself either.

Didn't WB already state that the load times were vastly improved?

@Steel76 wait you actually think the Switch is over two times as powerful as Wii U? Oh honey, come have a seat. I got some unfortunate news.

I think people are overestimating the amount of load times in the game. You will encounter around two every play session and the first is the loading of the entire open world.

I honestly found the load times for Tropical Freeze much worse since they are way more common.

EDIT: The first load time shown in the video is the longest in the game. They really aren't that bad; few and far between.

@sillygostly TT said that the box was printed incorrectly and the 13gb install is only for the full download of the game. I don't believe there's an install at all for the physical version.

@DBPirate
Yup.
Loading time has been cut for 10-11 seconds.
Plus, TT Fushion has redesigned the U/I during gameplay. They added Hexagon shape on the Right + Left Top for Character profile and Hexagon shape onfor Right + Left Bottom for Mini map and Video message.
Looks like 3DS version.
Even better looking.

If they fix the load times I will buy it.

Granted, the world is has to load is gigantic and it could be excused the first time around, since, well, you could say they weren't that experienced with open world games.

But no improvement in this regard is just a bummer.
I sure hope that they can and will fix this and i'll gladly double dip.
But like this, i might as well play the WiiU Version again.

I said something about it in another post that they obviously hadn't optimized it due to it still being 720p. This further shows that it's a cash in attempt. They COULD have optimized it but didn't. Won't be buying this.

@Marshi Nope. Still 720p in both docked and portable form.

@SwitchVogel While I agree with you the loading times are still better than Wii U, so for Nintendo owners worth having. But seeing how load times are almost non-existent on PS4 is where I agree it must be lazy programming, unless the game world is cached in the PS4s 8GB RAM at all times.

@Discostew
Agreed. It would be nice to know if this is a problem on all or just some hardware.

How is it on other platforms though? Relatively the same? Better? Sounds like a case of lazy WB ports to me. The PC version is $20 on some sites, might pick it up if I ever finish the 5 other open world games I'm in the middle of.

What a crap port.

Should've saw this coming, and proves my point yet again about 3rd parties on Nintendo consoles....They're lazy.

I'll stick with the WiiU version then. Great game to play while eating lunch. Play a bit...then when the game loads eat a bit...repeat until done.

@SwitchVogel

But did they have access to the 13 gb download? I think the download will maybe reduce the loading?

We can complain about Lego City, but TT games aren't known for being technically skilled in any shape or form.

Lego City was poorly optimised for Wii U in the first place but this is an inherent issue with the archaic lego engine - the engine itself was first used on PS2 and everything since then has been bolt ons.

TT need to dump their archaic engine and start from scratch. Simple as.

Nope. Deal breaker. Dont need to buy that problem twice! Was excited to buy it too....

Unacceptable to me. The load times and the price are the major problems giving me zero desire to purchase or play it in general. Thanks for the confirmation NL.

Sure, those load times are still annoying, but now that it's on Switch, I'd say it's somewhat of a worthy sacrifice for a portable version. As long as it's 100% portable, I'm picking it up.

@gatorboi352 I hope you're sitting down, because Fast RMX on Switch is pushing 4.5x the number of pixels that FRN on Wii U was doing, and that game on the U was stressing the hardware.

Okay a solid pass on this one...nice work WB.

I wonder how the PS4/XB1 versions run, that may help us understand what 3rd party support on Switch will be like for the future.

Meh. LCU was one of my favorite games on the Wii U. If some load times cause you to miss out on any of the other consoles, it's your loss.

I find it silly that people are making such a fuss over load times. If what some are saying is true the game actually loads faster than what is suggested in this video. Plus PS4 has the same load times so it's probably more of the engine rather than the system. I don't think the load times are nearly as bad as Skyrim either

PS. Just playing Skylanders on the Switch and the load times are just as worse as Lego City.

In this case it's strange, since they are much faster on my PS4. :-/

Take that for what you will.

I don't think anyone thought the load times for LCU were ever because of the WiiU hardware but were an issue with the game itself. it would have been nice if they corrected it somehow, but I'm guessing it just bulk loads most of the game world into memory all at once instead of streaming it as you travel the way most open world games do, and that's a fundamental design issue that can't really be corrected. It sucks, it's infamous, but it's what the game can do. I'm glad they shaved some time off, and thankfully with Switch once the game is loaded you can LEAVE it loaded in suspend mode which helps a lot so you don't need to worry about it every time you pick it up. But by reports it's not really better on any other platform, and confirms that the bulk of the load times was not due to reading it off BD, that added to it ,but only made a bad design worse. TT had no experience with open world beyond this game, so they probably used whatever approach they normally use for their level based games and treated the whole world as a big "level" rather than using methodology specifically for open world environments.

