dartmonkey

Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)

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The full-price games are hard to justify, I agree. What's most annoying is that digital prices are kept high (here Bomberman digital went up by $25 just after release) to appease retailers, but they start discounting almost immediately whereas the eshop essentially never does.

 

Apparently I paid $115 for that 200GB card. Not cheap, but full-price games here are generally $80-90.

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Hmm, Gamestop is running a bundle that ships on Friday with things that I would actually want to buy (Zelda physical, Zelda expansion pass, and pro controller.) At the same time, I've gotten depressingly little use from my Xbox One, and I've fairly recently (4 months ago I think) spent $800 on VR that I don't really use as much as I should either.

 

http://www.gamestop.com/nintendo-switch/consoles/nintendo-switch-gray-joy-con-zelda-pro-bundle-ships-by-07-07-17/149360

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So on Wednesday I'm flying from Calgary to Halifax. This means a total of about 5 hours in the air, with a 3 hour layover in Toronto. I intend to bring my Switch. 

 

I'm a bit into Shantae (just opened the race level), Thumper (about halfway through world 4), and have a few levels left in Snake Pass that I haven't beaten yet. I'm looking for stuff to keep me going on the long trip. Anyone have suggestions?

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1 hour ago, Dewar said:

Hmm, Gamestop is running a bundle that ships on Friday with things that I would actually want to buy (Zelda physical, Zelda expansion pass, and pro controller.) At the same time, I've gotten depressingly little use from my Xbox One, and I've fairly recently (4 months ago I think) spent $800 on VR that I don't really use as much as I should either.

 

http://www.gamestop.com/nintendo-switch/consoles/nintendo-switch-gray-joy-con-zelda-pro-bundle-ships-by-07-07-17/149360

I haven't heard anybody express regrets about getting a Switch. If you haven't played Zelda and money's not an issue, I'd go for it.

 

25 minutes ago, miffy495 said:

I'm a bit into Shantae (just opened the race level), Thumper (about halfway through world 4), and have a few levels left in Snake Pass that I haven't beaten yet. I'm looking for stuff to keep me going on the long trip. Anyone have suggestions?

World of Goo is fantastic, although you have quite possibly played that already. I just downloaded Mario Kart 8 because I want it for multiplayer - did you play that on Wii U?

 

I'd also recommend the Neo Geo beat-em-ups if you're remotely interested in 2D fighters. The art alone is incredible and I've had fun just button mashing and watching the animation.

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Not my kind of game, but great to see more bigger 3rd party games appearing on Switch. The return of wrestling on Nintendo platform.

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This doesn't sound good.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-07-19-nintendos-new-online-service-looks-like-it-could-be-every-bit-as-bad-as-you-feared

 

Quote
It's something of a faff, and it doesn't look like it'll be worth it - at present, you can only take part in private battles, and the voice chat itself seems extremely limited. Unlike with Skype, if you flick aside to another app on your phone, you'll lose the ability to talk to your friend. So, if you need to head to an IM client as I did, to figure out with a friend exactly how to make sense of it all, you're fresh out of luck.
 
You'll also need your phone screen on for that voice chat to remain connected - meaning it guzzles battery in the process. It's an almost aggressively limited service, and this is before we get into the mess of cables you'll need if you're going to want to play online with headphones in the Switch's handheld mode - something which it would seem is only possible with a separate splitter available elsewhere.

 

I don't understand Nintendo's online adventures, this is the 3rd online generation now for Big N and everything seems still so complicated for them.

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The voice stuff is a total shambles, but I actually quite like the Spa2n companion app so I hope they focus more on that stuff.

I don't even know if a good voice program would've been a great voice chat experience since you'd just have to use your phone?

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The online Switch stuff is just...bad. I actually think its been kind of a detriment to my enjoyment of Mario Kart, I hate the lobby system. I hate having to try to organize this stuff over text/Discord. I understand they are probably using an external app because they can't afford to dedicate resources on the Switch - people forget it's a $200 tablet at its core- but man, the app sounds like a shit show. 

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There's no way the switch couldn't handle processing the voice chat natively. This is a very deliberate choice, and no one can seem to come up with an even halfway sensible reason as to why.

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It shares 4 gig of ram between CPU and GPU, I would assume they would want to keep their Switch OS as light as possible so they don't fall into the same trap as Xbox and Sony and need to reserve large swathes of ram for just the OS functionality. I'm not saying  it couldn't handle processing it, but I could see why they would want to leverage a device everyone already carries on them to offload some of that if they thought they could get away with it.

 

It's a pretty dumb setup either way, hah. 

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http://nintendotoday.com/switch-3-gb-ram/

 

I admit I don't know if this is 100% accurate, but I'm pretty sure I've seen this from multiple sources.

 

Regardless, you're 100% correct that it's dumb either way. :P

 

EDIT: I should say I _love_ the app as an _option_, but as the ONLY option it's goddamn baffling. And reportedly the app kind of sucks?? I'm sure many of those bugs/features will be ironed out over time, but still.

