The Nintendo Switch

That looks awesome. The wave of great looking Indie Games alone is enough to keep me happy with this thing for months.

Two new games out now on digital that I'd like to play:

Sidescrolling runner Shu; only $10 and the art style and platform physics look delicious

http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/shu-switch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7fbVR_eMdI

New Squenix old-school RPG Lost Sphear; less value priced at $50 but the turn based battles in the trailer sure seem like they'd scratch an old school itch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xejat0lBlZ0
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/lost-sphear-switch

Might want to beware on the rpg - kotaku had a quick first thoughts item on it today that was pretty negative

hm, thanks!

shu looks great

It does, but with Hollow Knight imminent I don't want to OD on platforms.

lost sphear is made by the crappy squenix retro team, their last game I Am Setsuna was a pretty big dud. the good team is the ones that did bravely default and are making octopath traveler now. id wait for reviews on sphear.

Other hyped retro-y platformer coming up: Owlboy

yeah that ones on my list too, forgot about it

Saw that Wolfenstein II is coming to Switch, too, at the end of the year. Not to go back to Doom, but I'm wary. With Doom, some people say it's great, others say it's a mess on Switch. I don't know who is right, but I do know Bethesda concedes a lot of the bugs, which range from audio dropouts and weird sounds to game freezes and crashes. It's unclear if that's due to the Switch and its limitations or due to Bethesda/Panic Room rushing the port.

from all accounts I've heard doom switch is fine and about as good a port as is possible given the hardware

i've been buying Bethesda games since like 94 or 96 and they've always had a reputation for bugs iirc

Bethesda and id Software operate (pretty much independently) under the Zenimax umbrella, shouldn't be conflated.

Not sure who worked on the DOOM port

Panic Room?

Oh, missed that.

the important thing is that the new wolfenstein games are both great and everyone should play them

xpost Same people that did Doom, and the problems I hear about Doom go way beyond Switch limitations. Like, reduced resolution, that makes sense. Audio drop outs, crashes, slow-downs ... people have real issues with these. Bethesda even has an official reddit bug discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/7bmk8o/doom_for_nintendo_switch_faq_known_issues/

Kind of sad how many issues can only be resolved by restarting.

BZ otm. i gifted Wolfenstein II on PS4 to my brother for xmas and he texted me last night to tell me he finished it (and the first one as well). i rarely hear from him so it must have really been something! i played a good bit of the first one and it was incredible.

yeah, they're something special, not least because the story and the characters are genuinely compelling - quite an achievement when they are an unlikely melange of two-fisted pulp sci-fi, heartfelt drama and a genuinely chilling presentation of fascism

i don't think single player shooters are for me anymore, i played a bit of new doom and it was clearly good and entirely avoided all the stealth and hiding behind cover stuff i usually hate in shooters but it failed to hook me even so

we've stumbled upon the secluded chicagoriko village. Idyllic on its surface, but one villager keeps dropping subtle hints: there might be something fishy about the local DOOM port. gonna check it out.

huh

anyone grab celeste? or intending to

soon as I get home from work ~~~

same, will play tonight for sure

https://www.destructoid.com/review-celeste-484157.phtml

I finished my (first) run through Shovel Knight, and while there is soooooo much content left in just the first game, I think I need to take a break from platforms for a bit. In the end, while I did get better/gudder, I thought the bosses were pretty weak, or at least the game let me get too ... overpowered? I had a harder time just with a couple of levels and their bosses than I did with the final boss. Anyway, very excited, because I've successfully kept my copies of Zelda and Mario under wraps, so will probably break the seal on one of them.

But yeah, Celeste looked good, but ... platforms. More spikes and moving platforms. I've been watching a few playthroughs of that insane riff on platforms, and ... yeah, spikes and moving platforms.

Add "twitch platformer" to my rapidly expanding game lexicon.

Wow, Celeste is getting raves across the board. I admit I'm curious, because the slips I've seen seem pretty familiar. Vs. something like Shu or Hollow Knight, which look gorgeous. Looking forward to hearing what you all think after you've played a bit.

hollow knight is a different genre, idk about shu

Hollow Knight is a ... metroidvania? Still looks like it involves hopping around across platforms and stuff (as did Castlevania and Metroid). So the difference is ... Celeste is just hoping around, but not gaining powers or unlocking things? But Shovel Knight, even though you do that, too, is a platformer? I find some of the distinctions subtle.

metroidvanias have you exploring a set map repeatedly as new powerups make previously inaccessible spaces part of your gameplay.
side scrollers/platformers don't involve much backward progress.
celeste looks to be the latter, hollow knight the former

metroidvanias generally don't require precision platforming, you've got plenty of space to move around and the difficulty comes from combat and/or puzzles

celeste is a precision platformer, there's no combat and the difficulty is in the platforming itself

obv theres some exceptions e.g. ori and the blind forest is a metroidvania that's focused more on the actual platforming but even that game doesn't require constant precision like super meat boy or whatever the quintessential precision platformer is

So what it's shovel Knight?

i'd put traditional platformers in a separate category

feel free to ignore the ciderpress taxonomy of platforming games though

speaking of which, Dead Cells confirmed for switch, whenever it officially releases

i think typshovel knight is a megaman, a mostly forward pushing action platformer

ok just cleared the first 3 chapters of celeste and this game owns

it hits a really good spot where it doesn't feel like a pure precision/mechanics workout like super meat boy, which i never really liked for that reason, but is still plenty difficult enough to be rewarding.

OTM re: Super Meat Boy, although shit I guess that means I have to buy Celeste too

l bought Shovel Knight a couple days ago and finding it a little empty so far, but gonna persevere.

I agree it's pretty vapid, but I found it just fun enough. Also, tons of distractions and things to do/find, plus all the spinoff games included. Plus, he uses a shovel.

So much on sale. Might do mario+rabbids.

Yeah, Celeste owns

just finished the main story in celeste. i'd definitely call it the best-in-class challenge platformer. the last level in particular was incredible.

took me somewhere between 5 and 6 hours but that's skipping most of the collectibles and there's also much harder 'remixes' of all the levels that you can unlock plus a new postgame level that requires secret collectibles to enter. probably at least a 20 hour game if you want to full complete it, which i will attempt at a later point.

i'm in the middle of it on ps4 (golden ridge chapter) and i'm loving it too. i am taking my time and trying to get most of the strawberries as i go. there is a tim rogers video review, obligatory:

Kotaku's Tim Rogers @108 liked Celeste so much, he was barely able to make any jokes. If you like jokes, don't worry: there are some jokes.

Just not as many as usual. pic.twitter.com/Q321YfNzqk

— Kotaku (@Kotaku) January 25, 2018

I have no idea if people hate him, but I think Video Dunkey is pretty funny (his Dark Souls goofs are great). He likes this, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHLizp8fARo

Anybody else playing the aesthetic triumph that is GOROGOA (on Switch or mobile)? I'm totally enraptured by this and kind of hope it goes on forever.