Nintendo Switch

[John E. Dynamite]

Cardboard templates will be offered for free. It's for kids with nerdy parents, nothing wrong with that.

[twiztor]

i think this is a really neat idea. if i had kids, i'd be all over this. of course, it would probably be destroyed, but still, the concept is intriguing.

[turk128]

The more I read about the LABO, the more surprises I stumble over.

People in the DIY/crafting community are saying that the price is not high at all; the cardboard seems to be crafting cardboard which is far from cheap. If anything it seems the perforated, templated stuff Nintendo is providing is cheaper in cost than stuff of similar quality/complexity. And that's not even factoring in the cost of the software included.

And the people who deal with STEM education stuff say this is not expensive at all even if you factor in a Switch.

LABO is seriously thinking out of the box stuff that has great potential to have more impact than just in the gaming industry. I'd love to see Nintendo spin off a division dealing with edutainment stuff, going back to their roots and all.

[Mr Harms]

3 hours ago, turk128 said:

out of the box stuff

heh, i see what you did there. 

When i first saw the video I didn't know what to make of it. I just thought "it can do that?" Then i was like "its cardboard... in 2018". But then I started to think of the possibilities. IF this tech is opened up beyond just the games made for the cardboard in mind, it means you could be making your own peripherals. It doesn't have to stop at cardboard, really. Any material in the same template would work, in theory. Its genius. 

[Death From Above]

This is gonna look super primitive in 20 years when plastic home 3D printing is far, far more commonplace. For now I'm on "I don't get it", but at the same time, I think about that and wonder where this could go someday.

[Kevin Wilson]

Its 100% not for me but I have no issue with them doing something unique and built towards children. Now I wouldn't mind if they now focused on online/VC/etc. since its been almost a year which is kinda crazy, but I'll assume that the team that made LABO isn't the same team working on that other stuff so no harm done.

[turk128]

The team making LABO is probably in their own bio dome secluded from the rest of the others. Making their of therapeutically medicinal plants too... must have been hard to keep the others from participating.

[Contentious C]

Hell, I was thinking of nabbing a Switch with part of my tax refund this year, and this might have just cemented it. The Variety Kit could be neat.

Well, that, and now it's also essentially impossible for me to upgrade my computer, because graphics cards have absolutely skyrocketed due to STUPID FUCKING CRYPTOCURRENCY. I should have just bought one months ago at ~570ish and been (briefly) in debt over it. FML.

[John E. Dynamite]

Current Indies-on-Switch Forecast:

Celeste is supposedly A) a very great game that is netting the highest scores of the admittedly short year despite B) not being about frozen pizza?

Night in the Woods is still the funniest, most heartfelt, and therefore greatest rust belt furries trapped in a late-stage-capitalism-slash-eldritch-or-is-it?-existential-nightmare walking simulator of all time.

Crypt of the Necrodance is currently fucking up my girlfriend's life on the PS4 but if you want it to fuck up your life both at home and on the go, it's here for you.

Hollow Knight is going to come out like, any day now.

Owlboy is probably gonna come out even before that.

I don't even know what Kentucky Route Zero is but apparently I should play it.

The final Shovel Knight expansion drops in the next few months but I guess I should wait to buy them all together in some nice package years down the line (even though that's what I thought Treasure Trove was supposed to be).

And then whatever Fe is and whatever Inside is (willfully ignorant on that one as I'm told it's spoiler-y) and I guess Read Only Memories looks cool if I want a visual novel. I'll never have time to play all this stuff against my insurmountable backlog but maybe you will.

 

[Death From Above]

I don't even know how to describe Kentucky Route Zero. It isn't really a game in any meaningful sense of the term. But after playing through it I've probably thought about it as much as any game in the last couple years, and at the end of the day that's what counts. It's the closest thing I can imagine to if David Lynch and the Coen Brothers got together and made an art game. I've really never seen anything else like it.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

i'll keep it brief cuz I know I yell about it a lot, but the best summary I have for Kentucky Route Zero is "an adventure game from an alternate universe where developers loved live theater instead of action/comedy movies." It is more lyrical than textual. it's also just kind of a cool place to hang out, even if it gets real scary sometimes.

