What are you playing on your Switch 2: Play Harder

I really hate turning to a guide, and though ocassionally I'll look soemthing up and it'll be such bullshit I'm like "that's on the game, not me" I usually feel better if I figure something out myself.

Treesmurf wrote:

I've gone back to this little known game called Tears of the Kingdom thanks to the influence of Hyrule Field Report, I want to get all the shrines done at the very least but reckon I'll end up trying to finish all the side quests and Treasure maps in the process.

Yassss! Did we already spoil the shrine reward for you?

Oh I'm a big guide hog. It takes very little for me to lose patience and start looking for walkthroughs. Games are for fun, not for banging my head against a wall until I figure something out.

I'm an impatient old man who feels like his gaming time is limited - in my youth I would've avoided a guide unless stuck for hours, but now, fuck it, I ain't gots to prove stuff you vidjagame

Thatis a rare case where I did regret it a few times - I looked stuff up for Tunic, towards the end when trying to get all the stuff. I worked out a lot of it though, and did feel dumb for the stuff I had to look up, as opposed to a clunky bit of game design.

Oddly talking guides on SS3 as CW and me got different endings in Dragon's Dogma 2. As I looked up what a certain item was for that spent a while getting, that then explained where to use it.

Buskalilly wrote:

Treesmurf wrote:

I've gone back to this little known game called Tears of the Kingdom thanks to the influence of Hyrule Field Report, I want to get all the shrines done at the very least but reckon I'll end up trying to finish all the side quests and Treasure maps in the process.

Yassss! Did we already spoil the shrine reward for you?

Yes but by choice to keep listening/not skipping forward, as ever with TotK it's more about the journey than the destination.

Balladeer wrote:

Games are for fun, not for banging my head against a wall until I figure something out.

That's fair - for me, though, it's more fun overall to struggle for a little bit but then solve something and have that satisfaction.

I decided to put Metroid Prime Remastered on the back-burner for the time being. Truth is, there was a stretch before, during and after the point where you get the Gravity Suit and Thermal Visor that just bored me to tears. Nothing happened for hours. I think I’ve got a long way to go but I’m not massively interested in where it’s all going. I expect I’ll have a chance to return to it later in the year, when the Switch’s release schedule quietens down over the summer.

~

I've moved onto Endless Ocean Luminous. I'd bought and paid for this weeks before the reviews came out, and I was unpleasantly surprised to read into those reviews how simplistic it was, how unvaried it was, and how it had removed features from it's Wii prequels while turning it's story mode into an unworthwhile grind. It honestly didn't cross my mind that they'd regress from what they'd put out fifteen years ago and release a game that's worse. But they have. 

It's still a relaxing and (no pun intended) fluid game that I've sometimes enjoyed. Yet it's randomly-generated oceans lack the defining characteristics of quality game world building, the lack of interactivity with the oceans' creatures drains the game of any realism it might have had, and you can't help but feel that the use of an AI navigator to tell the game's story and voice the game's trivia is a worrying sign of the future for this sort of thing. I predict that the much-maligned story mode will be patched in an update though - it's utterly senseless how even incremental progression is locked behind scanning thousands of individual fish, that's clearly a nonsense design choice. 

It's certainly not the worse game I've ever played but I'm umm'ing and ahh'ing about trading it in to get as much of my money back as I can.

From what I've read, abandoning MPR because it's boring for Endless Ocean Luminous sounds like abandoning Britain because it's wet for Atlantis. Still, if you'd already paid for the ticket to Atlantis before the whole sinking thing, I can see why you'd try to get your money's worth.

Since my last update here I've smashed through Botany Manor and Paranormasight, and ended up flailing around for a next game while I make gradual progress through Pepper Grinder. Of all the 2D platformers I've played on Switch, Pepper Grinder is definitely one of those.

Did you ever look at Promenade? After I saw reviews and thought of you.

