The Nintendo Switch

it gets more complicated fast!

Interesting, hadn't heard about that game at all. I'll give it a shot someday

i just played through it, it's very clever & well made but yeah only about an hour or 2 long. i didn't really get stuck but it wasn't too easy either, the solutions just kind of flowed naturally over time from interacting with the game. very satisfying experience.

OK, post-gifting:

Mario Kart is a really nice update over our old Wii version, but it is of course a known quantity
I haven't played Zelda yet, but my daughter seems to like it
Overcooked is a blast but super high stress
Haven't played Mario yet, thinking of saving that one for the future
Just Dance ... kids wanted it and played it once, but I hope they actually return to it

Have Snipperclips on its way (wanted games we could play as a family), but the one I keep coming back to in the short term is Steamworld! Lots of fun, clever, well-designed.

Nice. I just completed Mario Odyssey (well, only like 200 or so moons, but completed the main story), so looking to move onto Steamworld Dig 2 over the next week until (spoiler alert) I get Skyrim as a Christmas present. At 35 I feel a bit too old to be getting video games as presents from my mum, but it saves me spending £50 of my own money on it.

I'm intrigued by Never Stop Sneakin', and was tempted by Gorogoa but I'm worried it's all hype. Also, is Tiny Metal out this week? Super hyped for that, but not heard/seen much press.

Gorogoa is not a long puzzle game, but is one of the absolute best I have ever played.

(On iPhone, so it may be a little wasted on a 44KK TV)

gorogoa is worth five bucks, no problem. it is gorgeous, it is fun. It will take you less than two hours to beat. as with many such "art games," i wish the subtext was less maudlin OH HOW I HAVE LIVED MY LIFE but the puzzles are occasionally challenging without requiring google help and the visual style is spectacular.

That’s some seriously bullshit SwitchTax. £11.99 on Switch, £4.99 on iOS.

Get it on iOS for sure, control scheme is totally natural there... close ups for iPhone I hear

I found that Kotaku puff piece unbearably indulgent after the second or third posed photograph of the developer so I refuse to play this game on any platform (I got far enough to note that Annapurna brought him a marketing & pr budget, seems like that’s definitely paying off)

Also can you, like, pick a username dude

lol

said this before but for your benefit tombo: i left forks on my mobile so that i could keep track of the 8 zillion bookmarks i had there which is the main reason i switched to this one

wait so do you like the bookmarks or not

then just make your alt “forks not a phone”

okay i thought i was going insane, good

well i like the bookmarks occasionally but i had developed this ocd tic where i had to clear all my bookmarks before i fell asleep and it was either get a new username or erase all the bookmarks... and i think i seriously had like 2500 bookmarks? and that felt worth hanging on to in some way. Besides which I got the itch to maybe post and follow ilx a lot less. but that became "a little less" and here we are now.

you're bad and you should feel bad

nuke those bookmarks man

it's okay guys, i feel okay about all this
i'm here if you wanna talk about it

kill the sock, free your soul

I initially read that as Tombot asking if you could choose a username in the game, like yeah yeah beautiful art and great puzzles and all that, but c’mon, can you name your character?

Got splatoon 2 yesterday, lots of fun, but I find it frustrating when teammates ghost or can't hold their own, it just feels hopeless.

That's just every online team game for you

Yeah, I guess so. Haven't really played any before.

