The Nintendo Switch

They play more than one note at once in the trailer at least

this shit is fantastic and i love how angry its making HARDCORE GAMERZ. love you crazy nintendo men and ladies.

Ingenious special effect use of rather simple technology put Nintendo on the map as toymakers in Japan so this really feels like a throwback to that.

They play more than one note at once in the trailer at least

they do! i was wrong. i had a friend once who made a IR drum machine that worked by punching the air and it could only register one hit at a time to a MIDI trigger. so this seems like newfangled computer magic.

this shit is fantastic and i love how angry its making HARDCORE GAMERZ. love you crazy nintendo men and ladies.

seriously how are these man baby trolls so trollable

These look super neat, for kids. If I had to play Captain Nintendo Devil's Advocate Concern Troll, some might be worried that after a huge failure (Wii u) that seriously hurt Nintendo, it's come back in a big way with Switch, and maybe some people are innately concerned this could prematurely distract Nintendo from further rebuilding its video game brand (or move ever so slightly away from its reputation as a console for young people) and open the door for another potential disaster.

The flip side is that it can't possibly cost the company that much to make cardboard cutout toys, and also it seems so perfectly in line with current STEM education trends. I think of all the cardboard stuff as just another accessory, like a Pro Controller or infrared gun or something. Except it's creative as well.

they are charging 70 bucks for a few sheets of cardboard and a 40 buck game; this is fucking genius imo

seriously how are these man baby trolls so trollable

It's hard to even conceive of how doing goofy cardboard nonsense could anger a person

One of the things I appreciate about the Switch - as someone who hasn't spent much time gaming since the Amiga 500 - is how self-contained and beginner-friendly it is. Outside the games, there's zero need to engage with games culture, man baby trolls and whatnot.

(And inside the games too.)

it's just a shame they cancelled all their other games to solely focus on cardboard. will be cool to see what From does with it though /s

seriously how are these man baby trolls so trollable

in the age of the internet you can find somebody who will complain about anything

its too late for Switch to be a disaster - its already a huge success in comparison to the wii u and thats before pokemon, animal crossing, smash etc. its selling like crazy and that won't stop any time soon. Labo can only help that momentum and i think by next christmas if it lives up to the video and they keep developing it then it'll be doing insane numbers.

Switch has already outsold the Wii u in less than a year iirc

current positive or negative reaction to Labo is the 100% foolproof test for whether you're a human with a soul or a heartless dead zombie with no passion or joy in your life

I do wish there was a Big Deal game on the release schedule in the next 6 months though, there's lots of good ports coming but ports and Kirby and Mario tennis aren't what's going to carry the momentum from last year's big games

xpost No, I know, Switch has done really well, and the fact that they are even bothering with stuff like Doom or Dark Souls and have all sort of other popular Nintendo titles no doubt coming down the pipe means it will continue to do well. Labo just seems like a different experience entirely, but if Nintendo is going to gamble I can't think of a smarter or more inventive way for them to do so. Like, not only did no one see this coming, there is no way anyone would have ever seen this coming.

I think of Labo as a cool detour, which is very game-esque. You can use your Switch to do the thing ... *or* you can take this other path and use it to do this other thing. And so cool to see this novel, high-tech console used as a sort a driver for cardboard projects. Only potential concern I have with Labo I guess is durability.

I can see the durability being an issue but I also can imagine being bored with my cardboard piano by the time it takes for my cardboard piano to fall apart

They are giving the plans for kits away for free apparently so durability not a huge issue, just build another one? If you order via Amazon you get free building material with every order.

what's the durability on a piece of plastic you break? once it's broken it's broken. throw the whole thing away. buy a whole new thing.

at least with cardboard you always have access to cheap materials. so if you need to replace one side of the piano just remake that one piece. and you can recycle too! and fold them up when done!

yeah, storage is a huge plus on this says the guy who has a crate of old systems and joysticks in the basement
i mean i know i am literally thanking nintendo for selling me cardboard but those four guitar hero peripherals are heartbreakers

cardboard makes the flimsiness of ones guitar hero ignited dreams more explicit

People are pretty excited about Darkest Dungeon. What's its deal? Don't really know what they mean by "turn-based," is that like D&D?

nah more like RTS
Darkest Dungeon was fun up until the point where it pushed against my OCD. just not for me.

Kotaku called it an "upsetting medieval stress management sim" which is enough to tell me to steer clear.

Darkest Dungeon is def not an RTS. It's turn based which means that you have all the time you want to choose your action. It's like the Final Fantasy games.

So when people talk about XCom or Mario/Rabbids, that is ... turn-based?

All this terminology, I've generally been googling as I encounter them, but is there a one-stop game slang lexicon?

sorry, my bad, no idea why i said RTS. The opposite of RTS.

So when people talk about XCom or Mario/Rabbids, that is ... turn-based?

correct

darkest dungeon rules for like a week and then you'll be like fuck this shit is impossible

but it's a fun week!

oof. that's a turn off description for me too. but who knows, Stardew Valley somehow just hit that right balance for me, despite coming precariously close to being too much chore

in terms of stress vs chill, darkest dungeon and stardew are absolute polar opposites. darkest dungeon is fantastic but its a total bastard.

Is it just because so much of it is based on random chance, like a roll of the dice, essentially?

It is very difficult, a lot of it the difficulty is chance-based, and it’s permadeath (you spend a lot of time leveling up your crew, but if they die, they’re gone forever). In fact, succeeding in the game requires you to identify a strategy for dealing with the death and all your important characters and adapting. It is very stressful.

permadeath was what turned me away from the game. plus it's designed so that you simply CAN'T max out characters / properly balance healing / etc. you gotta cope with bad choices and why do i wanna do that in a vidyagame?

ugh I bought that game ON IPAD at some point but hadn't played it yet & you guys are making me want to delete it now bc the stress sounds awful & besides I need an excuse to whittle down the queue so GONE

well just to be contrarian I'm going to go play it ON IPAD and have a blast

*pouring sweat from entire face* nah these wings? these wings aren't that hot

rip tombot

it’s sad, he was a contrarian

there's literally a stress mechanic in the game

fwiw I think it’s one of the best 50 games or so I’ve played the last few years

it's really good and tactically fascinating. def worth a look tho i never got very far in it. maybe beat the first 3 or so bosses and then got stuck on this witch who kept throwing my party members into cauldrons and killing them. the really frustrating thing about it is that progress at a certain point is extremely slow. you'll keep wiping parties just trying to put one serviceable team together and then you're key team member gets some terribly debilitating flaw and then dies and then you're back to square one.

your*

it looks like a pretty straightforward, typical 'climb the stairs' progression type game where you gradually build up and improve as the game gets harder and you work your way to the top. it actually turns out to be more like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGPLNQzKGSA

it is great tho. it is a lot of fun and then it's not, and that's when you stop.

yeah that's more or less how i etc

there's literally a stress mechanic in the game

That game Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube was rad, it's the one that, the worse you did, the more it would fuck with you. It would, for example, suddenly ask you if you wanted to delete your saves, and when you in a panic hit "cancel" it would treat it like you hit "yes" and then declare "delete successful!" or whatever. Even though it didn't.

agreed on slippery stairs metaphor. Dark Souls was tough but fair. Darkest Dungeon is tough but not fair.

unfair not necessarily a problem and mitigating the unfairness a big theme in classic roguelikes. to dd's credit i'm thinking right now about booting it up again (this would be my third go) bc there's so much that /is/ compelling about it

correct me if i'm wrong, but i think you have a history of playing (and deep love for) immensely frustrating games though?

In my opinion XCOM and Faster Than Light are more stressful.