Video Games: May the force of your wallet be with you

[KiDisaster]

I'll say one thing about portable play for the Switch, I really wish the screen was bigger. I had a hard time trying to play Zelda on it personally. 

[Guy Kilmore]

38 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

I can easily take my ps4 around though for example.  It weighs maybe 5 pounds and all you need is an hdmi port and an outlet, I think people wildly overestimate how hard it is to move a console around,  The gimmick of the Switch is that you can play the switch like a bigger gameboy.  Nice I guess.  But just a gimmick.  As for the those saying the first party games are what makes it.... they did for the Wii too.

So are you able to take your PS4 and play it on the bus during a roadtrip, or while waiting at the airport?  I left for the weekend on a trip and my wife and I got plenty of play time out of the switch that we wouldn't have been able to out of our PS4.  It was a load of fun and it works really well!

[Caligula_K3]

I'd also say that the Wii's motion controls weren't a gimmick either. They were a feature that allowed you to play games in different ways than ever before. They could be used in a gimmicky way, sure (there were so many games where motion controls just meant waggling the remote), but in games like Wii Sports, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Metroid Prime 3, Okami, etc... they made the games much more fun and immersive. The wii mote and nunchuck was the best console control scheme for first person shooter games in general. I think it's cool that Nintendo uses its systems to experiment with how we play games, even if sometimes those experiments don't work out, like the Wii U.

[The Anti-Targ]

23 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I can only imagine that they'll port Fallout 4, though it's conjecture. Bethesda loves doing that sort of thing, and if they're already done with Skyrim it shouldn't be that hard of a lift save on memory issues.

 

By many accounts Skyrim is not a particularly good quality port on Switch. For one thing Bethesda games are buggy AF on the best of hardware, and they are too lazy to fix the bugs even for loyal fans let alone when porting for a whole new audience. Switch benefited from the fact that Skyrim was originally on PS3/360 and Switch is more powerful tech than PS3/360. FO4 on the other hand has no "low-fi" 7th gen version that can be readily upscaled for Switch. Bethesda would have to significantly downscale the PC, PS4 or Xb one version to squeeze it into the Switch. IMO Bethesda is too lazy and probably too lax on QA to be capable of porting a functional version of FO4 to Switch.

And now for something completely different:

The MSM and it's continued bullshit coverage of video games. This shit makes me even madder than lootboxes and the flooding of Steam with games that are nothing more than shitty asset flips. I call on Aussie gamers to do everything that is legal to take Channel 9 News down several pegs over the shit they pulled.

 

[briantw]

18 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I'd also say that the Wii's motion controls weren't a gimmick either. They were a feature that allowed you to play games in different ways than ever before. They could be used in a gimmicky way, sure (there were so many games where motion controls just meant waggling the remote), but in games like Wii Sports, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Metroid Prime 3, Okami, etc... they made the games much more fun and immersive. The wii mote and nunchuck was the best console control scheme for first person shooter games in general. I think it's cool that Nintendo uses its systems to experiment with how we play games, even if sometimes those experiments don't work out, like the Wii U.

Main problem was that the Wii's motion controls didn't work well enough to be anything more than a gimmick.  They had great potential, but the tech just wasn't there yet when the system launched, and motion controls got shoehorned into a lot of games that didn't need them and were only made worse by their presence.  If the tech had been better, like when they released that thing you could attach to the Wiimote that improved them significantly, I think it would have gone a long way toward making it feel like more than a gimmick.  But by the time they added that improvement, most of us had already moved on to other consoles.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, briantw said:

Main problem was that the Wii's motion controls didn't work well enough to be anything more than a gimmick.  They had great potential, but the tech just wasn't there yet when the system launched, and motion controls got shoehorned into a lot of games that didn't need them and were only made worse by their presence.  If the tech had been better, like when they released that thing you could attach to the Wiimote that improved them significantly, I think it would have gone a long way toward making it feel like more than a gimmick.  But by the time they added that improvement, most of us had already moved on to other consoles.

Motion controls were [are] a gimmick because they are horrible for most gaming applications, evidenced by the fact that almost no games today use motion controls as the main form of control, and the variations on motion control that all the main hardware makers have tried have never found application outside of niche games. Same goes for VR.

Gamers, by and large, don't want to do a lot of physical activity when gaming (and for practical reasons, because if you are going to game for several hours, you don't want to be doing substantial amounts of physical effort AND having intense concentration at the same time), they want the illusion of doing physical activity. So mainstream game controls won't evolved beyond KB+M / controllers until someone figures out how to do a Total Recall type of UI that does not fry the brain and cause schizoid embolisms.

[Ramsay B.]

On 1/15/2018 at 0:26 AM, Kalbear said:

I think people are underestimating how awesome it is to play good games basically anywhere you want. That's a big sell for the switch. And easy money for devs. 

