Anachronism

Ah yes, a fond farewell to the console that will still be holding over 90% of my digital game library for at least the next couple years. I'll miss you dearly as you continue to sit fully plugged in alongside all my other consoles.

The color palette is cool, though the character animation could use some work. Maybe they should take some hints from the best (and only) stylized, archery-focused 3D platformer I've played, The Pathless. That game's fluid movement is probably its number one selling point.

I thought maybe I was just crazy, but I might actually prefer lower resolutions sometimes. In this case, it lets the various environmental elements blend together more smoothly and makes it a bit less obvious how rigid a lot of the 3D models are. I'd rather devs put graphical power towards making their models and textures more detailed rather than letting me see their rough edges more clearly.

Right now I plan to keep myself busy with Mario Kart and all the Switch 1 games I've been holding back on in hopes of getting more consistent performance. I'd like to grab several other launch games, but since I don't plan to buy a microSD for a while, I'll be keeping myself to proper physical games or digital ones with small file sizes for the time being.

I want to add that hat to the collection of cool hats I never wear.

@jesse_dylan At least from the chart on their website, it looks like the majority of Switch games have now met whatever their highest standard is for compatibility, with most of the remainder still sitting in the "it starts, but more testing is needed" category and maybe 1% in the "incompatible/not fully compatible" categories. There will almost definitely be some glitches that slip past their testing, but it's hard to guess how widespread that will be until the general public gets their hands on it.

The other important news is that they've gone from around 20% fully confirmed compatibility to over 60% without many more incompatible games popping up. There are still a few on the pending list that I'd like to see patches for, but I guess that'll be up to the devs.

I'm sort of glad third parties have an incentive to do these generational boosts. There are plenty of Switch games I'd like to see brought up to par with their releases on other platforms.

Huh, I just finished Hellblade a couple days ago. Wanted to see what the ugliest version of one of the last generation's prettiest games looked like before we move up to the next one. The gameplay and story didn't do much for me, but even with some cutbacks, the overall atmosphere with the visual design and binaural audio was still pretty impressive. I don't think I'll be buying it twice, but I'd consider buying a port of the sequel on Switch 2.

I've been very tempted to buy from limited run a few times, but I've never quite pulled the trigger. If they manage to put out the only proper physical editions for some of the Switch 2's bigger games, then they might finally win me over.

I honestly assumed most games with big worlds were already doing something like that. Having to place every bush or swaying patch of grass by hand sounds like a massive waste of time and talent.

Man, the Switch 2 isn't even out yet and people here are already turning into graphics snobs. Admittedly, my expectations for Koei Tecmo aren't that high to begin with, but this looks way better than most of their Switch games. Plus, a lot of the finer geometric detail and all those small mechanical animations are things you just didn't see much in general on Switch. Since we might not get a new Monster Hunter for a bit, this looks to me like a decent substitute.

Mario Kart and Smash Bros. have both hit the point where just adding more content doesn't add as much value as it used to. With 8 Deluxe carrying over to the next generation for most of Nintendo's fanbase, I think it was a good idea to take the sequel in a new direction rather than trying to compete with themselves.

There's nothing I particularly dislike about the new design, but I do still prefer the old one. It feels a bit dumb to say, but he looks just a little too much like a regular gorilla now. Take off the tie and he could pass for a random side character in any modern animated movie.

I think it's normal to worry about remakes/remasters losing some of the originals' charm, especially for your favorites. I'm still annoyed at Xenoblade 1/X DE for giving the characters the weird plastic figurine look from the newer games, and at that slapped together remaster Twilight Princess got back on Wii U. I also didn't like the way Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee made the whole Kanto region into a cutesy diorama rather than the grand adventure it felt like as a kid. Meanwhile I love the diorama look in Link's Awakening, but maybe I'd feel the same way about that one if I'd grown up with it. This is actually the first game from the Trails series that's really caught my eye, so in my opinion it looks great, but the expectations of a new player vs a returning one, or even vs a new player when it originally released, are all going to be dramatically different.

Aside from the abysmal performance and the bad texture tiling on rocky surfaces, I actually like a lot of Scarlet/Violet's visuals. If they manage to completely fix the former, I might call it the best-looking entry from Game Freak in the last decade.

Definitely not the case for me. If anything, I've been making progress on clearing my backlog for once, though that might have more to do with running out of storage space than actually playing more.