[Cliff Hanger]

1 hour ago, John E. Dynamite said:

Current Indies-on-Switch Forecast:

 

Crypt of the Necrodance is currently fucking up my girlfriend's life on the PS4 but if you want it to fuck up your life both at home and on the go, it's here for you.

 

 

I love and hate both Necrodancer and Enter the Gungeon.  They do so many awesome things, but I am just so fucking bad at both after hours of practice that I find it hard to get invested in trying again.

[Victator]

Earlier tonight my right joy con stopped working. I can't get it to register at all. Anybody have an idea how to deal with this? The initial Google stuff did not work. I just got the switch brand new in January. I have a pro controller so at least I can keep playing Zelda. 

[Victator]

Well I thought it was more serious than it was since I saw articles on google about this. But it turned out my nephew accidentally turned it off. 

While I'm here, I am psyched to play Hyrule Warriors finally and Mega Man Legacy Collection in May. 
 

[Craig H]

I can't tell if I should get Zelda or not. On the one hand, it looks great and people seem to love it. On the other, people have said it's really shallow, you do the same stuff repeatedly, and the rain system is a piece of shit. It also doesn't look like it's going to go down in price. So is it worth the $60 or not?

[Contentious C]

If you want to play a Zelda game that's nothing like a Zelda game, you should get it.

I've been totally underwhelmed by the two boss fights I've done so far - way, way, way too easy. There are moments where I play bits of it and think, "Aah, this is a Zelda game after all," and then a monster I've whupped 15 times prior goes bonkers on me and I'm dead. 

The feeling I have about it is that this reminds me of the Bond movies; in a vacuum, I'd enjoy it, but it's so blatant that they tried to cannibalize aspects of similar things (Bourne with respect to movies/Witcher-Skyrim-DSouls with respect to games) that I feel like it missed something essential about itself along the way.

[odessasteps]

33 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I can't tell if I should get Zelda or not. On the one hand, it looks great and people seem to love it. On the other, people have said it's really shallow, you do the same stuff repeatedly, and the rain system is a piece of shit. It also doesn't look like it's going to go down in price. So is it worth the $60 or not?

I would say it is worth it if you plan on exploring and looking for every shrine and what not. I played methodically and got like over 70 hours before beating it. And after that, I did stuff I missed and the DLC which I still haven't finished. 

I know Matt was "speeding" through it, so he might have a different opinion.

[SirSmUgly]

Breath of the Wild is a perfectly fine open-world game. People talk about how revolutionary it is, so if you go into it expecting stuff that's never been done in an open-world game, you will be disappointed. It does some cool stuff with physics, to be sure, but that stuff can be bypassed unless you're using it to solve a specific puzzle. 

At the same time, it's a big departure from Zelda's typical "find item, go somewhere that used to be inaccessible to go to a dungeon and find the next item to reach the next inaccessible location" gameplay loop. Everything is opened up from near the beginning of the game. You can go anywhere with the proper planning.

Still, it's a game with weak combat and fairly weak puzzles via the shrines and other hidden stuff. I think that if you like hunting for stuff, gathering things, and doing some light crafting, you will probably like this game. The joy of puzzles fizzles out pretty quickly. There are some environmental puzzles, but they go from surprising to find to repetitive (and to get max capacity for weapons and shields, you have to find solve quite a few of them). 

In short, it's an impressive attempt at an open-world game for a company like Nintendo, who doesn't excel at them, but it's not nearly as good as one of the truly great open-world games.

[Matt D]

11 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said:

Breath of the Wild is a perfectly fine open-world game. People talk about how revolutionary it is, so if you go into it expecting stuff that's never been done in an open-world game, you will be disappointed. It does some cool stuff with physics, to be sure, but that stuff can be bypassed unless you're using it to solve a specific puzzle. 

At the same time, it's a big departure from Zelda's typical "find item, go somewhere that used to be inaccessible to go to a dungeon and find the next item to reach the next inaccessible location" gameplay loop. Everything is opened up from near the beginning of the game. You can go anywhere with the proper planning.

Still, it's a game with weak combat and fairly weak puzzles via the shrines and other hidden stuff. I think that if you like hunting for stuff, gathering things, and doing some light crafting, you will probably like this game. The joy of puzzles fizzles out pretty quickly. There are some environmental puzzles, but they go from surprising to find to repetitive (and to get max capacity for weapons and shields, you have to find solve quite a few of them). 

