The Nintendo Switch

That is pretty awesome.

my favorite thing about Tropical Freeze is every single level is different, they never reuse a theme or mechanic, and there are multiple things going on per level unlike the old games which generally just worked a single mechanic to its extreme per level. nothing outstays its welcome and it makes you want to replay levels just to get a taste of their unique bits again.

here's a good vid about the level design:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHcE6B4OP4

and another good vid from someone else breaking down a single level:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5wIIwBL784

picked up dankey kang today after never getting around to it on the wii u and goddamn this is a delight (albeit a regularly v challenging one)

so it's like Sonic but really slow and heavy

it kinda is, in the best possible way! it's melds mario and sonic in a really innarestin' way

should I buy dk y/n

nah

buy dkc if you like dkc, for all the praise its still a dkc game with the same gameplay as the snes ones

putting expense aside, if i have to choose between platformers, i think i'll get celeste next

sonic was always too fast for me, even as a kid!

donkey kong is nothing like sonic, it's not fast at all

celeste is excellent too though

I beat Xenoblade Chronicles 2! Cool shit imo.

still my favorite nintendo switch experience to date. such a weird and beautiful game

I was yelling at the cutscenes pretty regularly but they were never not entertaining and fascinating. With some surprisingly un-hackneyed themes.

My background: I haven't played a single DK game since the very first one. At one point I had this preordered, then I saw the trailer (I think) and it mostly seemed annoying. High difficulty, non-stop monkey grunts and Funky Kong? No thanks. So I cancelled my pre-order, knowing I would be busy with Dark Souls. Then Dark Souls gets punted and the Nintendo calendar looks shockingly light (where's Hollow Knight?), so I start to reconsider DK. Still looks annoying (even though the level design looks cool!), but I did learn that at least you can play other characters in Funky mode, which gives you some (but not all) of Funky's benefits, a compromise between what seems like the too easy Funky Kong and a more generic "easy" mode. That seems more appealing, but no way would I pay $60 for this. Again, $60 is apparently more than DK:TF retailed for on Wii-U! That's nuts. I'll just wait and focus on what I have. I'm nowhere near done Celeste, for example. Been taking a loooooooong break.

OK fine I’m getting Xenoblade Chronicles

Which means we’re probably getting a dedicated thread, just warning y’all

tropical freeze is a full price worthy game if you like platformers, the only reason it was cheaper on wii u is because there was insane backlash against it before it even came out because people thought retro were being squandered making 2d platformers instead of metroid prime

lol looking forward to seeing your reactions to it tombot

it's a divisive game among Nintendo fans, a lot of extreme opinions on both ends

I want to play Xenoblade Chronicles, but I'm still in Hyrule for a few more weeks.

BOTW may be my favorite video game ever.

I liked my 70 or so hours with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 quite a bit but compared to Breath of the Wild, which has something for everyone, Xenoblade really only has a couple pretty specific somethings. I'd say take a look at one of the videos that Nintendo put out explaining the combat system, and if it seems like pressing those buttons for dozens of hours would press your buttons, go for it. There's, like, at least four distinct meters/combo systems in combat in this game, and I only filled up the final combo meter ("Full Burst") like two times total, in the last few hours of the game. But it was satisfying as hell when did because it did something like 27 million damage.

xenoblade is for people who like trashy anime characters, pretty environments and music, crazy lore drops, and overelaborate RPG systems

https://nintendotreehouse.tumblr.com/post/166122222372/like-a-finely-layered-onionor-is-it-onions

some more details out about the online service - $20/year for individual account, $35/year for a family plan that covers up to 8 accounts. online play, cloud save backups, and a collection of 20 NES games (plus more added over time) with online multiplayer hacked in. launching in September at which point online multiplayer in existing games will get paywalled.

Seems fine. Family plan is a good move. I’m still not sure what the classic game library is, like, “for”, strategy-wise. I guess it’s a sweetener for the new paywall in front of online pay, but all you can eat access to the back catalog, even a slice of it, really seems at odds with what Nintendo thinks those games are worth. Guess we’ll see what gets added to the subscription over the years, and if the a la carte Virtual Console ever makes the jump to Switch (it sure seems like it won’t!).

I guess they are going for a limited Netflix type model with old games then? I wonder if any 3rd party games will ever turn up, or other systems. Add in Gamecube games and I'll gladly pay!

i think virtual console as it was in the wii era is probably dead since all the 3rd parties realized they could make more money by releasing anthologies rather than a la carte. i can see this NESflix thing being expanded to SNES and GBA for first party titles but not sure we'll get N64 forward

Nintendo 2017 had it going on. But 2018 seems pretty rocky. Dearth of big titles, this pretty underwhelming online thing ... Only thing I'm looking forward to between now and the end of the year is Smash and I guess Wolfenstein (assuming Dark Souls and Hollow Knight stay MIA). Lets me catch up on stuff, but that's only because there otherwise just seems to be little but a constant stream of 8-bit styled retro dungeon/platform games clogging up the store.

dude at this point in 2017 switch had one game. chill out until e3 when they announce their second half lineup

fry's has rayman for $20 if looking for a platformer deal, josh

Nintendo will have published 9 games from Jan-July this year, plus labo and a game-length Splatoon single player campaign. that's pretty strong first party support if you didn't have a wii u and own all 4 wii u titles already, and still passable if you did.

