Raffles

@NintendoWife Cheers, I happened to watch that earlier

It does indeed look horrendous.

I've played Wukong on both PS5 and PC, and on the PS5 it uses the same FSR framegen to get from 30 to 60. Again, very much abusing the tech, and it does not look good.

However, to be fair, in a fast moving action game, it's not as bad or distracting as it looks when pixel peeping stills. So hopefully people won't mind that much. Fast moving jank > static jank. Having said that, obviously the PC version at a true 60 was a massive upgrade.

@Max_the_German Ada Lovelace does indeed support DLSS frame generation, but Ampere does not, which is what the T239 is based on.

So yeah, it does look like it's using FSR framegen.

And honestly, given there's games that look as good as Requiem running at 60fps (and of course the Nintendo first party titles), there's no excuse for using framegen here. As per your Wukong example, it seems like an easy shortcut to get to "60fps".

@asdfghjklz Panel lottery is absolutely a thing, and has been for Nintendo too.

The variance in 3ds screens was huge, completely different LCD technology between panels, not just different manufacturers. This is IPS vs TN.

So it wouldn't be a surprise if this new Sharp panel is a significantly better screen with more normal pixel response times.

@rawzeku Capcom made Street Fighter 2 and Resident Evil, obviously they were never a terrible company.

@Olliemar28 lol, mentioned even more than I realised

This looks really good, better than I expected on the Switch 2. Very impressed they're targeting 60fps with these solid current gen visuals.

@MARl0 Yeah, simplicity is the beauty of arcade racers, and what makes the great ones as good as they are.

Technical prowess is certainly not their strong point.

@Kilamanjaro Highly unlikely there'll be a 60fps update. Their Goose game was 30fps on the Switch 1, and the Switch 1 can render basic visuals like that at 60fps without breaking a sweat.

@OrtadragoonX It's funny you mention Far Cry 3, as that game and its "performance" is what prompted me to get back into PC gaming, even though I love consoles. It was so bad, as you said would regularly chug along at about 15fps. I'm a big fan of the game, and it deserved far more than 15fps

What you said is true in those eras, there were a lot of sub 30 games. But tbh, I think 30 was almost always the target.

I only know of 2 games that actually targeted 20fps, those being WaveRace 64 and Zelda OOT.

There were some really impressive 60fps games in the early 3D era too though. On the PS1 Tekken 3 stands out, as does the Ridge Racer Bonus Disc. On the N64, that's a tough one. I can only think of F-Zero X, Dark Rift, and Smash Bros.

Even though they're only 30, you have to respect GT1 and GT2 for running at a solid 30 at least. GT1 even had a special TT mode that ran at 60fps.

I played a bit of this on the Switch, and it seemed really good, but the performance and visuals were hard to overcome. Very much looking forward to this remaster, just hope it has much better upscaling than the bizarre one they used for the first XC.

@GoproGO Yeah it was pretty good thanks.

@GoproGO I'm from the UK. I played SMW, Street Fighter 2 etc on an NTSC SNES at 60fps.

But I played SMB 1 to 3 on a PAL NES, and even PAL 50fps is far better than 30fps, especially for 2D platformers etc.

I think the first 60fps platformer we got, from Nintendo at least, was Super Mario Land on the GameBoy

@brakeman90 Good point, it's kind of gone in waves hasn't it?

NES and SNES era 60fps
PS1/N64 era 30
Then back up to mostly 60 in the PS2/GameCube era
Then once again 30 in the 360/PS3 era, and largely 30 in the PS4 era?

Thankfully 60fps has become normal again now in the SeriesX/PS5 era. Hopefully the Switch 2 continues to have mainly 60fps too, especially Nintendo's own games.

@Banks Interesting, OK, I've only tried single player.

@MARl0 Exactly, it was just normal even on the NES.

I do find it really bizarre, posts that insinutate it's a new PC-esque elitism, when 60fps was simply normal even in the early Nintendo days. Especially normal for 2D platformers. Early 3D in the 90's was a different story of course.