In short, it's an impressive attempt at an open-world game for a company like Nintendo, who doesn't excel at them, but it's not nearly as good as one of the truly great open-world games.

What’s the best open world game?

[odessasteps]

for me, Red Dead is #1, but i think it hits a bunch if metatextual buttons for me that something like GTA does not (although i loved Vice City).

[SirSmUgly]

13 minutes ago, Matt D said:

What’s the best open world game?

If we're talking 3D, I'm thinking of games like Red Dead and Fallout: New Vegas. I think that New Vegas has a pretty strong case for being the best game ever made. The easiest knock against it would be the technical aspects, which is exactly what Nintendo excels at.

Obsidian, on the other hand, excels at strong narrative storytelling (a wonderful thematic string moves through the DLC) and complex activities. If you look at some of the quest lines, like the ones that intersect each other when you're at the Ultra-Luxe casino, your options for resolving the quest lines are numerous, both violent and non-violent, and allow you to actually role-play a unique character. If you give Black Isle/Obsidian an open-world RPG, whether in 2D or 3D, they will nail those things.

Red Dead has a good argument based on a few of these merits as well, though it trades the complexity of quests for better combat and much better presentation. 

I don't think that the physics aspect of BotW via the Sheikah Slate are integrated enough into the gameplay outside of puzzle rooms to elevate its otherwise mediocre combat. The game itself is fine-tuned for performance (which is especially impressive when you run it on the Switch via handheld) but is narratively weak and full of poor quests. Building Tarrey Town is the most interesting, complex quest in the game (well, outside of Defeat Ganon, preparation for which IS the whole game), which doesn't bode well for the quests. 

I hate to make this comparison because it is played out, but I personally think that Horizon: Zero Dawn had a stronger narrative (well, dual-narrative, really) and much more interesting combat (that unfortunately was made too easy via upgrade trees). There isn't a quest in HZD as complex as Tarrey Town, but on the bulk, the quests are more interesting and some of the specific challenges (like corrupted combat challenges) are far more engaging than any of the combat in BotW. If I can't see BotW as a game that is better than HZD, which is decidedly NOT one of the best open worlds ever made in gaming, I don't see how it competes with Rockstar, Obsidian, or Black Isle games on that level. 

[Victator]

5 hours ago, Craig H said:

I can't tell if I should get Zelda or not. On the one hand, it looks great and people seem to love it. On the other, people have said it's really shallow, you do the same stuff repeatedly, and the rain system is a piece of shit. It also doesn't look like it's going to go down in price. So is it worth the $60 or not?

 It is nothing close to shallow. It is this huge world and very true to the original Zelda. The fun just comes in exploring. I went all over the world before I was powerful enough. Jury rigging weapons and exploiting my slate to get further than I should. 

One night in the more tropical area I wanted to get to a tower. But it was beyond my stamina. So I kept trying to find a cliff tp leap from. But I could not find a way so I kept going and found more secrets. 

It is one of the best game experiences I have ever had. 

[John E. Dynamite]

Smash for Switch got announced but that's got nothing on new Wario Ware.

[turk128]

On 2/21/2018 at 4:18 PM, Smelly McUgly said:

If we're talking 3D, I'm thinking of games like Red Dead and Fallout: New Vegas. I think that New Vegas has a pretty strong case for being the best game ever made.

Countless hours replaying New Vegas and discovering new things every time yet I hit a blank wall of apathy whenever I try to replay Fallout 4. It's a gorgeous world (some damn fine mods) but why the fuck should I care when...

Spoiler

Everyone, all the factions, are assholes. Assholes who want me to go genocide on their enemies.  Friends I made within other factions would turn on my ass without giving me any option to cash in my brownie points with them as if everyone is connected to a hive mind. I work my ass off to become the head bastard of a faction... doesn't matter, your powerless because of GM railroad, bitch.

I think I hate Fallout 4, it has all the dressings and tools to outdo New Vegas yet they regressed to the ass backwards story flaws from Fallout 3. And what really sucks is they're never going to give Obsidian a chance to do a New Vegas with the new engine.

[tbarrie]

1 hour ago, turk128 said:

And what really sucks is they're never going to give Obsidian a chance to do a New Vegas with the new engine.

Do we know that for sure? I've been hoping a better creative team gets a shot at playing with the improved game mechanics of Fallout 4.