I'm just thinking of it as aligning more with their handheld strategy than their home console one. Hopefully that means we won't just get a Switch 3 in another eight years, but who knows what the gaming industry, or the rest of the world for that matter, will look like in 2033.

It's working with me at least. This is one of a very short list of third party games I'm really feeling positive about at the moment.

I'd say I was being pretty price-conscious this generation, with most of my Switch library being bought at a heavy discount and only a handful of games actually purchased at launch. What I'm really worried about now is storage space. I just barely managed to squeeze my entire Switch library into a 1 TB microsd, but the only microsd express in that size is prohibitively expensive and sold out besides. With the size of modern games and the apparent slow death of physical media, it seems possible we'll soon see digital-only games taking up more than 100 GB. Aside from the inconvenience of needing multiple 1 TB microsds to store a library of those games, each game at that size would have an effective $20 bonus cost in storage space. I was already trying to buy my "premium" games physically and mostly sticking to indie/retro games for my digital library, but it seems likely I'll skew even more towards the latter with the Switch 2.

My hopes of catching up on the last decade of AAA games on Switch 2 are quickly dwindling. Maybe I'll finally get around to buying this digitally in a few years if extra storage space ever hits a decent price point.

The simplest solution I can see is to bring back user ratings and add more sorting/filtering options. If I can't narrow down my search to the point where every result is worth a look, then the system still isn't good enough.

Every time this topic comes up, it seems like someone has to say "bigger, more ambitious games cost more money". My response has always been that I'd rather they rein in their ambitions and focus on creativity and polish instead. There are games from decades ago that are still more visually and mechanically appealing than most games from this year. Meanwhile, modern retro/indie games have proven capable of popularity on par with their cutting edge counterparts. In other creative mediums, many of the most respected works are centuries old. That's not to say there's no place for these massive and massively ambitious games, but they should be the exception rather than the standard.

This is one of the ones I'm a bit hesitant about. It's one of the most graphically demanding games announced for Switch 2 and, as far as I can tell, there's no sign of a proper physical release. Until microsd express prices get a bit closer to standard microsd, I'm mostly sticking to physical games and sub-10GB downloads.

There's a reason why selling out has become synonymous with prioritizing profits over principles. Even if the people on top of these conglomerates were decent human beings instead of ruthless execs and money-grubbing shareholders, they still wouldn't have the same vision for the businesses they absorb as the people who created them, nor would they be able to fully devote themselves to each one like the head of an independent company can. What's best for a group will almost never be what's best for each individual, and past a certain size, it's impossible to keep making decisions without some parts suffering disastrous consequences for the benefit of the whole. This kind of thing even happens on the scale of families, so you just can't expect some random suits to give proper consideration to the employees and fans of a business they barely even remember they own.

I need a dark mode eshop to match the home menu. The bright orange and white already bothered my eyes and the red is even worse.

I think it's also worth noting that you can redownload games in the virtual game cards settings even without borrowing the virtual game cards, after which you can still borrow them in the way people have been up to now after flipping on the online license toggle in the user settings. I'm not actually sure why they even added that toggle, unless having it on somehow interferes with the virtual game cards.

We probably have a few years before even getting a glimpse of it, but I'm more curious about the next 3D Zelda than anything else. I'm really not a fan of most of the changes Breath of the Wild brought to the series, and while Tears of the Kingdom improved on that formula a good bit, I'm hoping to see either a return to form or another reinvention of the formula from the next entry.

I'm not sure when I'll get around to it, but I'd like to have a case and the GameCube controller, though I plan on mostly sticking to my Switch 1 pro controllers if I can. As for the microsd, I'd ideally like to wait until I can get a 1TB one for less than $100, but we'll have to see how long I can last on the Switch 2's built-in storage, especially with how few third parties are aiming for proper physical releases.

I think I've looked at it every day. I'm not expecting to get much actual news out of it, but the bite-sized bits of concept art, concert performances, cartoons, and comics are a nice way to break up the monotony for a few minutes.

Saw that yesterday and took a minute to be sure it was a fake. There's also clones of A Game About Digging A Hole, Exit 8, Chained Together, and who knows how many grocery store, card shop, and tavern keeper sims along with one or two for nearly every other simulation game too. It's getting a bit ridiculous at this point, honestly.

I'll be hoping for another Nintendo-targeted Monster Hunter, and maybe Dragon's Dogma 2 and Okami 2 if they can get them running okay.