Are they brand new fans who don't know any better or?

@nhSnork Pretty much every good 2D platformer ever runs at 60fps. They look nicer, easier on the eye, and feel snappier and more responsive.

That goes for games way back on the NES and SNES like Super Mario Bros 1 to 3, and Super Mario World on the SNES. As well as Donkey Kong Country on the SNES. So all the classics basically.

Oh and interestingly, to the topic at hand, even Castlevania on the SNES runs at 60fps

Wanting a 2D platformer to run at 60fps isn't some new elitism, it's simply what they should run at, and always have done.

@nomither6 100%. SF4 is the best fighting game ever. By far.

I wanted to love SF6, but it's no SF4. I like it a lot though, it's much better than SFV.

But SF4, I just love everything about it. The extremely tight gameplay, Supers, Ultras, FAs, music, stages, and epic cast of characters.

The Sony groupies must be pretty shocked. They're usually so busy slagging off Microsoft and smelling their own farts.

Hopefully this is a bit of a wakeup call.

The pad was great from day 1.

6 face buttons, a precise analog stick, a good d-pad, comfortable, looks good. What's not to like?

I think the only blight really, is the fragility of the analog stick.

@olliemar28 I'd love to see input lag tests of this thing.

I remember - somewhat surprisingly - any controller connected to the Switch 1's USB port had inherent input lag. Significantly more than wireless controllers.

Hopefully the Switch 2 is improved in that regard.

I've been using the Gulikit Elves 2 and it's much better than I expected, better input lag than any other controller, and HE sticks. Crazy for the price.

"Philabieldia"

@Anti-Matter I grew up with the PS1 as well, the PS1 and N64 simultaneously.

Big fan of both, but Mario 64 is the one game from that era that still holds up today, still plays brilliantly and gets played regularly in the speedrunning community etc.

Here in England (and probably many other countries), Mario 64 was a big deal, the only thing that came close on the PS1 was probably FF7 and maybe Gran Turismo.

Extremely underrated game IMO, I enjoyed every minute of it. I really liked the control system and variety of vehicles too.

@Anti-Matter Mario 64 is better than every PS1 game put together. It still holds up today, just a brilliant game.

Very highly. Mario Kart World is worth the admission price alone imo.

@Dm9982 Luckily not Unreal. Playground Games have their own in house engine for Forza, which is excellent and extremely performant.

@datamonkey Agreed. I take it as a bit of console war-ish hyperbole, but if not, it's truly bizarre to sell your PS5 because one game has come to the Switch 2

Don't get me wrong, love my Switch 2, but the PS5 is a great machine with tons of good games.

The PS5 has AstroBot, GT7, Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, GOW 2018 and Ragnarok, Astro's Playroom, Uncharted, LOU 1 and 2. Not to mention Xbox games like Flight Simulator, Forza, Fable etc.

I mean, there's tons of top tier games not available on the Switch 2

@Metaphor1987

I think I'll keep mine. I quite like AstroBot and GT7

This person did a remarkably good job using only in game items. The island actually looks pretty good, and the shops look like the kind of thing you see in Yakuza

lol at the pictures of Isabelle and strewn tissues.

@AmplifyMJ I couldn't agree more, that echoes my thoughts almost word for word.

I too have been playing Mario Kart when I was a kid, and I find MKW absolutely phenomenal. Pure unadultered fun. It looks good, it feels good, it has tons of content (around 200 tracks including intermissions, and 394 P Switches) and bags of charm. Incredible soundtrack too, makes it always a joy to play, and the ultimate feel good game.

We live in a strange and somewhat depressing era of games now, where no one is impressed by anything, people love to complain about absolutely everything, and people have been so conditioned by live service games, that if a game isn't updated every 2 weeks it's been "abandoned" etc.

Unless Nintendo were expecting it given this era, I feel like they must be pretty shocked at the reaction to MKW.

Good review, you even mentioned the input lag

I used to really like 8Bitdo controllers (they look and feel great) for Switch and PC, but after using the Elves 2, it's hard to go from 2.5ms input lag to more like 30ms.

