The Nintendo Switch

Hmm. Well, given that so many AAA games aim for some semblance of film-like realism, either in terms of physics, or violence/drama, or trying to look "real" (like high-end CGI), then maybe that's another vote for the Switch. A lot of stuff on Switch is stylized or surreal or cartoonish, but there's still an impressive degree of world building when it gets it right. Breath of the Wild is the peak of this, or maybe Mario, but even something like Mario Kart basically epitomizes this crazy cartoon world with specific rules and lore. I'd still say something like Breath of the Wild is anomalously great at this, but Switch also has the port of Dark Souls, which is steeped in this world building stuff. Or, like, Skyrim, right? Or now The Witcher? These last three are all ports from other systems and inferior in execution to other console versions, but they exist for Switch.

exist for switch, on which they are portable

Yes, exactly.

A lot of stuff on Switch is stylized or surreal or cartoonish, but there's still an impressive degree of world building when it gets it right.

This isn't a 'but' for me - what this means is that these games will keep their looks better than more 'realistic' games.

Yeah, I dunno. Whether Hollow Knight or Celeste, good games are good games, no matter how they look. Like I said, I just started playing Link to the Past for the first time ever. Does it look good? Not really, it looks fine, for what it is, but I got turned into a fucking rabbit and it was great. So if you're saying that realistic graphics are not the reason to play a game, absolutely; Shadow of the Colossus looked about as good as any game I have ever played, and I'll be damned if I ever play it again, even if the good graphics (and great story payoff, of all things) did make it compelling enough to play once. Whereas, I dunno, nu-Doom looked *and* played great, but the gameplay is why it was/is beloved vs. something like Rage 2, which got generally panned. Yet if I'm being honest, as an (often literal) armchair game player, it's the graphics that still impress me the most about a lot of PS4 stuff. The nuance of good gameplay is something you grow to appreciate with more experience, much like how many of you told me the brilliance of the open world of Breath of the Wild would be more apparent if I had played plenty of other purportedly open world games that fell short. Similarly, I suspect the perfectly-tuned gameplay of Celeste (again, just as an example) appeals most to those that have played dozens of pixelated indie platformers that didn't do it nearly as well. Breath of the Wild looks great. Celeste looks fine. Both are classics because of the gameplay. But only one of those is something nerds screenshot and post, and it's the one I finished.

Celeste looks fine fantastic. Good art direction always >>>> "graphics" IMO

I don't have a problem with the way Celeste looks. I am just generally underwelded with pixel games, because that's how all the games I grew up with looked by default.

heh, underwhelmed.

Are there any good games right now for Switch that do anything groundbreaking or strange in terms of storytelling? I could use a game that has a story that unfolds itself in surprising ways, or uses game mechanics/visual storytelling to reveal bits and pieces to the player.

Exclusive to Switch? Or just generally?

there's plenty of indie games that fit that description many of which are on switch

i don't think the switch version of obra dinn is out yet but that would qualify

I wish there was a better word than “plot” or “story” to describe “the particular way a game reveals its mechanics and intentions to the player”.

BotW had one of the most emotionally complex stories I’ve ever seen in a game, it wasn’t told with oceans of text but with just like the way the guardian carcasses were piled up around the tower of Akkala, etc.

The thought of playing Baldur’s Gate on Switch is equal parts exciting and daunting. Even booting up FF8 I was like “ughhh but all the READING and all the CUTSCENES”

Dead Cells has a completely bullshit “story” but it’s not really the point— games trigger another set of neutrons when they’re done right, there is a “story” being told even just as a player you’re figuring out the mechanics of the programming.

Anyway

My bf has to have a knee operation soon and he’s talked for a while about wanting a PS4– mostly for FF15. It’s also his birthday this weekend.

I had a PS3 and rarely played it. The only games that immersed me were GTA5 and The Last Of Us. I was given/I bought big ticket titles like MGS4 and Uncharted 2 but couldn’t really get into them.

I went to the games store yesterday to assess, and just saw so many Switch games that I was like “wow”. Even The Witcher, which I’ve wanted to play for so long, its being ported.

Is there any reason why our Switchy household requires a PS4, aside from my bf’s desire to play FF15? I scanned through the titles and I guess I’m just... disinclined?

I feel like I’ve played far more Switch than any other console since SNES. (Dead Cells, Dark Souls, Zelda, Skyrim, those were my big four time sinks). Then I ordered the games based on hours logged and saw that EVERY ONE of my bf’s games clocked higher than mine— Fire Emblem, Octopath, Mario, Mario Tennis. Crazy! It’s such a good system.

yes - love the switch. felt a bit fallow towards beginning of this year but have too many games now if anything

I'm still torn about getting a Switch, now that the Lite is available. I'm dying to finally play BOTW (Zelda is by far my favourite series, half of my gaming time is spent replaying old Zelda titles), but I'm really unsure how much use I will get out of it after that. Guess I could try to sell it later, idk.

by the time you've exhausted botw the next zelda probably won't be too far off

Or the next system, if you go at my speed.

xpost @fgti

I wouldn't pick up Witcher on Switch--I played on PC, and it's difficult for me to imagine playing it with clunky and downgraded visuals. It's a beautiful world, but I'm not convinced the powers of its visuals will carry over.