It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out between the different studios/publishers. The ones who put the full game on the cart are definitely earning bonus points with me, but for games that I'm okay buying digital, the key card allowing them to start off both that and the fully digital version at a lower price could be nice. I'd still rather the key cards not exist at all, but I'll take the silver linings where I can find them.

Yep. Fought with Target for a while before Walmart finally let me through. Now I just have to hope it doesn't get randomly cancelled.

@GoldenSunRM Yep, gambling addicts are notorious for trying to figure out "the system" when they're really just throwing darts blindfolded and hoping they hit more than they miss.

Guess I'm glad I waited on this one, though I honestly still might just go for a Switch 1 copy with those storage requirements. Actually, I've even been holding off on playing Frontiers just in case it runs a bit better, so I'm in no rush. Maybe they'll release a proper physical version some day.

Darn it, and I just finally got back down to one missing 3* card. Why must they keep doing this to me?

@Bunkerneath Nah, probably just some rotten luck. I was dealing with the same for a month or so before the newest pack released.

The file size is what's really impressing me. It makes me worry a little about how many tracks the game has if they're able to fit all those high quality assets in such a tiny package, but hopefully it's just another example of them doing things the right way.

Geez. The combination of third parties refusing to properly compress their games and refusing to put out proper physical releases is going to make maintaining your library a nightmare. Soon we'll have to start bulk ordering 100 GB microsds and keeping one game on each.

I'll be looking forward to the inevitable digital foundry video on this one. The series has become a good benchmark for what a well-optimized third party game can look like on Nintendo consoles.

My GameCube library is largely made up of Nintendo games and licensed games. I'm looking forward to checking out everything I missed as a kid from the former category, but it's a shame we'll likely never see most of the latter.

I like the look of the illustrator's work. Some of it reminds me of what you might see in a school textbook. Seeing pokemon drawn in a similar style should be interesting.

I've put a lot of time into Skyrim, but I'm still not actually sure if I like it. It earns some respect just for the variety of gameplay mechanics built into it, but the controls were always unpleasantly clunky, while I found the characters and world both visually and narratively unappealling. I know very little about Oblivion, but if this remake takes a similar formula and smooths out all those rough edges, then I could see myself having a lot of fun with it.

Pikmin was the first home console game I owned, and it taught me at a very young age that I never want to be responsible for a bunch of other people's lives. I really like a lot about the games and I've owned three of them, but I've barely played them at all because I just give up as soon as my little guys start dying. I rarely mind getting a game over and losing a few minutes of progress, but if a game makes me permanently sacrifice other characters in order to progress, I just stop wanting to play.

@StewdaMegaManNerd But why? I understand that brand recognition is important to grab the attention of casual fans and kids, but I can't count the number of great games I've played with completely forgettable main characters. It just seems a waste to focus on the characters over the gameplay, especially when it comes to the perpetually blank slates of the Mario cast.

I've been surprised to see some people disappointed that they're leading with a 3D Donkey Kong instead of a 3D Mario. Either way it's a major first party platforming collectathon, and it's likely even made by the same team as Odyssey. If we were talking about a story-focused series that'd be one thing, but since it's not, who cares if you're playing as a plumber or an ape as long as the genre and quality are the same?

This kind of reads like one of those "Dark Souls should have an easy mode" pieces. All other types of entertainment are more or less pure escapism, but games are supposed to have some degree of challenge, and the form that challenge takes is just as much a creative choice as the art style or story. Fall damage isn't just there to add realism. It's a punishment for failure or a way to keep players from skipping large chunks of the game. To be fair, I've complained vigorously and repeatedly on this site about things like level-scaling, excessive openness, and overuse of assets ruining the sense of progression and novelty in open world games, but seeing a personal preference like that declared as a sweeping statement in the header of an article just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Welp, glad the prices on the things I care about are staying the same. Still never paying $80 for a game, so I guess I'll have to start waiting on sales for their biggest titles.

The game still looks cool, but there was no news here worth making an event out of it, and definitely nothing that makes it worth more than every other AAA game. I don't know who's taking the reins on this console launch, but aside from the one hour between the start and end of the Switch 2 Direct, they have not been doing a good job.

I managed to have a great time with Witcher 3 on Switch. If this game's most taxing area in an already outdated build can still run passably, then I don't think the performance will be a problem for me.