The Nintendo Switch

Once you leave the starting area you can do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want in the starting area too but you have to complete the quest line you’re presented with to go anywhere else so you might as well follow instructions.

yeah it's like a couple hours of starting area to get all your tools and then a few more hours of it suggesting that you go to a couple specific places to pick up some story threads but you can ignore it if you want. even if you follow all the shit it suggests, it turns you completely loose by like 5 hours in.

dang

Zelda is so open world it puts others to shame. i remember Skyrim having hundreds of quests but them all being exactly the same. there is so much more custom content hidden throughout BOTW's world by comparison.

I’ve been playing a lot of Lumines Remastered and Mario Tennis Aces. Pocket Rumble is coming out tomorrow finally. Will it be the no-motions accessible 2D fighter of my dreams? Maybe! And next week is Captain Toad and Octopath, the latter of which should hopefully be enough crunch to last me a while. (Since I’m not a JRPG crushing machine like ciderpress.)

Smash won’t be out in time for family vacation over Thanksgiving but Super Mario Party will…

xpost
i've played 60+ hours and i STILL haven't come across the hidden forest. or, er, maybe i just walked right by it because it's hidden, but i'm pretty sure i haven't even been near it yet.

i'm hooked on lumines but I keep hitting a wall around level 50 in the standard mode

mildly curious about pocket rumble, worried my fighting game knowledge might be half a step too high for it to be interesting though.

my copy of Ys 8 came with a foldout map of the game world tucked into the case and now I think all switch RPGs should be mandated to do this. there's plenty of extra space in these cases. probably not gonna play the game until after Octopath as much as I'm tempted.

trying pocket rumble and as a supposed entry level fighter this actually feels more difficult than BBtag to me in practice even if there's fewer buttons. it's easier to learn but harder to execute in. the AI is very difficult too compared to other fighters I've played. it gets a lot of different characters out of a 2 button system though which is neat.

God damn it, I'm about 24 hours into Hollow Knight, which I realize is nothing, and the difficulty level has spiked. Stupid wall climbing spike things to avoid, indestructible crystal creatures shooting lasers, it's become kind of paint ass. I had no real problem surmounting the challenges of Steamworld or Shovel Knight, but I found Celeste way too difficult and frustrating. This game is so cool I feel bad it's starting to feel more like the latter.

Heh, paint ass.

the platforming is imo easier than celeste (tho dying is less forgiving) but obv the combat is much harder. the crystal guy (i assume you mean the first version sitting on the bench?) was one of the tougher bosses i've fought for sure. i do love how much character is in the world. i just reached the resting place and i think started heading into the end game? there still seems like there's a bunch to do and i still have no idea where the dlc is. i've been loving the game so far (and i really didn't enjoy salt & sanctuary which feels v similar but is a "slower" feeling game mechanically imo). it's a great cross btwn celeste + salt & sanctuary. and i think the game world / back story is better than both.

paint ass

this thing is really something

handheld vs TV makes a huge difference in activation energy for some reason -- so much easier to just pick it up and dive in

what's the best game out there for 5-10min quick sesh type gaming?

ILX

Super Mario Odyssey you can make progress every five minutes easily. Sometimes every 90 seconds.

Stardew Valley seems perfect for 10-minute chunks - that’s about how long a “day” takes to pass in the game

also, is it p much standard to get a screen protector/case/memory card?

You will need a memory card eventually, but not right away necessarily. A zipper case for traveling is advisable. I have never put a screen protector on anything, the very idea disgusts me. Some people say they have issues with the dock scratching the screen but I have no idea what they are doing with their Switches.

I don't think I've ever played Stardew for less than an hour. That shit sucks me in like crazy

Ha ha, same here. It’s definitely the kind of game where you realize the sun is coming up and your real life is ruined even though your farm life has never been better. But hypothetically you could play just for one day in the game.

some units early on shipped with warped docks iirc which is where the scratching concerns came from

still, it's a plastic screen so it will scratch much easier than a smartphone if you drop it on something or whatever. I def put a tempered glass protector on mine right away, makes it feel like a smartphone screen which is a lot nicer imo

pretty much everything Nintendo puts out plays well in tiny chunks, the only exception I can think of is Xenoblade.

i put a screen on mine and i don't even notice it now and it's nice to know i have protection

