Anachronism

This is the first time I've owned a game console for half a year and not bought a single physical game for it. A decent part of that is the sizable Switch backlog I'm still working through, but the rest is all down to the pricing and key cards. There are plenty of games I'd like to play, but I just don't feel right buying them, and that dampens my enthusiasm for the console as a whole.

@kal_el_07241 I still consider any decent port of a realistic open world from this decade a miracle. These games truly would be impossible on Switch 2 if it weren't for DLSS, because in terms of raw numbers it is not close to Series S. Nintendo's very lucky their partnership with Nvidia and the timing of hardware releases allowed them to get a console with that technology out at a competitive price well ahead of Sony/Microsoft.

Glad they're continuing to fix up the game. There's still plenty more to improve, but considering they'll likely be making back several times their development costs over the next decade, they'll hopefully feel motivated to keep working on it.

Well since we've gotten 1 and X remastered in the style of the new games, it's obviously only fair if they remake 2 and 3 in the style of the old games now.

As a general rule, I do like to have some side characters in my games. There's not much point in saving the world if there's no one to actually save. That said, a series so well known for its sense of isolation should probably make interacting with those characters mostly optional, and definitely shouldn't make any of them chattering quip dispensers. For the sake of all the people who've waited eight years for this game, I hope the drama around them ends up being severely overblown.

No surprise they had to make some cutbacks, but the clips on the page this info comes from still look pretty solid. I'll be interested to see digital foundry pick it apart. Though regardless of how the game turns out, I'll have to hold off until it no longer requires me to sacrifice a quarter of my storage.

That was a beautiful example of how not to edit a video. It'd make me want to apply, if only I had any inclination toward public speaking and hadn't spent years commenting on and criticising things here through various levels of sleep deprivation.

Nintendo's recent acquisitions feel pretty different from what's been going on in the rest of the industry lately. While other companies seem to be cannibalizing each other left and right just to add to their hoards of IP, most of Nintendo's recent purchases are just people they have good working relationships with. To be fair, Nintendo's hoard is already so big that they're reluctant to expand it further, but building up a network of competent teams still seems like a much healthier business model than continuously driving franchises into the ground by buying out the people who built them up and immediately firing half of them.

@BaldB3lper78 Can you look at these side-by-sides and honestly say the Switch versions ever look better? The game's whole visual identity has been stripped away.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMKXGXo8Ig

@Inaroomalone Transferring virtual cards between the same account on different consoles doesn't work the same as loaning them to another account. As far as I know, the only restriction is that you can't split your games between more than two systems.

@JayJ Cool, good to know.

Awesome. This is one of the Switch games I saved for Switch 2 so I could get the best experience out of it. Glad it's finally ready to go.

I've been looking at some comparisons, and I'm pretty sure the "definitive edition" looks worse than the original release on 360/PS3. They've taken out some visual effects, removed foliage interaction, and changed the lighting in a way that ruins the moody atmosphere and makes everything look more plasticky. All the frame rate and resolution boosts in the world aren't worth compromising a game's artistic design.

So to ask the obvious question, could you load up all your virtual cards on one of your consoles, disconnect it from the internet, remove it from your account, and then still freely play your games offline on it?

Also, I find it really funny that they left in the pre-virtual card sharing function, but turned it off by default despite there being, as far as I know, zero downsides to leaving it on. The only benefit I can think of is that they might lower server costs a bit by not having a million Switches constantly checking whether they're allowed to play a game.

I'd much rather get something more in line with their other games, or even just more ports, over a competitive multiplayer one. Though I do still hope it does well enough to reinforce the slowly growing relationship between FromSoft and Nintendo, if only so that we're more likely to get those ports.

Considering I've maxed out my Switch 1's 1TB card without having to worry about nearly as many big digital-only games, I'd rather wait until there's a 2TB one available for Switch 2...and then probably wait some more until it doesn't cost half the price of the console. Until then, I'll be trying to stick with proper physical games and indie digital ones.

Link looks good enough, though I'm not a big fan of the recent Zelda designs. A dress and tiara might have been a bit too impractical if she's going to be wandering around outdoors, but I still definitely prefer straight hair or the long, dangly braids to the wrap-around type on her.

Guess Silksong is my choice as the only one I've played. I didn't enjoy it as much as the original Hollow Knight, with the controls never quite becoming natural and some of the bosses getting boring long before my muscle memory caught up enough to beat them, but the world design and the sheer quantity and variety of content still make it an exceptional game. Pipistrello and Blue Prince also seem cool, so I'd like to check them out at some point.

@RobLife1 Think that's one of the playable characters from Absolum.

Think I've had enough reminders that most of my favorite games are not other people's favorite games. Seeing half of them in the bottom 50 and the other half not making the list while your biggest disappointments fill up the top 10 gets a bit depressing after the twentieth time or so.

