Ham-n-jam

I would absolutely love a Switch 2 upgrade, but I also just really want to replay the game. I wish they would either confirm or deny if an upgrade is coming so I don't feel like I need to wait indefinitely.

Mind you, they said a switch XCX port was practically impossible for the longest time and then did it anyway so a deconfirm might not even be reliable lol

Nice, was just checking if I could use it on PC the other day. Steam controller support is so handy!

@SalvorHardin Honestly I wouldn't say Silksong has old school difficulty since a lot of that type of difficulty is associated with bs/unfair enemy attacks and level designs. Silksong feels tough, but fair in that figuring out why you took damage and how you could avoid it is pretty logical, so you can adapt pretty quickly to boss attack patterns if you think carefully about it.

I'd say it's less about the 'pro' players wanting to feel superior to those struggling with the difficulty, and more like they want to encourage people to persist at it even when it seems impossibly hard. They're likely better at the game than they realise, and we want them to feel that immense satisfaction of overcoming something challenging too

I love how satisfying the current difficulty feels. I think there's already a lot of optional gear and different builds available for struggling players to experiment with. Only downside to the game for me that could maybe do with some tweaking is some of the bland generic hunt and rosary donation sidequests. Felt a bit like bloat in an already very long metroidvania, but they are easy enough to grind out tho.

I feel like despite a lot of online (mostly deserved) criticisms and negativity surrounding the Switch 2, most people are pretty stoked with the actual hardware itself - except maybe those that were hoping for a drastically different successor to the Switch 1

The tech is pretty impressive, and some meme vids are fine, but it being used to mass generate this vaguely coherent, uncanny short-form content is absolute brainrot lmao. Attention spans are truly going down the drain if this becomes popular.

Man, I just played og Trails in the Sky for the first time like 5 months ago but I'm already tempted to check this one out, it looks so cool seeing everyone in full 3D! I'm glad to hear people are loving it

I think I prefer the look of the trainer models in Arceus, but there still hasn't been any HD models that I've really been a fan of in the series so far. I'm not sure if it's the shaders/lighting or the proportions, most of them just look like they don't really fit in the environment to me. The combat does look fun in this one, tho. Makes me a bit torn up about getting it.

@jsty3105 yeah true man, I do agree that convenience and control scheme are more important factors than the specs. I own a decent spec PC, but I got Dragon Quest 11 on switch cuz the portability is great. I was also thinking of buying Resident Evil 4 on switch or the remake on PC, but I've decided to hold off till I can get my hands on the Wii version cuz apparently that control scheme is awesome fun : ]

"It does this by listening for an inaudible sound-wave signal that is broadcast inside" hahahaha man, that's kind of insane. As a dev the creativity of that verification is impressive.

@jsty3105 I mean... yeah I think some versions are straight up slightly nicer to play lol. If the ports are otherwise identical (in price, content, gameplay, etc) and you have the hardware to support it (a high res/high refresh rate monitor), I don't see why you wouldn't just buy the port that runs at the highest res/framerate?

Of course, at the end of the day as long as the performance isn't truly abysmal, any port should still be a fun time and the numbers don't matter that much. It's especially diminishing returns in resolutions above 1080p.

Seems to me like it'd be pretty hard to introduce an easier difficulty without watering down the experience. You couldn't just remove the boss double damage moves without fundamentally changing the way you interact with the 3HP healing system and how you manage smaller mobs during fights. Reduced boss HP also seems like a bad option since they aren't really damage sponges as-is.

Figuring out when it's safe to heal, when you can get a few extra hits in and which crest/charms setup to use is key to enjoying the fights imo. All the systems tie into each other nicely to make strategy feel more meaningful.

Hmm, I've just made sure auto update is turned off just incase. It is a tough challenge so far, but feels very rewarding once you learn all the boss attack patterns and use smarter healing strats to mitigate the double damage attacks. Also I found sister splinter much easier that most of the others, only took maybe 5 attempts, so interesting that she's getting a nerf.