The mobile aspect is the only reason I got a Switch. Playing Zelda on my downtime at work was too appealing to pass up. In fact I haven't even tried to play it on a tv because I just leave it in my locker at work. 

So I'm about 7 hours into The Witcher 3 and loving it. Don't know what took me so long to start it?

[Slurktan]

21 hours ago, Guy Kilmore said:

So are you able to take your PS4 and play it on the bus during a roadtrip, or while waiting at the airport?  I left for the weekend on a trip and my wife and I got plenty of play time out of the switch that we wouldn't have been able to out of our PS4.  It was a load of fun and it works really well!

Did you miss the part where I said the Switch was a bigger gameboy and the PS4 wasn't?  My point with the PS4 was that when using a TV the PS4 is just as easy as a switch to be bring to a friends place or a hotel or whatever.  The PS4 (Or Xbone) isn't a gameboy so you miss out on the gimmick of playing it not on a tv, in return you have a much more powerful system that plays games that aren't made worse for being on a switch.

I'm not saying the Switch is bad.  It isn't.  It is a gameboy.  That's it.

[Werthead]

21 hours ago, RumHam said:

Also have they said anything about Fallout 4 for Switch? That one I would probably not re-buy as it was pretty shallow and underwhelming. I'd love a port of New Vegas though. 

I think we can safely say that Bethesda will never do anything for New Vegas. They won't do a remaster, they won't do ports, they never fixed several egregious bugs and they barely even acknowledge it exists. And it's only one year older than Skyrim, which they've ported to everything bar the Commodore 64. Bethesda seem quite irritated by the fact that New Vegas has had stronger critical legs than Fallout 4 and now regularly tops polls of the "Best Fallout Game", not to mention the shitty way they treated Obsidian (who nearly went bust after the shenanigans) being called out.

[Mexal]

I just recently bought a Switch so I could play Zelda: BOTW. Thoroughly enjoying it. I'm not a big gamer but this is right up my alley.

[KiDisaster]

So apparently Playground Games (the folks behind the Forza Horizon games) are working on a new mainline Fable game. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-01-17-sources-microsoft-plots-fable-return

The first Fable is one of my favorite games of all time and the sequels were very disappointing, so I'd really love for this to turn out well but I dunno how a studio who've previously only made racing games will do with a big open world RPG. Then again, I thought the same about the Killzone devs making Horizon and they knocked that out of the park so...maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised again. 

No Molyneux to Molyneux things up this time is already a pleasant change. 

[briantw]

34 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I think we can safely say that Bethesda will never do anything for New Vegas. They won't do a remaster, they won't do ports, they never fixed several egregious bugs and they barely even acknowledge it exists. And it's only one year older than Skyrim, which they've ported to everything bar the Commodore 64. Bethesda seem quite irritated by the fact that New Vegas has had stronger critical legs than Fallout 4 and now regularly tops polls of the "Best Fallout Game", not to mention the shitty way they treated Obsidian (who nearly went bust after the shenanigans) being called out.

They're clearly still salty that another company so easily made a better Fallout game than anything they've been capable of.

[aceluby]

1 hour ago, Slurktan said:

Did you miss the part where I said the Switch was a bigger gameboy and the PS4 wasn't?  My point with the PS4 was that when using a TV the PS4 is just as easy as a switch to be bring to a friends place or a hotel or whatever.  The PS4 (Or Xbone) isn't a gameboy so you miss out on the gimmick of playing it not on a tv, in return you have a much more powerful system that plays games that aren't made worse for being on a switch.

I'm not saying the Switch is bad.  It isn't.  It is a gameboy.  That's it.

For the love of god.  Mobile gaming isn't a 'gimmick'.  Stop arguing that it is.  It's a stupid argument.

[RumHam]

This Nintendo Labo thing looks completely batshit in the best possible way.

 

Gonna have to get it for my niece and nephew, they'll get a kick out of building the stuff. I do wonder how well the cardboard contraptions will hold up in the hands of pre-teens. 

[Inigima]

On 1/16/2018 at 4:13 PM, Caligula_K3 said:

I'd also say that the Wii's motion controls weren't a gimmick either. They were a feature that allowed you to play games in different ways than ever before. They could be used in a gimmicky way, sure (there were so many games where motion controls just meant waggling the remote), but in games like Wii Sports, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Metroid Prime 3, Okami, etc... they made the games much more fun and immersive. The wii mote and nunchuck was the best console control scheme for first person shooter games in general. I think it's cool that Nintendo uses its systems to experiment with how we play games, even if sometimes those experiments don't work out, like the Wii U.