Disappointing, but not surprising, and it's still one of the greatest games of the past decade either way.

Double dipping to play it again on the go.

60 bucks for a lazy port. Screw that

On-off topic, does anyone know how co-op will work in this game? I haven't actually played any lego games with coop. I assume "2 players over local play with two copies of the game in two handheld switches" won't be a thing here (which is a shame, 3DS-style local is the most fun coop without fighting over camera control )

@UK-Nintendo Switch means you shouldn't HAVE to plan your toilet trips!

@NEStalgia aha. Good catch

@Wolfgabe
So.... Lego City Undercover still have same 50 seconds of Loading time even on PS4/Xbox1/PC ?
Guess I definitely choose Switch version since the game originally published by Nintendo first.

@Discostew yeah I don't think your example equates to "switch is 2.5 times more powerful than Wii U".

@gatorboi352 True that. It shows it's capable of more than that.

Co-op is nice but since all my friends are into mobile gaming i think i ll stick with the Wii U version. Too bad that Warner Bross had promised to improve the framerate. Oh well.....

@Fooligan

Pretty much. Maybe PC will be better?

Well guess I'll ignore this port as well, since they can't seem to manage fixing issues from the original.

My kids have never complained about the load times and my son is super excited to play it again. I am super excited for the multiplayer aspect of it. Maybe a Easter present for them.

@gatorboi352 The Switch's floating point performance is well over twice that of the Wii U in docked mode, and that doesn't account for the fact that the Switch uses a much more modern and efficient architecture than the Wii U.

Not worth the money, especially for those of us who played the original on Wii U. There's absolutely no reason for this game to still have loading screens that long. Not when Breath of the Wild has rather short loading screens on both Switch and Wii U. If you really want to play this game and still have a Wii U, then pick up a used copy or get one of the newly-branded Nintendo Selects version for $29 CDN. There's absolutely no reason to pay the $60+ to get this on Switch when loading screens are still that long.

Apart from the initial game boot up loading time, there are only 2 instances in the game that need to load:
1. Getting into and out of the police station
2. Getting into and out of a mission
In my opinion that's not much, but of course 1-minute loading to get back into the open world after visiting the police station or after finishing a mission can feel unnaturally long.

Another thing is, as you can see in the video, Switch loading times are reduced by 20% compared to the Wii U version. For me that's a good improvement (along with the 2P co-op).

But I won't double dip a 59,99€ on it. I got the Wii U version for 34,99€.

Some folks are saying the game runs at 1080p @ 30fps in docked mode, which is a nice enough boost from Wii U's 720p @ 30fps. In portable mode, it's also 720p @ 30fps.

I'm not sure about the range of this kind of article, or the impact in sales, but anyway, I wouldn't say this is a lazy port. Is just a port like they did for PS4... I mean... now it takes 50 seconds...but even if it was 30 seconds we would be complaining. Unless the developers have a secret, I don't think it's gonna be like 15 seconds (probably it could be only starting the game from scratch).

If you expected anything more than lazy ports to Switch, you were delusional. Just be happy the system is getting ports for the time being. Could be very different come next April.

OK, seems there was some overreaction here. Turns out the load times are quite a bit better than the Wii U version, especially off internal memory. More so, the game runs at 1080p with what appears to be similar performance as on Wii U (30 fps with some dips). The DOF appears to be lessened, but some (like me) prefer less blur which sort of ruins LOD.

So, it seems to be a reasonable port of an unoptimized source code. Pretty much what should have been expected. They were never going to completely overhaul the engine.

@ACK Thank you for the alternate analysis! Supported by this article, I was about to disdain the lack of anything good and unique on Switch, but you have alleviated my concerns somewhat with the information you provided, here. Now, I'll still be looking forward to buying this, eventually.

@ACK @Steel76 It's probably fairer to compare physical vs physical and digital vs digital rather than muddying the waters between the two. Not fair to compare a BD disc to a UHC1 card and not fair to compare the gamecard to a USB SSD etc. I think the video above was doing physical vs physical. And it's still better, but not overwhelming (maybe that video is an older version though.)