More big things will come in the fall and 3rd party support will ramp up over the next year as we hit the point where games that started development after the switch was a confirmed Hit are being finished.

I got Rayman cheap, it's fun!

Given Smash is the only big Nintendo heavy hitter in the next several months, I don't know what else I'm expecting from them at E3. And yeah, a year ago there were barely any titles. Also, a year ago the Switch was barely one month old. The other titles announced, like Captain Toad and Tennis, I couldn't care less about them.

Tennis looks pretty fun tbh

I don't really like any of the sports games, save Mario Kart and Smash (if they count), but that's just me.

What non-port big Nintendo titles have there been so far? Odyssey? Anything else? Kirby? Splatoon?

what you should expect at e3 is the second half lineup with 1-2 releases per month as they've been doing so far. smash is one game out of a potential 5 to 8 or so things

no Virtual Console but there are a lot of NeoGeo games up. Metal Slugs, Magician Lord, KOF '98, etc. some good stuff

Wasn't it one of you guys that emphasized that Smash was the headliner, the heavy-hitter? I love surprises, but I don't know what else I should be expecting.

And it's not the pace of releases, it's the quality of releases. So many ports, and then disappointing titles like Kirby. From a selfish standpoint, I'm happy to save so much money. But I would love a few more appealing games.

smash is one of their most popular series though, it'll get top billing over pretty much anything except Mario and Pokemon.

I was not even a little disappointed by Kirby!

Kirby games are quality, they're just not difficult.

xpost Absolutely. And games like Smash and MarioKart and Mario and Zelda are why I have a Switch and not another system. Given its success I was just hoping for more third party stuff, and I'm sure we'll get it, but with little to nothing prominent on the radar except ports, sequels and the promise of stuff like (as I mentioned) old but new to Nintendo Dark Souls or Hollow Knight, it's just a bit of a bummer. Feels too early in the system's life for it to be this quiet. Stuff that appeals to me (like Metroid) and my kids (Animal Crossing) won't be until some time in 2019, I assume, which is a wait.

We downloaded the Kirby demo and even my kids, who like Kirby, were (the kid equivalent of) fuck this.

they are hiring for the new Zelda, so the follow up to BOTW is def going to be worth looking forward to

i'd say wait to panic until after E3. Nintendo has a habit of announcing games out of nowhere and saying, "Btw this is coming out in a few months). they first announced Dark Souls on Switch 2 months ago.

Nintendo wants to sell 20 million Switches in their FY ending March 2019, they need some sort of tentpole beyond Smash to achieve that probably.

I don't know, I just figured Smash was meant to coincide with their online system.

Also re Dark Souls, don't mean to be impatient, but yeah, they announced it, but within a couple months it was totally off the schedule again.

The service will launch with 20 games, with new games added regularly. Launch titles include:
Soccer Tennis Donkey Kong™ Mario Bros.™ Super Mario Bros.™ Balloon Fight™ Ice Climber™ Dr. Mario™ The Legend of Zelda™ Super Mario Bros.™ 3 And more to be revealed!

20 NES games is pretty cool, i'll take that. 20 dollars a year for 20+ NES games already pays for itself. kind of like a revolving NES Classic. if you can download the games to your Switch that would be a neat way to build up a library of emulated games over time.

i know for sure i am gonna play all the way through TLOZ for the first time (and probably try the Master Quest). Dr. Mario is a nice include. SMB3 is perhaps the greatest game of all time, now it will have extra online features.

Pretty sure the other publishers only figured out Switch was going to be a big success about 6-9 months ago, and are now rushing to get titles ready. But making a good game can take years, so it might take a while to fill the pipeline.

yeah any 3rd party game releasing right now is a port that was added late in development or after the fact. third party support will look a lot better once we get into the third year or so of Switch's existence and devs have had time to build games that target it from the start.

But why not just announce you're working on something, especially if it's a port? Wolfenstein, for example, was announced with little to no warning, and certainly at the time no release date. It keeps people engaged and invested. If I knew (insert AAA game here) was coming, I'd be more excited. That's why I was looking forward to Dark Souls. Never played it, wanted to, finally coming to Nintendo, and was going to carry me through until the end of the year, when I would get Smash. And then ... poof. But at least I know it's coming!

again, wait until e3, most publishers will hoard announcements for e3, it's not uncommon to have a lot of silence in the first half of the year

best way to market a thing is to announce it far in advance so that it's not a surprise and is boring by the time you can make money selling it