I'll get this one too.

I love Yakuza 3, it's underrated. I actually prefer it to 2.

Very much looking forward to this, and the new additions, I appreciate the writeup

@MamaSymphonia As someone who loves a solid 60fps, yeah it is always disappointing when resolution/graphics are prioritised over framerate.

Consoles often follow a familiar pattern - at the start you'll get excellent framerates and image quality like Ridge Racer 7 on the PS3, running at 1080p60, and by the end of the generation developers inevitably try and push visuals as far as possible, with cutting edge (at the time) techniques, so you'll end up with fancy lighting/effects, and games running at 720p20

So far though, I've been pleasantly surprised we've been seeing the on paper specs reflected in real world performance, at least with Nintendo games. Odyssey, BOTW etc, look excellent, running at 1800p60 and 1440p60.

Hopefully 3rd parties catch up soon.

@MamaSymphonia 10 times is a bit of a stretch. You're right the raw GPU compute of the Switch 2 really is 10 times higher (0.4 tflops vs 4 tflops).

But it's bottlenecked somewhat by the memory bandwidth and CPU, both of which are around 4 times better than the Switch.

A more realistic real world estimate would be about 6 times more powerful than the Switch.

Either way I agree, it's a LOT more powerful than the Switch, so we should see the same kind of uplift we're seeing in Nintendo's own games, the Mario and Zelda updates.

@Suketoudara I couldn't agree more.

Mario Kart World is joyful, beautiful, extremely polished and just pure fun. MKW and AstroBot are the most fun games I've played in years.

I even like the open world and P Switches. Nintendo did a masterful job of seemlessly blending each course/biome together, and having a big detailed open world, with tons going on, running at a flawless 60fps on a machine with a 1ghz CPU. It's underrated as a technical showpiece, and a game.

Crossworlds feels so cheap and nasty in comparison, with dull course design, boring weapons, and absolutely awful floaty handling and physics. Very good point about the lack of Sumo Digital, I hadn't considered that.

Crossworlds is shockingly bad, and I say that as a Sonic/SEGA fan, who wanted to like it, and really likes the original AllStars.

I feel like people saying it's better than MKW, have to be trolling, surely. MKW is in a completely different league.

I played this on the SeriesX and well, I honestly cannot believe how anyone thinks this is even close to being as good as Mario Kart World.

I'm a big Sonic fan. Love SA1 and SA2, and even Generations is great. I also like the original All Stars, and Transformed.

But Crossworlds feels unbelievably cheap and nasty compared to MKW. Terrible floaty handling and physics, bad level design, ugly visuals, boring gameplay and weapons, and somehow doesn't even feel fast.

I guess it really has become trendy to hate on MKW, as CrossWorlds is a joke in comparison.

@the_beaver @Jack_Goetz

How is it not finished? Very strange narrative.

The game launched with more content than any Mario Kart ever, and arguably has more content than any Mario Kart ever, at launch or otherwise.

Including intermissions the game has around 200 courses, a brand new mode in Knockout Tour, Time Trials, multiplayer, custom cups with VS races, and a huge open world with 394 P Switches.

So again, how is it not finished?

@WaveBoy You summed up exactly why I've played Galaxy far less than any other 3D Mario.

Mario 64 is one of my favourite games ever and I even like Sunshine a lot more than most people.

Galaxy I wanted to love, naturally, but man the core gamefeel doesn't do it for me. It's exactly what you said - slow, clunk, floaty. I'm used to Mario feeling very energetic and agile, it's part of what makes the games so fun. When I see videos of Galaxy it looks amazing, geat level design and ideas etc, but when I play it, it simply doesn't feel good.

One of the reasons I love Odyssey so much and rank it as the joint best alongside Mario 64, is Mario feels incredible. His agility and moveset is unmatched. The agility and acrobatics is fun in itself, simply running and capping and jumping around the levels is a joy.