@Medic_alert it's also a pretty fair comparison if you own multiple systems. Might as well get the best version if they all cost the same anyway. I'll grab most games that perform decently on Switch 2 cuz I like the portability, but if the port kinda sucks I can just grab it on PC.

Woah, I've never heard of Magical Vacation before. Legit looks like some of the very best spritework I've seen on GBA, it's beautiful.

@YunoboCo @larryisaman
eyyy we got 4p splitscreen in city trial officially confirmed guys : )

https://x.com/KirbyAirRiders/status/1958718276357259434

@mystman12 huge if true, that gives me some hope!

@RupeeClock Yeah if they did support GameShare I doubt it'd add any more players than splitscreen supports because of the resource requirements. I do prefer good ol' splitscreen anyway, I tried playing a bit of FAST Fusion using GameShare and the (small, but noticeable) input latency and stream bitrate kind of kills it for me.

@larryisaman same here :/
Man, feels like we took a wrong turn at some point when so many games had 4p splitscreen in the 2000s, but you're lucky to even get any splitscreen in modern big releases, even with the vastly improved hardware

@larryisaman yeah it's strange isn't it? Damn, I really hope city trial has it too considering even Sakurai is saying it's the main attraction.

@OorWullie ahh yeah skimming thru again I see a couple of 2p splitscreen clips around the start now, thanks. I got confused when it wasn't mentioned when he was talking about the local wireless/online play. Hopefully they have 4p splitscreen?

It looks really awesome, but concerned they didn't show off any splitscreen mode, that's a really hard sell for a party racing game if they don't have it...
EDIT: looks like it does have at least some splitscreen gameplay, but it's not clear if it's just for the race mode or not

Yea the naming is kinda lame lol but the gameplay looks really fun, hope it turns out well. I'm always interested in new top-down action games that look anything like Zelda or Crosscode

As someone who has had to open up their older controllers to replace parts due to stick drift, broken buttons and LEDs, that does really suck

@Dr_Corndog yee same here, it looks like it'll be a blast, but I've been thinking considering the pricing for this generation I might hold off on most singleplayer games till they go on sale. Online multiplayer I might wanna go in while it's popular to play with a healthy playerbase, and maybe big story focused games too to avoid spoilers.

If it's great now, I'm sure it'll still be great in 4yrs when it finally goes on sale lol

The problem is compounded by there being no decent high capacity micro SD EX cards being available. I've got ~20 Switch 1 game cards in my case that I can find and pop in and play easily.

If I had 20 key cards, there's no way that's fitting on my console storage, and maybe not even a 1tb card. Having to manage popping in a key card, turning off the console and tracking down and switching out the associated micro SD EX with the actual data on it sounds like complete a**. On top of that, I refuse to buy any micro SD EX until a trusted brand like Sandisk or Samsung come out with at least a 1tb model.

Looks fun, just hope they can make the platforming interesting. The rock surf and throw mechanics look awesome, but being able to climb up most of the walls and the destruction mechanic seem kinda ehhh unless they can do some really cool stuff with it. Fingers crossed!

@SirLink I thought so too before, but then I read that although plastic screens scratch much more easily than glass, they're better at surviving impacts in situations where glass would shatter.

So unless I'm reading it wrong, plastic screen with good impact resistance + glass screen protector for scratch resistance and taking the brunt of the damage actually seems like the most optimal combination for surviving drops?

Yea nah figured this'd happen after hearing about it happening with the OG switch dock and hearing the new screen is plastic again, chucked a cheap as tempered glass protector on straight away ez

Love the console hardware. The UI design is an upgrade over Switch 1, but lacks the "wow" factor of a new console UI since it's so similar (I'm still a sucker for the Wii U menu skeuomorphism lol so was hoping for something in that vein).

Main thing I'm hoping for is some confirmations for more Switch 1 upgrades soon, I wanna to replay XC2 but still holding off on that for now.

Dayum, not so great for long trips eh. I guess if you're playing on a flight at least it seems feasible to play in tabletop mode with a powerbank in the top USB-C port.

