jon128

I was surprised when I saw this discount. I didn’t get it though because I am 90% sure this game is too dark and violent for my taste.

I’m still playing Metroid Prime 4, but am taking it kind of slow and playing other things between sessions of it. I’m liking it but I think I liked Metroid Prime Remastered more.

The thing that is keeping me from playing more Metroid Prime 4 most of the time is that I keep playing Street Fighter 6. It is the first fighting game I’ve gotten in to. I am not very good at it yet, but I am improving. I feel like I am close to being able to move from Iron to Bronze as Ryu.

Seems like it needs another patch. I was doing a Metalhead run and it crashed during the final boss battle. It autosaves every room so I reloaded and played a little and then it crashed again. Not sure if I just had bad luck, but I’m hoping they release a patch at some point early next year to fix this issue.

@StorminNorman I booted it up and it showed the Switch 1 logo. Then I manually checked for updates and it downloaded an update, but when I start it up it still shows the Switch 1 logo. If I start Silksong or Metroid Prime 4, I see the Switch 2 logo. So I think the update is still coming.

Update: Available for purchase on the US eShop now!

I am curious how the new content will unlock and what the difficulty will be. I love this game but I only played to the Act 2 ending and that took me something like 76 hours. I then started a new file to see how much I improved and finished Act 1 in under 6 hours. I want to go back to that second file and finish act 2 as well and eventually go back to the first file and unlock and play act 3.

I’ve considered this game in the past. Good to know it got a switch 2 update if I decide to go for it at some point. Even though it is on sale right now I am not going to pick it up because I don’t want to pile it on to the backlog.

I haven’t really played much Mega Man, but I may pick up 11 to give it a try. I also really know almost nothing about Monster Hunter, but with it being so cheap maybe I will look into it to see if there is a chance of me liking it.

I’d recommend Street Fighter 6 to anyone who (like me) has ever been curious about fighting games but has not been able to get into them. I am bad at it but am enjoying playing it in ranked mode and trying to improve slowly.

Nice! I enjoy this game and bought the previous DLC so I will probably upgrade for the very reasonable $2.49.

I haven’t played too much so far (just finished the area where you get the bike and headed into the desert) so I am trying to reserve judgement. So far the first two areas feel like distinct areas and are not as interconnected as Metroid Prime was. Now that I am out of what felt like the tutorial I’ll see how the rest of it is. Mouse controls are nice (although strange when on the bike where I seem to always end up with the camera in a strange position)

Edit: I guess I have not played Prime 2 and not enough of Prime 3, but it sounds from other comments like 3 is also disconnected as well.

Just leaving a note here for anyone that gets this and doesn’t like the sound of the keycaps bottoming out: I tried putting keyboard o-rings on them, but it doesn’t work well with the design of the switches. 2 o rings worked okay on the bean shaped caps, but not on the circular ones I actually use. What did work well was taking small rubber bands and putting them around the outside of the square part on the bottom of the key cap. The rubber bands I used were from a “loom” craft kit (the ones for making bracelets and things by weaving the small rubber bands together).

I think the new filters look more accurate at least from what I remember from playing SNES and N64 on CRTs back in the day. Have there been 3 versions of the filter for SNES? I think the original one was not very accurate, but I thought it got better at one point and then they added the effects at the edges. I might be misremembering though.

It is interesting that a game key cards like Madden 26 have only the game key card version reduced in price. My son wants that game and I’d prefer to buy a digital code, but the only way to get a discounted digital version ($35 instead of $30) is to buy it on the eShop which lacks proper gifting options. So I’ve reluctantly bought the discounted game key card even though I’d prefer fully digital.

It feels like the market is realizing that game key cards are the worst of other worlds, except for the use case of wanting to play and resell.

Nice! Maybe if I get back to playing this I will load it up on Switch 2. I played this a bit on Switch 1 in the summer after getting it on sale for $16. I did fall off of playing it after getting to a bit I found difficult and not realizing how the save system interacted with recovering your previous body. I think I could have not saved at a certain point and just tried a section again to not lose my upgrades. If I play again I may restart or maybe see if I can get through a boss I am at with no upgrades. There is always assist mode, but I’d rather not. There were some spots where the game dropped from 30 fps so hopefully that is not an issue on Switch 2.

In the US at least, Amazon still has 512GB Samsung MicroSD Express cards for $75 (https://www.amazon.com/512GB-microSD-Express-Card/dp/B0FT995SPF?tag=dekuli-20). Last I checked Costco had 1TB Lexar cards for $180, but I went with the 512GB Samsung card.