Also "less Depth of Field" would mean that the in-focus area is shallower and more of the background is blurred out. You either mean MORE DoF, or you mean weaker application of the DoF effect filter. That might just be my photography forum instinct kicking in. I'll refrain from asking about the bokeh.

@NEStalgia Depth of Field refers to an effect which blurs the surrounding scenery to differentiate from near and far objects as well as to theoretically improve the appearance of distant objects by softening sharp edges and aliasing. Considering that many games have no Depth of Field effect, I do not see it as inappropriate to refer to a weaker effect as less. The effect intends to mimic a camera lense, but we are not viewing games through a lenses, so the effect is not there by default.

@Fuz Haha! In fairness, I would like to do those things if I got a steady paycheck.

@Steel76 @Gauchorino Glad to help! Pretty disappointing to see this rushed article exclusively focused on load times in an unpatched version of the game. Moreover, two writers for the site storm in to instigate a "lazy port" narrative in the first two posts with little analysis or background. Amateur.

I will say I am still worried about co-op performance, even if I'm dubious about how much of a benefit it is to LCU. Would be nice if there was at least an option for local co-op across two Switches.

25% to 60% reduction in load times based off the videos I watched (6 seconds shaved off 25, and 9 seconds shaved off 15, etc) isn't a stellar improvement, but it's a moderate improvement at the least

I'm ok with that amount of improvement. Maybe not quite as much as I'd hoped but far from no change at all...

Not as bad as tape loading on a C64, but still some pretty meaty load time, particularly considering it's running from a cartridge on Switch.

Must mean the real load issue is how game objects are arranged in memory.

@ACK Depth of Field refers to the depth of the field of vision. Increased depth of field means the in-focus plane projects deeper into the field. Reduced depth of field means the in focus plane is shallower and more of the background is out of focus. Larger aperature and closer focus reduces DoF and increases blur. Stopping down to smaller apertures and focusing farther out increases DoF and increases blur.

The rendering effect is meant to approximate that real world camera effect in the virtual camera.

Thus "increased DoF" means less blur, more in focus. Applying a stronger DoF filter effect, reduces the effective DoF.

That may or may not be the way you were intending it or not, but it's better to negate confusion

@NEStalgia Well, yes you are accurate in the general sense. However in videogame parlance DoF refer to the effect, little more. There are other factors that contribute to an effective depth of field like you mention, such as draw distance and level of detail. But we don't generally refer to your actual depth of vision as DoF in games as it is in a virtual sense there is no real depth. This is why the effect is applied and generally it is understood to be referring to the specific technique rather than in general terms, so as to differentiate from the various technical factors conspiring to achieve the sightlines in a videogame sense.

Obviously we are sort of arguing semantics, so I'll at least attempt to signify the strength of the effect rather than relying on a quantitative term to be more clear. Thanks.

@ACK Yeah I think that's one of those things that in the game industry became a slang/shorthand of just saying "increasing the DoF" when what's really really meant is "increasing the level of DoF effect applied", but when taken out of the context of "industry slang" the statement actually says the opposite of what it's actually meaning just because it's the understood shorthand without the inverse adjectives included Originally I'm certain it was referred to the "right" way in rendering as well since the whole point is to simulate a real camera more realistically. Really it's referring to the out-of-focus blur or the bokeh effect, so DoF is technically inaccurate all around But at least that one gets transposed often enough in photography/cinema as well

This is quite disappointing given that the system has already shown it's more than capable of loading giant open-world areas in a reasonable amount of time. I'm guessing this was treated more like a quick port than it deserved and that the game engine wasn't really updated to take advantage of the Switch's capabilities. If so, that's pretty lame.

Let's see how things look after the patch. If the load times are still consistently 30 seconds+, I don't think I'll be picking this up.

Jesus Christ...I saw some footage of the game being played on the PS4 Pro, and the load times are pretty much the same as the Switch's load times at the same areas.

I would have hoped for better optimization. Hopefully this can be patched in down the road.

I had so much fun playing this game that once I got into it the load times didn't really bother me. Use them as a toilet break or something and just enjoy the game if you haven't already.

Definitely changed my mind about getting this for Switch. The horrible load times were the main reason I didn't get it for Wii U. Too bad.