Pretty glad I skipped out on Switch OLED cuz I am loving the huge upgrade coming from an og Switch lol

Pretty much all of the tracks that have tight turns and a bunch of wall ride + grind rail sections or dense hazards and boost spots are great. Disappointed with rainbow road too like some of you guys are saying, I find the track is way wider than it should be and has less satisfying risky strats you could do like in the MK Wii and 7 rainbow roads

Nice! I did find it a little blurry playing 4 player on our projector, but tbf it's only a 1080p projector lol, hope this helps a bit. Thanks for providing so many options Shin'en

I'm just hoping the open world idea didn't make any of the tracks worse than they otherwise would've been as standalone tracks. I keep seeing screenshots of that desert track with the really wide, long road and get a bit worried there's going to be a lot of long wide roads to accommodate connecting the tracks and the bump in racer count. We'll see tomorrow!

Man, that is pretty insane - I honestly had no idea it had so many tracks. I would've guessed it had roughly 80 or so

@PessitheMystic Yeahhh this channel is feeling like some kind of industry plant now, which always makes me feel less inclined to check it out compared to if I naturally discovered it in my youtube feed

An all-in-one case would probably be great for me since I realised pretty much the only times I travel with the switch are when I take it to a mate's place, along with an extra controller and usually the dock too if they don't have one. Having an easy to transport home console is awesome for local play.

This official one seems crazy overpriced tho even outside of the US. There's already a Powerwave all-in-one case coming out on launch day for almost a third of the price that looks functionally identical.

@Zufolobelisk lmao chill out dude, Friendly was making a joke about waking up to Tom Nook everyday because he's infamous for his mortgages. Reading Friendly's post the other way is nothing to get upset over either man...

That replica of Estelle's Orbment looks so sick. Yeah would be grabbing this one on either Switch 2 or Steam, I think my launch Switch 1 needs to be put to rest soon lol

I feel like it was kind of a bad idea having 2 Splatoon games on Switch 1, Splatoon 3 is still really fun but would've been way more hype with a time gap after 2 and some next-gen presentation. The series should probably be a 1 game per console release considering how similar all 3 games are.

New Xeno series game is always most anticipated tho

480p honestly sounds fine for a Switch 2 camera since most of the time you'll be seeing the person's face in a tiny box on the bottom of the screen. Fullscreen maybe not so much lol. I wonder if the lower res was partly to save battery life?

Nice, I like seeing a 1440p specific performance mode to match my monitor res, probably means it can put any extra resources that would've been used on 4k elsewhere to make it look a bit nicer. New mechanics sound fun, looking forward to it.

Is the new faster data transfer tech behind the Switch 2 carts really driving up the manufacture costs to the point where even small file size games like Tetris and Bravely Default need to be on key-card? This seems insane!

If this keeps up, when the eShop eventually shuts down some years from now, seems like literally the only way we'll be able to play half the library will be if a security exploit is found and we can load ROMs on a hacked system.

Hoping the latency and picture quality is good with it being a streaming implementation rather than the Download Play method

Prefer digital triggers too, but yeah I could see analog being better for racing games. It's the same reason I prefer super flat keyboards like the MX Master Keys over most mechanical keyboards, the shorter press travel time feels a lot more responsive.

I would've loved to join a midnight release of something really hype for a few hours when I was a uni student, but 2 months of sitting around would be hella boring lmao

Now that I've finished it - game is pretty fun if you ignore half the honestly quite bland side quest content but has wayyy too many problems to justify a 10/10, it feels misleading. Most of the characters and main story are just missing that sauce that makes the mainline series so great. And that additional chapter content... LOL. There's some conceptually cool ideas and themes in the game, but it struggles to present them in a satisfying way.

It's one of those games where the Wii U gamepad was really well utilised, so honestly, I doubt they could make a Switch 2 port as good. Having a map with the sea charts open while the gameplay is running + the touchscreen drag'n'flick item menu was really great.

Anyone know if the 4 player splitscreen will run at 60fps this time?

I've only just got into the series and beat Trails in the Sky FC recently. Will catch up in probably like 6 years lol, wish me luck boys