It's become more of a monkey's paw situation for me. There's just too much, and even after filtering out all the garbage, I often feel like I'm digging through piles of good but not quite great games in hopes of finding the rare ones that manage to leave a lasting impact. It might be easier if I was willing to drop things and move on after a couple hours, but my combined perfectionism, desire to respect my games, and refusal to waste money compel me to play all the games I buy until I either finish them or hate them.

I think going high on the console price ultimately worked out better for them than if they'd gone as low as possible and then been forced to raise it. The game and accessory prices are still a sore point, though, so I'm not sure how they'll do with attach rate in the long run.

Looking at AI right now, it kind of feels like competing against someone who gets both more competent and more unhinged with every passing moment. Assuming its development doesn't hit some unavoidable dead end, or somehow kill us all, it could very well result in the largest societal shift in recorded history.

With every practical measure of value being potentially thrown out the window, something with subjective value like entertainment might be one of the few refuges for economic stability, so it's probably pretty important to work out all the legal details on that sooner rather than later.

Despite playing New Horizons religiously at launch and hopping back onto the daily grind a few times since then, I've never felt quite done with the game, so I don't mind having an excuse to dump even more time into it. I'm also fine with the next entry likely being a long way off. I'll need a good break before I'm ready to start from scratch again. Plus, that leaves an opportunity for them to release the original Animal Crossing through the GameCube library.

The one deal I'm really looking at right now is the half price Blasphemous 2 bundle. Not sure if it's officially part of the sale, but it's suitably spooky and the sequel to one of my favorite metroidvanias.

I don't have too many complaints, but I'm definitely only playing for the nice card art and to get my collecting fix. I've tried to get into the actual game, but the solo content, which I prefer, is pretty limited. And I really don't want to play more than a few ranked battles a month, so even maintaining a rank above great ball 1 is annoying, never mind climbing to master ball. But like I said, I don't care about those modes enough to really be bothered by it. The one thing that's really bugging me right now are the tons of duplicates and shinedust I put into unlocking flares, and whether I'll get any of that back now that they're going to be free. If I put all those resources into unlocking them, alongside putting up with a minute-long load time on every card I unlocked them for, only to fall behind all the people who didn't even bother with them, that's going to leave a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

Even if it was bound to happen after they brought all their other games over, this still feels like the closest thing to Sonic ending up on Nintendo consoles in the last 20 years. It's the true end of an era. I guess we'll just have to hope the next one reaches heights equal to the last.

As for Halo coming to Switch 2, ideally, I'd just want to have the whole list of Bungie games with no modifications, including the version of Reach from before 343 got control and messed with things. Failing that, a decent port of the Master Chief Collection would still be nice.

Huh, this might be the first time I actually want to play a game on easy mode. Pikmin was one of the first games I ever owned, and the series has always held a special significance for me, but I've never gotten close to finishing a single entry because I just can't stand to send my pikmin to their deaths. If that mode actually makes it feasible to get through the game without any losses, then I might finally be able to fulfill that decades-old wish.

The first Direct left me feeling confident in the game's quality, but a little disappointed in how close it was sticking to the original. Sakurai is kind of a lunatic, so this presentation could go either way between revealing a bunch of exciting new content or spending the full hour diving into random bits of minutia. I'm sure it'll be an interesting watch regardless, but I'm hoping to see something that'll really get me excited for the successor to one of my childhood favorites.

@MontyCircus Yeah, I had to watch that even last generation. In terms of 10+ GB games, I only really make exceptions for multiplayer ones, which are nice to have easy access to, and 75+% discounts where I'm getting much more than the cost of storage in savings. Though considering the added cost and current 1TB limit on microsd express cards along with all the digital-only AAA games, I'll have to be even more selective now.

Glad we're starting to see good deals on Switch 2 games, though I'll still be aiming for physical versions where possible. Given Nintendo's historic approach to discounts and the reduced profit margins on the new carts, I might be waiting years for some of my most anticipated titles.

Geez, the $70 price tag, near-launch DLC, and now limited time content in a single player game? Is Nintendo hemorrhaging money from somewhere or did they just hand over the monetization planning to a bunch of con artists? Regardless, I'll get around to Bananza when I'm good and ready, and since the DLC already didn't appeal much to me, now I might just skip it entirely.

I wish more graphics comparisons would just split the screen down the middle rather than showing all these useless tiny displays. I realize keeping things synced up in actual gameplay would be tough, but you could still use some software to send in identical controller inputs and get it pretty close.

I really like the dinky little speaker. If it had any internal storage, I might buy it just to load it up with a ton of retro soundtracks.

I almost wish they'd stuck Popplio or Piplup in there so I could have picked Chikorita for once. Unfortunately they went with my brainless boy Totodile, so I really don't have a choice.

@GamerOG77 I think there's a pretty good reason to gripe. Outside of graphics, which are a pretty low priority for a lot of us, games on average aren't any better than the ones we bought 10 or even 20 years ago, but the prices for retail games keep going up while the functionality of the physical product you're buying keeps going down. It's questionable whether or not we'll be able to stop the death of physical media, but those of us who care about it are at least going to keep trying to slow it down.