I cleared some space for this recently, but I did see a 512GB Samsung MicroSD Express card for $75 on Amazon the other day and picked that up. I had been considering the 1TB Lexar for $180 from Costco, but decided to start smaller at a lower price when I saw the sale for the Samsung card.

I am considering splatoon 3, but I have Splatoon 2 and last I played it it was still possible to get games (and for local multiplayer Splatoon 2 is great because used cartridges are just $15).

I may just wait for Splatoon 4, although I don’t know how long that will be with Splatoon Raiders announced (and I think that is single player).

It is interesting that right now (in US at least) the switch 2 edition is $23.99, but the Switch 1 version is $6.24 and the Switch 2 upgrade is $7.99 so you end up paying less is you go that route.

The sale price plus the upgrade isn’t too bad of a price since I bought it for $12 or so years ago. With the Switch 1 game going on sale regularly for a price less than the upgrade it does seem like the upgrade is priced a bit high for just being a frame rate increase. Although I appreciate that they needed to have people work on the upgrade. I guess, overall, I’d rather be offered paid frame rate upgrades than no frame rate upgrades and then I can decide for myself.

It would be nice to see more 3rd party games get frame rate upgrades for switch 2 (free or paid).

I think generative AI is just another technology and you can use it in good ways and bad ways.

The technology is very interesting to learn about. I think the 3Blue1Brown Neural Networks playlist is a good introduction: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi I think there was also a guest video on this channel not long ago about the video and image generation models that was interesting.

For a deep dive into some of the code and math I liked this series by Andrej Karpathy: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAqhIrjkxbuWI23v9cThsA9GvCAUhRvKZ (He also has some let’s technical overview videos that are long but have some good stuff in them)

I am really looking forward to playing Absolum (and Ball X Pit seems interesting as well), but I am currently splitting time between Silksong and Street Fighter 6. Silksong is proving to be quite long for me since it takes me lots of tries on things, but I am still really enjoying it. I’ve been trying to be better about not buying games I am not going to play right away.

I’m interested in Ball X Pit and Absolum, but I am still playing Silksong and Street Fighter 6. I’m enjoying SF6 way more than I expected, since I haven’t gotten in to fighting games in the past. I feel like I am usually able to identify mistakes and improve and there are enough people playing online that the lower ranks have people of similar skill levels as me.

When I am not distracted by SF6 I am playing Silksong which I think I still have a fair amount left in in spite of playing for 45 hours.

I think if I pick up a non-Nintendo platform in the future it would likely be a Windows PC or Windows PC handheld. I have a MacOS laptop but the selection of games on Steam for Mac is quite limited and generally overlaps a lot with Switch. People love the SteamDeck but I have some concerns about the selection still being limited or having issues due to the translation layers involved.

@kmtrain83 for the “simpler times” experience the Playdate console may be a good option. It is pricey though for what it is (probably due to it being produced by a small company at relatively low volume).

I love all these unique controllers we are getting now. I bought the 8bitdo leverless and have had fun trying it out on a few games. I’ve replayed some of Celeste with it and played bits of Silksong with it (beat Last Judge with it, but it may have caused me to take more tries than I otherwise would have). I’ve switched back to a pro controller for Silksong, but I may try it again with the leverless. I also bought Street Fighter 6 while it was on sale because I have been curious about getting in to fighting games. SF6 has nice tutorials so I’ve had fun with it in spite of the fact that I am new to it and therefore bad at it.

It is neat to see a controller that adds analog as an option. I could see this being good for games like Hades or TMNT: Splintered Fate where it might be nice to use separate fingers for right hand inputs while still having analog control. That said, I am not ready to splurge on another controller right now.

I’m still playing Silksong because boss fights and gauntlets take me so many tries. I think I am improving somewhat though. After I finish a fight I am always excited to keep going.

I’ve also been dabbling in learning fighting games via Street Fighter 6.

I’m definitely interested in this one. I may pick it up in the next few days if I get a chance to play it with a friend. Otherwise, it will be on my list of games to eventually pick up.

That is a neat fact. I am not sure I would call 1/400 of RAM “incredibly inefficient” though. If the text is constants in code files then this is how it would work naturally. When a program is loaded into memory all of the text that is included as constants in the code is loaded as well. Of course, you can also put text in separate files and have the program load those files at runtime as needed (which it sounds like SMG2 does).

I said about once a month, but a lot of them are indie games and are digital. I am curious with how popular games like Fortnite and Roblox are with kids if they will continue to play those kinds of games as they get older. I wonder if the kinds of games middle aged gamers like me like will decrease in popularity over time.