I disagree completely with this. I enjoyed Wii motion controls in zero (0) Wii games, especially Skyward Sword -- a game I liked in terms of design but never got far in specifically because the motion controls absolutely ruined the game for me. I hated Wii Sports, Prime 3 was my least favorite Prime game largely because of the motion controls, and the motion controls turned Okami from a middling game into a bad one. The Wii was a piece of shit and the Wiimote and Nunchuk were the worst parts of it. The vast majority of the time I spent on my Wii was on the Virtual Console, overpaying for games I had bought before.

The mobility of the Switch -- the ability to take it out of the dock and pick it up where I left off -- is nice but I use it only very occasionally. Surprisingly, though, the fact that I can just suspend any game and instantly put the system to sleep, then come back hours or days later and pick up where I left off turns out to be absolutely phenomenal.

[Guy Kilmore]

21 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Did you miss the part where I said the Switch was a bigger gameboy and the PS4 wasn't?  My point with the PS4 was that when using a TV the PS4 is just as easy as a switch to be bring to a friends place or a hotel or whatever.  The PS4 (Or Xbone) isn't a gameboy so you miss out on the gimmick of playing it not on a tv, in return you have a much more powerful system that plays games that aren't made worse for being on a switch.

I'm not saying the Switch is bad.  It isn't.  It is a gameboy.  That's it.

It really isn't, I own both, the PS4 is much harder to get connected to a TV then a Switch.  You can do it, but the PS4 is not designed for portability.  The Switch is....and you can play it on the go.

[Guy Kilmore]

3 hours ago, Inigima said:

The mobility of the Switch -- the ability to take it out of the dock and pick it up where I left off -- is nice but I use it only very occasionally. Surprisingly, though, the fact that I can just suspend any game and instantly put the system to sleep, then come back hours or days later and pick up where I left off turns out to be absolutely phenomenal.

That is a pretty cool feature and one I make use of frequently.  

[Caligula_K3]

7 hours ago, Inigima said:

I disagree completely with this. I enjoyed Wii motion controls in zero (0) Wii games, especially Skyward Sword -- a game I liked in terms of design but never got far in specifically because the motion controls absolutely ruined the game for me. I hated Wii Sports, Prime 3 was my least favorite Prime game largely because of the motion controls, and the motion controls turned Okami from a middling game into a bad one. The Wii was a piece of shit and the Wiimote and Nunchuk were the worst parts of it. The vast majority of the time I spent on my Wii was on the Virtual Console, overpaying for games I had bought before.

The mobility of the Switch -- the ability to take it out of the dock and pick it up where I left off -- is nice but I use it only very occasionally. Surprisingly, though, the fact that I can just suspend any game and instantly put the system to sleep, then come back hours or days later and pick up where I left off turns out to be absolutely phenomenal.

Eh, I won't deny that the motion controls didn't work for everyone. But they (and the first/second party games, as always) were the main appeal of the system. I didn't buy mine until I'd played a ton of Wii Sports/Zelda on friends' systems, and pretty much everyone I knew loved it. As for individual games- I know that people had mixed results with Skyward Sword (whereas I thought the controls made it have the best combat of any Zelda), but I think it's pretty unanimously agreed that the Metroid Prime 3 controls were fantastic, and a real improvement over the Gamecube Prime games' controls and dual stick FPS controls in general. Of course, YMMV, and clearly it did, but it seems weird to claim these controls were a gimmick when they were the main purpose of the system itself. And the Wii had so many fantastic games- I got a ton of use out of mine, and still have it and use it. 

[RumHam]

The motion controls for Splatoon are great. Next best thing to mouse and keyboard. It was really hard switching back to controllers for other FPSs.

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, Guy Kilmore said:

It really isn't, I own both, the PS4 is much harder to get connected to a TV then a Switch.  You can do it, but the PS4 is not designed for portability.  The Switch is....and you can play it on the go.

Um, plug it into a power socket, plug the HDMI cable into the TV, done. I'm not sure how much easier it can get. If you have the Switch dock already connected to the TV then yes, it is much easier to connect Switch to the TV. But if you are taking the whole thing to a new location to play it on another TV, then wouldn't Switch and PS4 have pretty much exactly the same level of technical savvy required to set up?

It is true, PS4 is not designed for portability. Indeed if you lug it around too much you are likely to cause some internal damage and break it. I'm guessing that in the interests of saving on cost and weight, some components of the PS4 are a bit fragile, because you are expected to plug it into a TV and leave it there for its entire useful lifetime. Switch is no doubt engineered to be able to take a bit more of a beating than PS4 (or Xb one), because you are expected to take it to exotic locations and expose it to all sorts of stresses that a home console is not intended to experience. But to suggest that connecting PS4 (or Xb one) to a TV is challenging in any way is rather overstating things.