I did not, I could swear this is the first I've heard of it.  Nintendo Life reviewed it in February (7/10 but reads like an 8) but I don't remember seeing that review until now.  That said I'm not exactly short on platformers to play: after Pepper Grinder there's the patched-up Penny and Smurf-recommended Splasher for me to try, as well as Planet of Lana if I fancy something a bit different.  So I don't think I'll get onto it any time soon.

Have put on my PSN wishlist but believe it has a physical, so one like Tchia and Pacific Drive if I see the physical somewhere I very well may pick it up.

I've started playing Axiom Verge. I understand it's well regarded, and Metroidvanias are an automatic win for me. But... feels by the numbers so far - it's trying REALLY hard to be Metroid. is the problem that it's a few years old now? Like maybe there have been a dozen more interesting variations on this genre since then.

It's ok, I've always found it a little too retro feeling compared to games that have iterated more on Metroidvania's around the same time & since.

It probably doesn't hold up in a post Hollow knight world but I really enjoyed it at the time, maybe part of the charm for me is the fact it was all done by one guy.

I’ve spent a lot more time playing Endless Ocean Luminous than it probably deserves. There’re three modes, hundreds upon hundreds of fish to observe and randomly generated maps – in theory, it’s the type of game that should last ages. Yet no aspect of it is truly executed well. It’s too dull after a short while, and after this weekend’s debut online event I can see myself trading it in. It’s Temporary Ocean, it’s Limited Ocean, etc etc.
 
I’m just killing time until Paper Mario comes out. I picked up Brawlout from CEX the other day, which is a Smash Bros. clone that must have been one of the earliest Switch games. Competent but forgettable, it’s ironic that the combat lacks punch. I thought that it would see me through until tomorrow, but it hasn’t, and I’ve already moved on from it.

Jimbob wrote:

is the problem that it's a few years old now? Like maybe there have been a dozen more interesting variations on this genre since then.

That’s sort of how I feel about Clive ‘n' Wrench, which I started last weekend after being done with Brawlout. It’s the development project of just one guy, a project he started in 2013. Had it released in a finished state in, say, 2016 on Wii U, I think it would have been very positively received. But by the time it eventually launched last year, there’d been countless 3D collect-a-thon platformers that have done every aspect of Clive ‘n' Wrench collect-a-thon platforming quite a bit better. The guy who made it must be simultaneously so proud of his effort, but so disappointed that his game got such a critical arse-kicking because there’s simply many more successful examples of the genre nowadays.

My list of games only has two in common with the last time we posted, so: new slate time!  Guess the theme.

Tunic - While this moody adventure is admittedly still on my list years later, I've made substantial progress recently.  It's still nails.
Worldless - This I haven't made progress with.  Oh well.  When I'm next up for a moody space Metroidvania with turn-based battling, I'll get back to it.  It's good, I think.
Animal Well - Another moody Metroidvania.  After getting all hopeful about it in the eShop thread, I've actually found it hard to go back to.  It's the high difficulty and grim mood that put me off.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes - Slink around a mansion/hotel/museum/thing lifted only by the courtyard's dog, solving reasonably tough puzzles and crying out for a back button for the menus.  It's all done in a moody noir style with hints of time travel.  The plot will be stupid: I don't know if I'll ever find out how much.
1000xResist - Moody walking sim about a Cantonese teenager who survives a pandemic, clones herself, and becomes god.  You play a clone, finding out more about her and how she's actually (it is heavily implied) a piece of s**t.  Not a barrel of laughs.

And for the combo breaker, Penny's Big Breakaway.  This looks fine on Switch now (I've put it into performance mode), and I desperately needed something cheerier to offset all the moodiness.  I don't like moody games!  I don't know how I've ended up playing fi- no six of them!  (I've also started Strange Horticulture with The Lady, a moody plant shop sim. )  And yet, part of my thinks Penny might be the game I give up first.  I've never played a Sonic game but this is how I imagine they feel to control: constantly pushing you to Go Fast with one hand while telling you to explore levels with the other.  It's a dichotomy that I'm not sure sits too well.