I'm thinking about picking up a PS4 just to play Death Stranding, even though I know it'll be a clusterfuck of a narrative, and probably have less-than-ideal gameplay. I just want to be part of whatever emotional experience Kojima is squeezing out.

Re: the bit about "plot" and "story": I took a neat class in college, the thesis of which is that video games are today's equivalent of ancient oral epic; that epics were performative and improvisational in nature, and no two bards told the same story exactly the same way. Players are bards telling their epics: we all hit the same major events in the story, but arrive at them and work within them in distinct ways based on our individual play styles and real-time decisions. We had names for these ideas, but I can't remember what they were. I'll see if I can dig up my notes, if I didn't get rid of them.

Caution: If you play Binding of Isaac enough to the point that you learn how to strategize floors/items/rooms you will become hopelessly addicted. Worse than Dead Cells, because there is no maximum items the player can hold/acquire, and the synergy combinations are endless.

yes - I was addicted to Isaac for quite a while

RE: Celeste
I was recently vocal about not liking Celeste in the ILG thread dedicated to it. I didn't properly explain why.

1) It felt like a combination of other games (mostly flash games) so none of it felt really new. (VVVVVV and I Wanna Be The Guy/Boshy being the closest but there are elements from other games)

2) Gameplay was puzzle-platforming in that you visualize your path and then execute the jumps/dashes. In places that don't give you time to visualize, you just have to guess while you are moving, die, and then retry. I won't say this is bad but it's not great either.

If I had felt like I was reaching areas that had ground-breaking platforming ideas I might of been more excited to go from screen to screen. But, imo, the additional gameplay mechanics that you get as the game progresses weren't surprising me with an "oh that's cool" reaction. They felt more like minor gimmicks that you have to work with. This leads me to thinking that Celeste felt more like work than fun. Also, I couldn't enjoy completing hard areas because the cynic in me didn't feel like there was any reward for beating a single screen. My reaction was like: "yay. I executed button presses correctly and now I have to visualize and execute all over again."

I didn't feel like solving the "path-planning-puzzle" element was all that challenging. The challenge was more in the execution. I just couldn't get myself to be happy for pushing the correct buttons at the correct time. I really don't want to complain about the difficulty of executing each screen correctly (which I'm actually pretty good at)-- but it does slow down the overall gaming experience. When I constantly wanted more from the game, I was instead, slowly introduced to new gimmicks that felt more-or-less like new arrangements of 1's and 0's than exciting new ways to travel.

3) Strawberries are just another unsuccessful gaming collectable cliche in that the reward for performing a more difficult moveset is only a tic up on the strawberry counter.

4) Air dashing in platformers is fun. However, being restricted to cardinal-direction dashing (although it makes prefect sense in this game seeing as how all the paths are predetermined with little room for maneuvering) isn't as fun as fluid movement in games like Ori and the Blind Forest.

5) The story didn't tug me along (honestly, I didn't give it much of a chance)
/end pessimism

I might actually try to finish this game to confirm my reaction. I did enjoy playing one of the Dark Souls games to near completion. That game didn't make me feel like Sisyphus.

binding of isaac is one of my top 5 games all time i played it so much (and even 100%'d the original w/ the expansion inc beating every boss w/ The Lost - but not the remake which i played thoroughly but didn't 100%)

So you are saying you would have preferred more RNG? I'm trying to figure out how the "pressing buttons at the right time" thing doesn't apply to all platformers otherwise...

xp

That was more of a comment on how there is mostly only one way to get from A to B.

i really enjoyed celeste which i thought was a well designed platformer that felt great to play and had enough innovative stuff and distinctive enough sense of place + art + music etc that it stood out as one of the best games of the year but i did feel like the enthusiasm was a little ott for what was essentially an excellent platformer but not necessarily a huge breakthrough in the genre

Also, I couldn't enjoy completing hard areas because the cynic in me didn't feel like there was any reward for beating a single screen. My reaction was like: "yay. I executed button presses correctly and now I have to visualize and execute all over again."

i think this is totally valid. but it also applies to things like sudoku. for me, the fun of a game is in the joy (if any) of using the gameplay mechanics, not the reward that i get for completing it. this is especially true if the "reward" is an update to the very bad story, but also if the reward is a bigger gun that shoots faster or something. or worse, a "reward" that consists of making something that was annoying in the game slightly less annoying (e.g., gaining the ability to run 10% faster)

Interesting, I had the opposite experience from FlopsyDuck re: Celeste and Dark Souls; Celeste always felt like something I could beat if I was tenacious enough, and eventually I did. Whereas Dark Souls I loved to a certain point, but eventually it just wore me down into a state of abject hopelessness. I made it to the Ornstein & Smough fight and threw in the towel then and there. I think this owes at least in part to Celeste having an actual protag character that I wanted to see succeed.

xp "for me, the fun of a game is in the joy (if any) of using the gameplay mechanics, not the reward that i get for completing it."