Holy shit, now this is why I play games. I was going to take a break from Hollow Knight, and even figured, man, I am sick of this, I'm just going to restore my soul above ground and stop. But I decided to try one more spot I forgot about ... and opened up a couple of more huuuuuuuge areas of the game, with so many more benches, and stagways, and enemies, and upgrades. And now the game is so much more fun again.

you guys are really selling me on Hollow Knight. it's on my list

It's only $15 and it's huuuuuuuuuuuge.

yooka-laylee is 25% off

is it good? I thought a hat in time was just okay and most people said that was better than yooka

it’s not great. controls are awkward and missing a load of functions like gripping ledges (which means you’re always slipping off platforms), and the camera’s not responsive enough.

it’s missing the charisma that it really wants to have, too. there’s a played-out joke about being self-aware, but as the script writing is terrible it just doesn’t work. the characters are dull and their jokes don’t land at all.

ultimately it feels like they ran out of money/confidence halfway through designing the thing and just released it.

I would like to play Lumines in bed right now but one of our joy cons is headed out to get its wonky control stick fixed ☹️

I got to level 80-something in lumines, turns out it slows down again for a bit if you can get through the fast skins in the 50s.

Josh, they added gyro controls to Fortnite on Swtich today.

Literally came here just to post that! Game on.

had some multiplayer 2-joycon Mario Kart 8 fun last night. weirdly, it seemed like controller one was working fine but controller two you had to press both LR at the same time to use an item. also the gyro was working at the same time as the analog stick so you could be turning and if the controller was tilted the wrong way it would fight against it!

at least it gave you a good excuse for losing, which was kinda classic

Octopath tomorrow! Jason Schreier panned it, but he also panned Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which I dug, so that’s a good sign. I’ll never understand why people think “repetitive” is a relevant criticism of a video game.

xpost Mario Kart seems to have all the helper stuff on automatically - auto start, auto steering, etc. Make sure you turn that shit off, because more than once I've played with my kids and we've wondered what was going on before realizing we hadn't turned that stuff off.

thanks for the hint, JIC!

Jason Schreier panned it

it's a lame pan too. "Why would an alchemist and a mage travel together?" yeah i don't think this matters at all. "All you do is go to a town and then to a dungeon" oh you mean like in every RPG ever made?

as long as the sound + music rules (especially the latter) im down

yeah. also annoying that he doesn't reveal that it's not actually a pan -- he enjoyed the game -- until the end of the review.

“I enjoyed this game but I’m afraid I have to tell you it’s bad”

I read it as 'this game does everything well except for the one thing that's a dealbreaker for me'

jrpgs maybe the genre where a single review is the least useful data point. there's such wildly varying tastes even among the most popular games.

These techniques aren’t simply a gimmick, though. Take, for example, the low camera angles. They create natural hidden pathways that hide treasures and secret areas behind raised foreground elements. It’s reminiscent of, say, the little invisible passageways that appeared throughout Final Fantasy 4 — but here, the use of scenery to obscure these secret paths makes for more intuitive exploration than you saw in the older game. Octopath Traveler’s level design does an excellent job of teasing you with seemingly inaccessible treasure boxes, then allowing you to figure out how to reach them. It turns nearly every town and overworld path into a sort of spatial puzzle to be unraveled.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/12/17563366/octopath-traveler-review-nintendo-switch-jrpg

^gets me really excited. you get a taste of this in the demo. pathfinding in FF dungeons was always kind of static, the introduction of literal depth to it all is a nice chance.

change

I'm surprisingly excited for the opportunity to play Captain Toad, even if reviews make it sound like it loses a bit without the second screen- I love that kind of hands-on toybox genre of game, like (to different degrees) Monument Valley or the Katamari games; something about having a birds-eye view on an inviting, tactile, closely considered world is massively appealing to me in games.

i don't think it'll lose much if you play it with the touchscreen

Goddam this wall jumping in Hollow Knight.

yooka laylee successfully harks back to the heady days of ‘90s 3d platforming in that the biggest battle is achieving anything at all with these shitty controls

there’s a challenge where you have to fly/leap through a series of rings, but the character is so slidy and the camera is so fucked up that it’s basically superman 64

i just bought Octopath Traveler. so glad progress carries over from the OT demo.

also got Captain Toad because the demo was so charming and $40 is not bad. i like the level design.

at one point the camera zoomed in and it looked really amazing but i could never figure out how to do it again.

http://md1.libe.com/photo/958836-une-image-du-jeu-captain-toad-sur-wiiu.jpg