TL;DR: my Switch has randomly ended up feeling quite grim and I don't like it. I hope you're playing more cheerful things yourselves.

Penny does have a bit of Sonic feel, but it's more on along the lines IMO of a Billy Hatcher, Balan and those sorts from a Yuji Naka then an actual game, like Sonic X Shadow should be a game you play.

Balladeer wrote:

TL;DR: my Switch has randomly ended up feeling quite grim and I don't like it.  I hope you're playing more cheerful things yourselves.

I've been known to enjoy a grim game (Tunic and Animal Well are certainly on my radar. At the moment, my main game is Super Mario RPG, which so far has enough charm to make up for some of the old-school JRPG awkwardness. I've also been dipping into DOOM, the original 1993 game, as I have the whole series on my Switch and the trailer for the new one enticed me to get back to it. I'm nearing the end of the third episode. After that there's a 4th episode that was added later, but I might skip it for now and jump to DOOM II.

Grim: The realities of WWII.

Cheerful thing: You get to snipe Nazi bastards in all kinds of different but satisfying ways.

If you couldn't tell I played through the entirety of Sniper Elite V2 remastered yesterday, this is probably one of the most quintessential double A games out there. I am now going to eventually get the third and fourth games for Switch as well.

masofdas wrote:

Penny does have a bit of Sonic feel, but it's more on along the lines IMO of a Billy Hatcher, Balan and those sorts from a Yuji Naka then an actual game, like Sonic X Shadow should be a game you play.

It’s likelier that I’ll complete Xenoblade Chronicles 2 a hundred times back-to-back without pause than it is that Balladeer will try Sonic X Shadow Generations.
 
I can’t quite my finger on what Penny’s Big Breakaway reminds me of. It’s not so unique that there’s ‘nothing quite like it’, but by the same token there’s no straightforward comparison. Thinking about it as I type, Sonic Lost World on the Wii U is a deep cut and not a fondly remembered game, but it shares a lot of Penny’s Big Breakaway’s clever momentum-based game design and colourfulness.

~

I wasn’t chuffed to find out that it released at £24.99, but a pre-release 15% discount and seven quid’s worth of expiring Gold Points gave me the shove to download the Rocket Knight Adventures: Re-Sparked collection. I’ve been waiting long enough for it, so why wait another six months for a sale. Unlike with many other well-regarded and unlicensed Konami games, I’ve no clue why the three included games didn’t quickly appear on Wii Virtual Console and XBLA back when those were the new thing. They hadn’t actually appeared again since they released in the ‘90s, they’ve been stuck on Mega Drive and SNES for thirty years. I’m happy to have them on a current-gen system now though, and Rocket Knight Adventures in particular is a sensational game that’s made better with the modern-day conveniences of rewinding the gameplay.

I think I'd forgotten that Penny is from the folks behind Sonic Mania. That explains a lot actually.

Buskalilly wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

TL;DR: my Switch has randomly ended up feeling quite grim and I don't like it.  I hope you're playing more cheerful things yourselves.

I've been known to enjoy a grim game (Tunic and Animal Well are certainly on my radar. At the moment, my main game is Super Mario RPG, which so far has enough charm to make up for some of the old-school JRPG awkwardness.

You should definitely try Tunic Buska, as a lover of Souls and Zelda I think it'd work for you (although I don't know how you'd feel about the more obscure puzzly bits, and people have mixed views about the combat. I like it). "Enough charm to make up for some of the old-school JRPG awkwardness", meanwhile, is bang on.

Tunic is something I'm very interested in, don't worry!

I went back to Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth as my new game to play on the train, and was surprised to see that one of the primary locations is Nakano Broadway, an otaku shopping mall ten minutes' walk from Mercy's apartment. It's captured pretty well in-game.

I remember that from Digimon Cyber Sleuth! The franchise is clearly really fond of that place.