Splatoon is better than most since it has very short games and it is possible to win practically on your own if you're really locked in. The worst experiences are still way better than getting stuck in a 30 minute MOBA game with a teammate who's not trying to win

oh I guess you have to play turf war for your first several hours though where the 'win on your own' bit doesn't apply as much. the ranked modes are a better experience imo, I haven't touched turf war since I got to level 10 except for splatfests

apart from some wacky interference which seems to fuck up everything bluetooth (and i have nfi where it's coming from

it was coming from my leg

Games I am tempted to check out:

Yōdanji
Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King
DragonFangZ - The Rose & Dungeon of Time

I need clarification from AA re: leg interference

yeah wtf does he have a cyborg leg or what

I was thinking x-powers

the switch has been living on the floor surrounded by wifi/bluetooth devices and 30cm from a load of cables, and there’s a big wooden box full of linen between the switch and the sofa. holding the right joycon in my lap was apparently the final straw. if I hold the joycons even a tiny bit away from my legs everything seems to be fine.

i mean that’s not technically a denial of cyborgleggery

i don't wish to comment on cyborgleggery at this time

i fuckin knew it

blossom tales looks like a nice little link to the past clone, will try it out at some point

Genuinely looking forward to your review

Still loving Steamworld Dig 2. It's been sort of easy so far, but then one level is this inescapable Terminator/Matrix like cyber world that is intense!

yeah it's certainly not a hard or long game but i found it really satisfying. the movement is really fun once you get the hookshot

Finished Steamworld Dig 2 and was a bit bummed it was so short - as I (pretty easily) beat the final challenge, I half hoped it wasn't really the end - but I actually kind of look forward to playing it again and figuring out more tricks and secret rooms and stuff. In fact, there were puzzles I never solved and things I never found and I sort of worried that without them I couldn't win, but it turns out they were just there to, go figure, enrich the game.

On the plus side, this may be the first game I've actually finished since Luigi's Haunted Mansion on Gamecube.

if you liked the general style of dig, steamworld heist is on switch now too, it's a 2d tactics game that's sort of a cross between xcom and worms

oxenfree worth $5?

Huh, that looks awesome! I'd buy for $5.

haven't played it yet but it's got a good rep among story heavy gameplay light ("walking simulator") indie games

okay i'm in. my backlog is like twenty deep anyway, what's one more.

I bought it and also Shovel Knight, which everyone seems to love and which seems like a bargain, considering it bundles together, well, everything, including new/future releases. I've been curious about Doom (which I've never played) but I've heard different things about the quality on the Switch. I mean I'm sure it's fine, but there were rumors of needing software updates. Likewise the Sexy Brutale, which seems cool but has so many known problems the developers admitted it and said they were working on fixes, but there's been no new news on that front so far.

Being relatively new to actually caring about a system, I really like how Switch operates. There are big, immersive, expensive games like SMO and BotW and whatever, but then there are all these little indies that are sometimes just a few dollars, and when there are more, there's often a ton of content. What I don't like is what sometimes feels like price gouging to me. Like Snipperclips, it's cute but should not be more than $15-$20, imo. A bigger complaint seems to be something like Doom, which is over $50 on the Switch, despite being a few years old, a problematic (or at least controversial) port, and like half the price or less on other systems. I get that $50 is historically actually not that bad, but it's a price point high enough that I'm less likely to go for unless it's a must-have (like proprietary Nintendo titles like Mario Kart, Zelda, etc.). On the other hand, I will happily pay $5-$15 for a lot of these indies and take a risk.

school vacations ending tomorrow, I'm happy that my boy already beat Ganon. now I can take my turn!

we have been playing a lot of Jackbox Party Pack 2, to which Switch brings nothing new but an easier interface than beaming from my laptop from steam. (yes, I bought a steam link too for cheap but I've been too lazy to bother plugging it in, also who has that many hdmi ports?) I wish I could stream our Jackbox sessions directly from the switch by like twitch or whatever bc it would be rad to play with the grandparents / my brother / etc who all live on other continents, but I think switch'll get that stuff eventually

I should also note that I have Homebrew running on our old-school (at this point) Wii and have it stuffed with stuff I copied from the library, so that mitigates prices I pay for new Switch titles. Plus me and my kids still like playing the Wii titles. My younger one, for example, greatly prefers Animal Crossing to Stardew Valley, which she thinks it's just too much/hard/boring. And I still like Super Mario Galaxy.