Why do people always have to mess with a good thing? Voice acting in Nintendo exclusives (and in things aimed at kids in general) is usually awful. I'd much rather imagine a character's voice and tone myself than listen to the equivalent of a parent reading a picture book to their two year old.

This looks cool. It's hard to tell much about the gameplay, but it gets some bonus points from me just for the effort put into the animation. There's always room for more games that try to replicate the visuals of classic cartoons.

Looks like a great time. I loved RC toys as a kid, so I absolutely would have picked up Home Circuit if I thought I had any chance of convincing multiple other people to buy into it.

@itsapossum No, I'd call Palworld a parody, but the developers were absolute idiots for intentionally provoking TPC/Nintendo. Plenty of games that copied Pokemon a lot more directly happily coexist with it because those studios didn't go out of their way to pick a fight with the biggest brand on the planet.

The Squirrel With a Gun copycat I mentioned was this one where most of the promo images show a squirrel holding a gun. https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/squirrel-madness-switch/

Their other games are similarly unoriginal, and they're only one of many companies releasing endless shop simulators, shooters with "bodycam" in the title that are not the shooter Bodycam, Digging a Hole clones, Peak clones, R.E.P.O. clones, etc.

There's been a copycat game on Switch for months. Considering the original aspire's more towards being a giant meme than a highly polished product, I'd be interested to see a comparison. Heck, there are enough shameless clones of other games that you could make a whole video series out of it. The only problem is that it would necessitate actually giving a bunch of scammers money.

With how aggressive this game's dynamic resolution was on Switch, it seems like a pretty good candidate for a Switch 2 replay. I'd honestly really like to pick it up if I didn't still have so many new games to get through. Hopefully I can hunt down a few of LRG's releases later on if I ever have money to burn on cool things I'll never use.

Cool. I played a bit of this before Switch 2 released just to have a point of comparison. Despite the apparent improvements over the original launch, it still felt rough, so I'll be interested to see how much better a properly upgraded Switch 2 version is.

More handhelds mean more support for lower end hardware, so I'm not complaining. None of these things are really threatening the Switch 2's niche, so hopefully they can all mutually benefit by giving third parties more reason to build their games with scalability in mind.

Those are a bunch of great QOL improvements. I put a ton of resources into flares, though. Really hope I get that back, especially with how much the 2* and shiny trades will cost.

The overall style makes me think of Thumper crossed with Stranger Things, though maybe without as much visual polish as either of those. Still, it looks interesting and it's been a while since I've played a good skateboarding game, so I hope it comes out well.

It used to be really cool when we'd get a spritual successor or copycat that felt like a love letter to or fun spin on a classic game. Now we've gone from games that try to offer a unique take on a similar core idea after a couple years to multiple shameless copies of an original game's style with none of its substance within a couple months. The only way we're getting out of this is if the companies running these online stores take a more active role in curating and gatekeeping them.

I've read through the article a couple times, and I'm still not sure whether "new games" in this context means brand new, or just new to me. So far I'm sitting at three brand new games for this year, with the most expensive being the bundled Mario Kart World at technically $50. There have been recent years where I didn't buy a single game at launch, though I still probably manage at least a dozen total games each year.

I would say I land in the hyper enthusiast group, but definitely not in the price insensitive one. I track new releases and major sales very closely, and every couple months I'll burn $20-60 on around 3-12 games, usually for $2-10 each. If it's something that had a great critical reception, or fell just short of convincing me to buy at launch, then I might go up to $20.

But in terms of full price retail games, especially with the state of pricing and physical media on Switch 2, I'd guess I'll only buy one or two annually, and maybe receive a couple more as gifts within their launch year. I always have a few games I haven't started yet, and a much larger pile of ones I either fell off or just didn't reach 100% completion in, not to mention a couple dozen more wishlisted games on perpetual discount that I already consider honorary members of my backlog. So aside from the increasingly rare case where I absolutely can't wait to play a particular game, I'm fully content to keep myself occupied with other things until a publisher decides to offer me a good bargain.

The music and the way the floating things moved around were very Pikminish. Though I couldn't say whether it's actually teasing anything or just referencing all those similarly charming Pikmin shorts they used to do.

Adorable. I just spent some time with the newest member of my family and already miss him, so this hit right on that soft spot for me.

Nintendo's games get stretched between trying to be family friendly and cool, usually ending up either as a bit vanilla or as oddball fever dreams, so it's neat to see them go all in on wholesomeness for once. Still no clue why they made this aside from giving their animation talent a good workout, but I'd be happy to see more.

I've been repeatedly surprised by what the Switch 2 is capable of, so on its own I think it's worthy of best hardware. Though taking the expensive and too slow regular game carts and the conceptually terrible key cards into account drops its score a good bit. I still haven't played Bananza, so hopefully it deserves all the praise its received and gets showered with an appropriate number of awards. Mario Kart on the other hand has had a more mixed reception, and while they've gotten it to a decent state now, there's still plenty of room for improvement. Outside of the soundtrack, I'll be mostly attributing any awards it wins to its sheer popularity.