The Nintendo Switch

its pretty meaningless, they can add smart upscaling and output at 4k but its just a band-aid solution for something thats not really an issue since 1080p still looks fine unless you're insane about graphics and if you are then fake 4k probably isn't going to satisfy you

yeah, 4k is kind of a big nothing for the vast majority of people whether they know it or not. i have a 55" 4k TV and to tell the difference between 1080p i'd have to be sitting uncomfortably close to it.

4K is kind of dumb if your Switch lacks the processing power to give you anything that would look particularly special in 4K, anyway.

retro graphics with sharper edges

picross in 4k

finally

so I have a voucher to still cash in before the end of next week
have narrowed it down to the following games:

Skyward Sword - not sure if the controls work that well, heard it's very linear. only mainline Zelda not played tho
Paper Mario Origami King - looks really pretty but last few paper games have been average at best
Mario Golf - love mario golf games but reception of this one seems muted?
Famicom Detective Club - wildcard pick

anyone played any of these, help appreciated etc

have not played any of them but have watched some youtubes lol, mario golf seems not that great, paper mario solidly better than the recent paper marios but not amazing, not sure about the other two

mario golf is ehh, i dont like the new real-time speed golf mode where you have to run to your ball, and the single player campaign uses that mostly and is also underbaked compared to the old game boy ones.

i bought the paper mario based on positivity from a couple ppl i trust but havent played it yet. i'm sure it will be decidedly not challenging like the others but sounds like it does more stuff right this time

ugh, how can you fuck up Mario Golf? guess I'll go for Zelda purely out of curiosity.

yeah seems like thats prob the best one

you can still play normal mario golf in it but you shouldn't get it for the single player campaign is what im saying

i bought mario + rabbids on sale for $15, pretty tedious

i also bought hades which i have not tried yet, not sure i like that type of game seems like its more for those who are committed to the gaming lifestyle but i will give it a try

hades is pretty good for the casual, imo

ok cool, also sounds like something you say to someone who only goes to church on sunday lol

i dont like single player games where the focus is on mastery through repetition. would rather be playing multiplayer stuff like fighting games if i'm gonna do that

i may still try hades someday though since people seem evangelically happy with it

part of the reason hades rules so much is that it's good for all kinds of playing styles, imo. if you want to try to do "the perfect run" or whatever you can definitely try it, but it's also the kind of game where you feel yourself getting a little bit better each time you play and learning new things each time

i may still try hades someday though since people seem evangelically happy with it

― ciderpress, Sunday, October 3, 2021 3:09 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah thats why i got it, also it was 30% off *waggles eyebrows*

i haven't played it in months but it lends itself well to picking up and playing for a bit and not touching for a while (vs some big old open world game where you need to relearn the mechanics/story/point of the game)

Most roguelikes are like that. The tough part is just learning/remembering the mechanics of paths/builds etc.

hades is loads of fun. amazing value for your money.

skyward sword is ok, the motion controls weren't a huge issue when i played on wii, though i don't know how the non-motion control option on the port works. it's very very linear, even by zelda standards. has some very good dungeons but its big problem is a ton of terrible filler content that just pads out the game length when it's already a very long game. the highs are very high and the lows are very low.

About an hour into Metroid Dread and loving it so far. It's easy to die but there's plenty of save points. IDK if it's a "great" game, but it is exactly what I wanted.

Also apparently it's very hard. I've died a few times already, but (so far) it's not Dark Souls or anything.

awesome, after playing some of the Castlevania Advance Collection i am all about filling in a map rn, if it's not too scary for my kid maybe she'll "help" me play this afternoon

that castlevania collection is great btw, aria of sorrow is exactly as amazing as i remember

aria is the particularly good one iirc, not sure about the others in that pack

harmony of dissonance was pretty good, circle of the moon was decent i think

Never got to play any of those Castlevania ones outside of Aria, and yes, that one at least fuckin ruled.

I played Harmony and Circle when they came out and enjoyed them, then thought Aria was a huge step-up, and Portrait an even huger step-up. I watched the trailers for the Switch re-release and decided I didn't wanna do it though... my revisitation of SOTN every few years is enough for me I think

Loving the new Metroid atm!

Metroid looks fun but those levels of Celeste where you get chased make me *so* tense and this basically looks like a whole game of that

are you being stalked in all areas of the game or are there designated areas for the stalker robot thing and others where its normal metroid?

There's designated areas where you get chased by the robots, and also you *can* kill them under very specific circumstances. The tense chase-y bits are so far very well-proportioned to the rest of the game IMO

It seems like about 1/5 to 1/4 of a given level is a discrete Stalker Ranch. You enter the creepy door and everything gets grainy and you are being stalked. You can leave at any time so long as the stalker has not detected you-- if so, you have to outrun the stalker. I've murdered four of them so far and even stalker #4 generated white knuckles and sweat, it's a genuinely thrilling mechanism. Echoes of MGS1 tbh

xp

i got metroid dread even tho i did not want to pay 60 for a 2d game its good the movement is very nice when you jump up to a ledge then roll into a ball it feels great its pretty hard im on the second boss

when you do the counter attack on those lil bat guys then shoot them and receive many health pellets is another very nice interaction

the only thing that could improve it i think is if you could jump on your hat

fuck jumping on a hat

lol

the only maybe mechanical misstep is the weird quasi playable cutscene stuff either you control the guy or you dont is my feeling

getting chased by the emmis is nicely done too imo its rare enough that it adds some novelty to the game and the trying to go fast is just fun on its own also when you die repeatedly the whole process is short enough that it doesnt feel like too much of a chore

and yeah killing them is pretty sick

i bought the super monkey ball rerelease instead of metroid. i never played these the first time around but they're pretty fun if you like games about getting owned by physics repeatedly, one of my favorite genres tbh

one of my favorite genres tbh

same. marble madness, monkey ball, and the irl wooden labyrinth with the marble, and also the cheap plastic sphere you can find in any goodwill for $5 game

i'm definitely gonna pick up monkeyball soon, as a reward for myself, but first i need to do something good

I have arrived at a point in Dread where the boss is so hard, there are so many weird details I'm learning where it's like "oh shit I can't even let that happen?" and I am dying and dying, and I feel like in fact I'm fighting a Contra 3 boss who is 10x harder, but I keep dying and trying again, this is a very bracing experience. How to make an "impossible boss" work where I'm not giving up in frustration but am trying and trying again? This is a wonderful game

i am wondering if i just need to git gud or if I'm having some controller issues but i'm finding the metroid controls frustrating. I'm aiming down instead of crouching, falling off walls instead of jumping. just me?

The game will by the 2/3rd mark expect an enormous familiarity with the controls… I got one particular upgrade that requires “good timing” to execute, and was plunged 20 minutes later into a compulsory boss fight in which mastery of the new upgrade was compulsory to survival.

I am having flashes of some of the hardest 2D games of my childhood… there is one boss sequence that is precisely one of the most difficult sections of Gameboy Battletoads. Unlike Celeste, which felt like work and luck, this feels closer to the Dark Souls nirvana of gitting gudder with every attempt

The game is gracefully transitioning from linear exposition to “ok now that you can go anywhere in this world, what areas do you wish to revisit and explore at your leisure?” sandbox.

I’m also having massive nostalgic moments with the very Metroid-esque “vital item is hidden behind something just obscure enough for you to think you’ve hit a dead end” design. Yesterday I was so certain that the designers had dead-ended me that I attempted to upgrade the software, hoping that there was a mistake that needed to be corrected, but no, I was just supposed to shoot something that I neglected to notice

yeah that happened to me at the beginning of the 3rd level, very NES