The Nintendo Switch

good piece on the appeal of splatoon, and the splatfest experience, here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-07-team-ketchup-loses-everyone-wins-in-splatoon-2s-first-proper-splatfest

Since before E3 I've had a basically insatiable craving for "news" about Switch releases, it's terrible.

I never knew I needed anything in my life as much as the paint roller in Splatoon

xpost, a bit: I think what makes Splatoon so special is how perfectly the game's structure coaxes teammates to to cooperate, play the objectives, not be glory hogs, etc? Like, spreading ink is the objective (as far as I can tell, K/Ds have literally no effect on your XP, points or end of match ranking) but also a vital support activity for your teammates, the jump-to-teammate feature and relative deadliness of the weapons encourages people to work in groups (especially since concentrating on a firefight means losing paint coverage and a potentially disastrous amount of mobility due to enemy ink)...every design decision is just so fucking smart

Except maybe whatever it is that's letting some people throw out a series of curler bombs at once; that is some real OP horseshit

And the occasional XP-farming AFK player; I'd love some more transparency on Splatoon's warning/ban system so I can be assured these assholes pay some kind of consequence for ruining their team's game.

yeah, it's the perfect nintendo-isation of online shooters, really - all the rough edges have been shaved off and what remains is polished to a super-high sheen

the interaction of all the various systems is just exquisitely balanced. it's a masterclass in good design decisions

I never knew I needed anything in my life as much as the paint roller in Splatoon

octobrush ftw imo - most effective weapon at close range, good spread of paint, and holding down the fire button lets you skate through enemy ink and out of trouble when you need to

the curler bomb swarm is the special weapon of the aerospray which is already pretty OP in turf war, being the fastest painting weapon. it's pretty useless in the other modes though since it has low range and damage.

i'm finding the ranked modes to be a lot more fun than turf war, a lot of the weapons that seemed useless actually have a place there.

plus the long maps like moray towers and port mackerel were just a chore to paint in turf war whereas they're more interesting for Rainmaker

and yeah the octobrush is probably the 2nd most powerful weapon, after the tri-slosher which is just beyond ridiculous and will hopefully be nerfed

huh, i was NEVER a team shooter fan (well i mean i was into team quake but that dates me badly) but y'all are doing a good job convincing me this is worth trying... maybe i need to resubscribe to a game rental service.

at the very least it's worth trying - seriously, it's the most fun i've had with a game for a long, long time and i usually hate multiplayer games with a burning passion

okay, back to gamefly i go
though i think maybe arms first.

i'm finding the ranked modes to be a lot more fun than turf war, a lot of the weapons that seemed useless actually have a place there.

the only reason i've been staying out of the ranked is because i've been loving the octobrush so much and it doesn't seem as viable in some of the non-turf-war modes (? not entirely sure). gotta get back into rapid blaster! i was doing really well with it when everyone i was being matched against was sub level 15

octobrush is good in ranked

especially in rainmaker you can make paths to the goal really easily and basically play offensive line as if it was football

Ha yeah that possibility had just occurred to me! i haven't played rainmaker yet, definitely want to get into it. i think i was scared off by the couple times i tried tower control and splat zones, it never seemed like i was able to get close enough to the action to make a difference. the problem was certainly more me than the brush, though

rainmaker is definitely the most unique and clever of the 3 ranked modes, it's basically football but the splatoon mechanics make football really interesting since the speed from swimming becomes super relevant which means controlling the turf becomes really important

i'm having great success with the sploosh-o-matic, just reeled off a big turf war winning streak and hit 10.0 freshness - it feels like a nice compromise between being able to ink a lot of territory and actually do hand-to-hand damage, plus it has a really useful sub/special

added folks from this thread just now, in case anybody's wondering who daniel the owl is

make that 15.5 SUPERfreshness :D

i'm SW-6114-4876-3898 btw, will be dipping my toes into ranked the next couple of nights

I'm SW-4321-2378-1718. Still just level 6, though.

I just bought Splatoon 2, I'm very confused. Added everyone here, my friend code is SW-2873-6273-7411

I caved and got one of these. Had to get it in a bundle, so I chose Zelda. Splatoon maybe in the future, though

really enjoying the blasters at the moment, both regular and rapid. the rapid blaster loadout is amazing for splat zones

I caved and got one of these. Had to get it in a bundle, so I chose Zelda. Splatoon maybe in the future, though

https://media.giphy.com/media/fY4AWE5NkNRhS/giphy.gif

lol

i'm still impatiently waiting for mine to ship

ATTN TOMBOT

GameStop has announced that all of its US retail locations will have Nintendo’s Switch console available in stores this week. Now, when I say “this week,” the on-sale will begin as early as tomorrow, August 15th, when your local GameStop opens, and I can’t imagine this restock lasting very long. Other stores will put the units they receive on sale Wednesday.

dude at the gamestop by my office told me he didn't know anything about availability or quantity when they opened this morning

which was fine bc honestly i love loitering in front of gamestop at union square as a man in his mid 30s

good opportunity to top up your energy levels with doritos and mountain dew imo

"so... do YOU like video games too????"

Killed Ganon.... think i'm gonna leave a little gap before going back to clean up missed shrines and side quests and do the DLC 1 stuff.
picked up I Am Setsuna in fukuoka and played an hour or two and its exactly as described - non mindblowing but very relaxing traditional 90s jrpg. pretty much perfect for a commute and makes me wonder why the fuck square and various others aren't getting any of the original FF and Dragon Quest games up on this thing. its weird as shit that 6 months after release, in terms of classics its still only Neo Geo games regularly going up.

if my iPhone can have FF Tactics for a tenner, why not give it to me on this?

I have a hunch, unconfirmed, that the iOS install base is greater than that of the Switch

perhaps, perhaps a tiny bit. but my point stands, it would take so little work to get fantastic games people would buy the shit out of on this system.

so this came in today and it's very cool. what's the deal tho with the black hard case? that's surely not for carrying it around right? what's a good carrying/travel case for this thing? also i should probably get a screen protector i'm thinking?

Hard case? Are you referring to the dock?

yeah since posting i've figured out that's the dock.

heh

heh

I really need to put some effort into this.

sonic mania is incredible

i never really played any of the sonic games when i was a kid, but i suspect i would have been pretty bad at them? the few times i tried them out at friends' houses, i would go really fast for like 1.5 seconds before hitting something and losing all of the rings. gather some of them up, get some momentum going, finally go really fast again and then hit something else, repeat repeat

Wow @ that admission my our local MM speedrunner. There goes my "people who are frighteningly good at *a* video game are basically good at *all* video games" theory.
Which means the corollary may also be false, meaning there may a video game that I am not terrible at

u shd play the first couple sonics zach theyre classic as hell

Alright, you've all inspired me. I pledge to not only play some sonic, but to keep playing it until I've set the speed run record! Some things are worth the effort

This should take like what, a week or so right?

nice

the new one takes everything from the original 3 and turns the dials all the way up, its overwhelming

that sounds amazing