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So far I've been using Discord for my online Mario Kart matches, but without headphones, so it's basically just shouting into a phone that's next to me on the sofa. It's not ideal, but vastly preferable to the Switch app, it seems. Mind you, it should be *relatively* easy for them to patch additional features onto the app, right? So it won't turn off if you switch apps or kill the screen?

 

The voice thing is pretty awful, but so far the online experience has been great. Mario Kart is pretty smooth in putting together a party of friends, Arms features the superb party mode and I've just dipped into Splatoon 2 and it's been a breeze to go online there too (though I haven't tried playing with friends yet).

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"So it won't turn off if you switch apps or kill the screen?"

 

Yeah that feels like an oversight to me, rather than the intended functionality. I'm confident it'll be fixed. I think. I hope...

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I'm going to do some testing with my headset, maybe I can plug it into my phone and just use Discord as well. I'll give the app a proper go of it tonight, but not being able to lock my phone while its going seems like a pretty poor design hah. 

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Rayman Legends Definitive Edition is coming on 12th September. Apparently there's a demo out already on the EU eShop; to access it simply find the game's tab in the 'coming soon' section and open it up, you'll then see an option to download the demo.

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I've splurged on a few games in the last couple of weeks. Splatoon 2 is great, although I'm away from home for a month with a shocking internet connection so I can't actually play any matches!

 

I also picked up Tumbleseed on sale - it's a stylish game that is going to need some more time to bed in. My instant reaction was 'where's the motion tilt control option?!' Having thought about it some more, you would need to map each side of the balance bar to a separate joycon in order to preserve the same precision, but I think I'd prefer that option (maybe it's there and I need to dig for it.)

 

I also just downloaded Overcooked. Unfortunately, the friend I'm staying with (not a player of video games usually, although he's been taken with MK8) became almost belligerent after about 30 seconds of the tutorial, screaming "This is SHIT!" and refusing to continue. It was really weird! Perhaps he just wasn't up for the stress or the co-op or was struggling with the controls. He demanded we switch to MK8. And I haven't touched Overcooked since :/ I have another friend arriving next week who I hope will be up for it, then we can tempt belligerent friend back after he gets comfortable with the set-up (and jealous that he's not playing😉) Devious!

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Tumbleseed is great. I definitely recommend it to everyone after a big update they did that allows new players to ease into it more. 

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It's infuriating that a portable console in 2017 doesn't support WPA2 Enterprise. Apparently neither the Xbox One nor the PS4 support it either, but they're not moving around between different locations like the Switch is.

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18 hours ago, tabacco said:

It's infuriating that a portable console in 2017 doesn't support WPA2 Enterprise. Apparently neither the Xbox One nor the PS4 support it either, but they're not moving around between different locations like the Switch is.

 

yup, when I'm at university, I tether my Switch to my mobile hotspot. 

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Man, I feel like I just lived through two Switch commercials:

 

1. It's bring your kid to work day, which means a lot of bored kids. I setup my switch on the kickstand and let them play some Mario Kart.

2. On my train home I found 3 other Switch owners and we played Mario Kart and Splatoon 2.

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That's exactly how we felt when I brought my switch to a Canada Day party so we could play Jackbox. At one point it was set up on the kickstand a patio table in my friend's backyard while we played ARMS and we suddenly realized: "Shit, we're the douchebags from the commercial right now..."

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2 hours ago, miffy495 said:

That's exactly how we felt when I brought my switch to a Canada Day party so we could play Jackbox. At one point it was set up on the kickstand a patio table in my friend's backyard while we played ARMS and we suddenly realized: "Shit, we're the douchebags from the commercial right now..."

 

People made fun of those Switch commercials, but they actually showed a few situations that I've used the Switch in. I have brought it to a few parties and played the (reviled but actually fun) 1-2-Switch and Snipperclips, and I've also found myself playing Mario Kart with people randomly in travel situations. It's awesome. 

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I wasn't expecting to use my Switch much in the handheld mode, and indeed did not do so with Breath of the Wild because I preferred to enjoy the scenery on my TV screen and because my play sessions were quite long. With Splatoon 2, I have come to appreciate the fact that I can just pick up the whole console sit on my balcony and play a couple of rounds. I even bought a case for the console, so that I can take it with me when I'm visiting my parents, something that I never expected to do when the console was first revealed. I'm yet to play games on the go or bring the console to a friend's house, but it doesn't feel as impossible anymore as it did when I first saw the commercials.

 

Because of the portability, the speed with which I can wake up the console and  juststart playing, and the fact that I can switch between handheld and TV modes really easily, I'm starting to feel that the Switch may be my favorite console, at least hardware-wise. Of course, I would prefer that it was more powerful, but to be honest, it has not been an issue so far.

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Yeah, there are way too many games now that come out and my first thought is "man, but what if this were on the SWITCH and I could just take it to bed with me when I was done on the TV for the night?"

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