Good review, and it's good to see someone who actually gives Mario Odyssey the respect it deserves, which is strangely rare

@RupeeClock Exactly the same for me with my SN30 Pro and Pro 2. Why do you think they've stopped Windows Bluetooth support with their newest controllers?

I'm a huge fan of 8Bitdo controllers generally - solid d-pads, sticks, build quality, comfort etc. But the best bit about them is arguably how versatile they are.

I love the Pro 2 and SN30 Pro, and I think I'll stick with those. Reason being, they have Bluetooth for both Windows and Switch.

For some weird reason their new Ultimate controllers and this Pro 3, only have 2.4g on Windows.

So for me who plays on PC and Switch in equal measure, the Pro 2 is better.

For people buying it exclusively for Switch 1/2, the GC colour is appealing, but might as well buy one of their other controllers for half the price

What he's saying is kind of fair enough, but on the other hand it surprises me any Nintendo games have performance drops tbh.

Nintendo produces arguably the most polished games out there, yet many of them are prone to framerate issues. Solid performance is part of polish, so you'd think Nintendo games would all run at a rock solid target framerate.

The combat is brilliant, and never gets old. This is one of the few games I felt like replaying straight after completing it. One of the best games ever.

And for the love of humanity, please play it with the original Japanese voice acting - the cast is superb, with some actual top tier Yakuza film actors like Riki Takeuchi.

Good. Yakuza 1 is infinitely better than the NL review score indicates.

It's an amazing game/series, with better voice acting and story than pretty much every other series around.

Even an average port of Yakuza Kiwami should be 9/10. One of the most fun games of all time, with a huge amount to do. Great story, great characters, great combat, side quests, minigames, everything about it is good.

Must have been a pretty huge bra, with watermelon size cups.

@Paraka It's currently the #1 game on Steam, and managed to achieve more peak concurrent players than GTA 5 and Cyberpunk put together.

Yes, it really has sold 5 million in a few days.

https://steamdb.info/charts/

@CielloArc Most of the players are on Steam, and after only 3 days it's become one of the most successful games of all time on Steam, even beating juggernauts like GTA 5 and Cyberpunk

@EaglyBird Ah that's interesting, we must be different types of gamer despite our shared love of Yakuza

For reference I'm a big fan of Street Fighter and racing games, turn based battles aren't really my cup of tea.

I really love the glorified beat 'em up gameplay in the mainline Yakuza series, and even the fact you can upgrade moves etc. I find it quite satisfying, especially after watching some cutscenes, to blow off steam furiously steamrolling some street thugs, especially being able to smash them with bicycles and various other objects with the Beast style

So it really took me loving Yakuza in general to be able to enjoy Like a Dragon and put up with the turn based battles.

But I guess it's a good thing that Like a Dragon was able to expand the audience of Yakuza, and get even more people to appreciate it.

As a long time fan of the series I always thought it was ridiculously underrated, so I'm glad Yakuza 0 was able to make it popular in the west and finally get the recognition it deserves.

I completely agree too on the amount of stuff being in Yakuza being completely unparalleled. And yes it's a good point, it's a wonderful mixture of being quite serious and convincing and emotional, and just absolutely ridiculous and light hearted. It's a nice contrast.

One of the things that struck me about Yakuza 0 in particular, is the sheer amount of effort put into all the minigames and side stories etc. More effort and attention to detail, than many main aspects of other games. Ryu ga Gotoku are certainly not lazy. An incredible, unique studio, and I really hope they can continue being this elite now that Nagoshi has left.

@EaglyBird Same here. At this point I consider it my favourite game series ever.

I recently finished Yakuza 0 and wow what a game, one of the best games I've ever played.

Yakuza is charming, funny, engrossing, and completely unique. It also has the best story and voice acting of any games I've played.

I've played 0,1,2,3 and Like a Dragon, and really looking forward to playing 4, 5, and 6.

Like a Dragon is a weird one for me as I hate turn based battles, and I miss playing as Kiryu. But it still has that unique Yakuza charm, great story, side quests, minigames etc, so ultimately I still love it