I never heard of it but I am curious. I won’t be picking it up right away but I added it to my list to possibly check out at some point.

“Brutal boss fights” is likely not what I would be looking for in an isometric game, but maybe it would be okay.

I’m still playing Silksong. I am about 40 hours in and just got to Act 2. It takes me a lot of tries on bosses and gauntlets, but somehow after finishing one I end up thinking “well, that wasn’t too bad.” I also bought the 8bitdo arcade controller (the leverless one). I replayed a bit of Celeste with it to get used to it, then picked up Street Fighter 6 while it was on sale in spite of the fact that I never got into fighting games in the past. I have to say Street Fighter 6 has a really nice tutorial and that has helped me understand it more than any fighting game I’ve tried before. I also ended up deciding to use the leverless for Silksong as well and I was okay enough with it that I decided I was going to beat the last boss of Act 1 with it and last night I finally did!

I wasn’t too excited for a new character, but now I think this looks really cool since it seems like there are ranged attacks. Curious how they’ll balance that.

I’m not sure I understand what arcade mode is. Is it no longer roguelike and you can just continue on or something? Edit: never mind, I clicked through and it seems like it is still roguelike but with some differences

I’ve really enjoyed playing this game in co-op mode. I am not too excited about just a new character but hopefully it adds a new area too.

I don’t play fighting games but I’ve considered getting the 8bitdo leverless for 2D games to see if I could teach myself to use it. I did try playing Celeste on a keyboard though and it was a bit rough. I could probably tweak some things from what I was doing with the keyboard in terms of mapping and hand position but it would take a lot of practice and I’d probably need to start with simpler games.

I think I am objectively worse at Silksong than many people. I’ve definitely spent 1-2 hours on individual bosses and gauntlets and I am still in Act 1 something like 25 or 26 hours in. It is always exciting when I finally get past the challenge though and I think I am getting better. I only played the original HK once all the way through and that save file had 55 hours on it.

I’m hoping to be able to get better generally so I don’t have to grind specific encounters as many times. So far my notes of things to remember when playing are:

• keep my eyes on the boss/enemies (and keep track of hornet more in my peripheral vision)
• first focus on dodging/surviving to learn patterns
• once I know the patterns get more aggressive with attacks at the right moments, but never force attacks that aren’t there.

I also have heard people talk about tools. I am probably underutilizing those.

I have both Wii versions. I also have 3D All Stars (physical). I still kind of want these, but I think I’ll hold off in hopes of a bit of a sale. I’d want digital now though so sale may be unlikely. If I end up deciding that I am going to spend the time to really play through them again, I will probably buy these versions though. $70 seems like the new default price Nintendo is going with so it doesn’t really surprise me. They are two great games.

My guess is that they do a galaxy 1+2 remaster at some point soon. Maybe they even announce it today.

I am a bit stuck at a point where I think I need to do one of two gauntlets to proceed. I’ll get through them, but I don’t enjoy the gauntlets as much as the boss fights because multiple enemies makes it feel less like a pattern to recognize. (Of course each individual enemy has their patterns, but the way they combine together isn’t always predictable enough for me to have a clear strategy).

I’m over 10 hours into Silksong because I took the day off yesterday to play. I feel like I am just scratching the surface of it though. I played through the original in probably 2019 and only revisited it briefly a day before Silksong came out to refresh my memory a bit. If I had known it would take so long for Silksong I probably would have replayed it at some point.

I’m loving Silksong. I like how it is hard, but even when my health is running low in a fight I still feel like I have a chance because it is possible to avoid hits if I don’t make mistakes and getting my own hits in might allow me to fill my silk and heal. The original of course works similarly, but I think the way this mechanic works is what really hooks me on this game. The way it is all or nothing in Silksong enhances the risk/reward aspect of healing. Sound, visuals, etc. are all great as well of course.

I was a little surprised by one area that I think I was trapped in until I farmed some items from enemies in order to get the ability to escape. It was okay, but I think they should have required about half the number of items. It sort of worked in a way as a storytelling element though.

Not reading this because I want to discover on my own, but it is impressive you all put a guide together so quickly without early access to the game!

I took tomorrow off work to play. I’ll definitely be playing in the evening today and maybe get a little time in at lunch.

I ended up starting Pikmin 4 recently. I’ll probably stick with that until Silksong comes out at which point I will be dropping everything and playing it.