This is otm. I really let the rigid controls get me down in Celeste. Cardinal dashing was the first thing that really bothered me. Secondly, the gameplay felt like there was only one way from A to B (no fancy walking here). There are probably some good platformers that do this but I could never shake the rigid feeling I was getting from this game.

celeste actually has a lot of different paths you can take, but the options open up more if you're an elite speedrunner celeste-god that can do all the various tricks. i certainly am not that, so i do tend to do the obvious path. but yeah, check out a speedrunning video to see what i mean, it's crazy

binding of isaac is one of my top 5 games all time i played it so much (and even 100%'d the original w/ the expansion inc beating every boss w/ The Lost - but not the remake which i played thoroughly but didn't 100%)

― Mordy, Friday, September 27, 2019 12:31 PM (forty seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

Then there is the madness of "Eden streaking", which is more of a streamer thing but still...

lol snailing along with Link to the Past ... there is a lot I like in here, but I do encounter some bullshit, like pits you have to avoid, except for the ones you're supposed to jump in, or torches that don't need to be lit except for the ones that do, etc. It's not particularly hard, but boy, I am just not good at solving puzzles, especially when the puzzles aren't really puzzles so much as "do this random thing you've never done before, or this thing the game has previously told you was the wrong thing to do." I'm definitely enjoying it, though I suck so bad at games that even using guides or walkthroughs they take me forever. I can't imagine how long something like this would take me if I didn't have tips or guides.

I tried to get into Binding Of Isaac but the visual aesthetic just doesn't work for me. I grew up on roguelikes that were fast and immediate and ASCII based and Isaac just felt slow and like there was a mandatory tileset that was unappealing

I tried to get into Binding Of Isaac but the visual aesthetic just doesn't work for me.

same. i liked the gameplay but got sick of the whole baby humor thing

Yeah at that point, and in "retro" games in general, there were still mechanics or inconsistencies that they were still figuring out. Modern games do a better job communicating mechanics through design.

Another one I can think of it is the part of the fence you can jump over, which is indicated by ...two little bumps in the grass on the side you can hop from?

Or! Cracked things that sometimes break when you dash into them vs. ones that don't, despite using the same visual crack type. I think they were trying not to spoon feed too much, so that the player could discover via trial and error, but the bumps-mean-fence-hop thing is just bad pixel art/visual communication.

xxp

The unfortunate (seemingly) gothy Jhonen Vasquez inspired poop/gross theme of Binding of Isaac turned me off initially but once you get into the gameplay you tend to forget about the setting and theme.

My Issac skill and knowledge got to a point where I mapped a reset button to my controller because the game starts a lot quicker if you have good items on the first floor.

Until you accidentally smack the reset button halfway through a good run. Used to do that in N+ accidentally.

On that note, you should all play N++, which I think may be the greatest 2d platformer of all time. One of the only games where mastery makes you feel like a god. The only inputs are left, right, and jump. The rest of the complexity comes from the rounded hitbox on your character and the nuances of momentum-based movement. Unbelievable game.

You may remember previous iterations: the N game, and N+.

When I looked up must-have games after I bought my Switch, Binding of Isaac kept coming up, but everything I saw and learned about it made me say N-O.

Again, it's off putting at first, definitely.

I've enjoyed the LttP puzzles. Being stuck usually starts an exploring phase where i find new stuff before finally realizing I always had what I needed to get unstuck.

heart-removing pits in lttp are distinguishable from drop-you-a-level pits by sight

Modern games do a better job communicating mechanics through design.

frequently "design" here means "constant explicit instruction"

That was a problem more-so in the early to mid 00s. I think overall games have been less relentlessly handholding.

yeah there's definitely been a swing back on that this gen

I knew a guy who had "link, listen" as his text message noise on his phone 😑

Holy crap, you want good looking games? I just started Ori and the Blind Forest, and that intro is straight up Bambi (in every sense, sniff).

See, re: Link to the Past. I get the master sword - fine - and go back to rescue the princess, but can't get to her because of the lightning wall. I swipe a few times with my sword, but nothing. So I look up what to do, and yes, I'm supposed to use the sword, but I was swinging in the wrong spot. Fine. So I go back, open the lightning gate, get to the wizard, he makes her vanish and ... that's it. I'm stuck in the room. Fine. But aha! They made a point earlier that the magic mirror will teleport me back to the beginning of any dungeon, which I do. Ta-dah! I'm out. But it turns out, despite being told the mirror can teleport me to the start of dungeons, in this case I was *not* supposed to do that. I was supposed to know I needed to stab a curtain to expose a door. Groan.

hehehe yup. Agahnim exits the room through the top middle of the screen. Otherwise there's no obvious clue at all.

Back in the day I thought that sort of bs was there to sell strategy guides.