I had started Nier Automata around a month ago on Switch 1 and was enjoying it until I hit a part that really bugged me where there was a save point in the middle of a mission that I reflexively used and then got stuck without restorative items right before a boss. According to the web, there is supposed to be a vendor nearby too but they made him killable and I think he probably got caught in the crossfire. I’d gladly redo the mission from the beginning and try to get better, but I think my only options are to get really good and beat the boss with no items or lower the difficulty and essentially put it on autopilot to get through the boss. Unfortunately that choice has put me off of the game. Hopefully I will get back to it at some point.

It makes sense, but I knew the option was there so I changed it immediately. For other games that are different enough (BOTW/TOTK), I haven’t changed it (I didn’t realize the option existed in the Zelda games honestly, I guess I never looked for it).

@Divide_and_Wander That is an interesting theory.

I really enjoyed Hollow Knight when I played through it years ago. I’m excited to play the sequel when it comes out. If it shadow drops I will probably end up starting it in spite of the fact that I have quite a few games in progress right now.

I played around with it tonight and let the kids try it out. Liked how the HD Rumble gave the movement a tactile feel. I thought it was pretty neat overall. I think it is very reasonably priced, but I don’t plan to get it because I don’t think it is something I would play a lot. It seems like the kind of game that will be difficult to play casually online because the people that get into it will get very into it and become very skilled (which is great for them). Unless maybe Nintendo implements some kind of match making that tries to match skill levels.

I really recommend TMNT: Splintered Fate (which is on sale for $14.99) if you like hades but want to play a game like that with a friend (and don’t mind that it isn’t as hard as hades and probably doesn’t have as much variety). I’ve been having a good time with it!

My guess is Galaxy 1 + 2 re-release.

Even though they are great as-is, and available on NSO, I’d actually kind of like to see remakes of Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World. Or maybe just remasters with widescreen mode. Maybe add some fun achievement-style challenges or a bit of new content.

Game key cards have their place: People who want to play and resell. Libraries being able to lend copies of games. For both of these, game key cards are better if the alternative is a digital only release (of course a real physical release would work as well for both use cases and would not require downloads).

My preference is changing toward digital, but I bought almost all physical for first party games on Switch 1.

I think I’m at the end of Donkey Kong Bananza. I did slow down as I got closer to the end and did a bit of backtracking and started playing another game, but now I am ready to finish off the main story. I will of course revisit it occasionally to collect some more bananas and dip into whatever additional post game content there is.

I also started Nier Automata on Switch 1 and am enjoying it so far, it is pretty unique and I am enjoying that. I do wish it was stable on Switch 2 (I haven’t tried myself but am trusting the warning on the eShop page). I don’t have any other platforms to play it on so I am happy enough with this version, even if I do wonder a bit what it would be like to play it on another platform.

A random thing I meant to mention: I got the Savage Raven Dockable Switch 2 grip (the Neo Grip) and I really like it. I got the bundle with their Max Carry case which is large but nice. I use MobaPad M6 HD for handheld mode on Switch 1, but decided to get a grip for Switch 2 for now. I am really happy with the grip. I also sort of on impulse bought the Savage Raven thumb stick grips. I got the ones that match the accent colors to add a bit more color since I got the all black grip. The thumbstick grips improve the feel of the sticks more than I expected them to.

> Please tell me they fixed NieR…
@SplatRay001

This. I just bought it in the recent sale and started it on Switch 1 last night due to the reports of it not working on Switch 2. It would be great if they fix it at some point.

I'm still working my way through DK Bananza and enjoying it I like how they mix some things up a little bit as you progress. I feel like based on the number of Kingdoms in Odyssey I may be getting close to the end, but who knows. I also may want to backtrack and do a bit more collecting (at least finding and doing all the challenge levels — I've been doing them as I come across them if I find them).

I also played more TMNT: Splintered Fate with a friend the last two days. Still really enjoying that game. It definitely has some bugs, but they don't really affect the gameplay. And there are some tweaks I wish they'd make. I wish that in multiplayer it did a better job of tell you when you get hit (in single player there is a red overlay on the screen). I also wish it did a better job of communicating when your special and tool charged with controller vibration or some graphical effect close to your character. The corner of the screen where it tells you is too far away to really look at at least when playing in TV mode. So I just have to do it based on feel and timing.

I've played a little Dead Cells in between other things lately. I bought it a few years ago and never got into it, but I am liking it now. It is definitely difficult and I've only gotten to the first boss once in the few hours I've played recently. I need to be better about remembering that refilling health is manual and takes a little time.

I didn’t want the game until after the direct when they explained it in full, but the smashing itself is actually way more fun than I expected! It is such a good game all around! I think my favorite thing so far is to find the more hidden banana in the challenge stages where 2 are obvious and 1 is hidden.