Nintendo Switch #4: More than 1 year later

[bambamcam4ever]

And out of curiosity, how many main line Nintendo franchises do you all care about? I've basically realized that while I consider myself to be a Nintendo fan that I actually don't care about the majority of first party Nintendo franchises.

As in...

3D Zelda, 2D Zelda, 3D Mario, and Mario Kart = must buy.

2D Mario, Metroid, Kirby, Yoshi, Mario Party, Donkey Kong, and Star Fox = I've collectively bought two games in these series in the past probably decade, and they were both 2D Marios, though I'm open to playing them.

Pokémon, Super Smash Bros, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Fire Emblem, and Animal Crossing = honestly zero interest in any of them, though I did buy Brawl for the Wii.

The only things that convince me to buy their consoles every time is Zelda, 3D Mario, and Metroid Prime.

I will usually get Pokemon, Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Pikmin, plus Fire Emblem although that series is going in a worrisome direction.

I'd add F-zero but they decided to stop making that series after releasing the best racing game ever.

 

[aleshemsky83]

messed around with the switch lite side by side with the switch as best buy. The screen on the switch lite feels suprisingly compareable to the switch in size despire sounding way smaller on paper (5.5 vs 6.2).

 

[Jovavic]

I picked up the Switch so I can check out Breath of the Wild. Anyone have any tips? I've only done 1 Divine Beast so far (the Zora one).

Go the northwest area of the map and do the Beast that's there cuz the power it gives you after you defeat it helps alot.

The path to Zoraland is a good place to get some arrows

 

[Randy Butternubs]

And out of curiosity, how many main line Nintendo franchises do you all care about? I've basically realized that while I consider myself to be a Nintendo fan that I actually don't care about the majority of first party Nintendo franchises.

As in...

3D Zelda, 2D Zelda, 3D Mario, and Mario Kart = must buy.

2D Mario, Metroid, Kirby, Yoshi, Mario Party, Donkey Kong, and Star Fox = I've collectively bought two games in these series in the past probably decade, and they were both 2D Marios, though I'm open to playing them.

Pokémon, Super Smash Bros, Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Fire Emblem, and Animal Crossing = honestly zero interest in any of them, though I did buy Brawl for the Wii.

I like the core three: Mario/Zelda/Pokémon. I hope for a return of Star Fox. Love Smash. MOTHER is finished but one can dream. Fire Emblem is great with Three Houses.

don’t care at all for Pikmin. Ambivalent towards F-Zero but hope for a comeback. DK/Yoshi are usually good games along with Kirby. Love Splatoon. AC is good though I’m not as hyped for the new game as some people are.

I’m sure I missed a few franchises...

For non-handhelds (I don't use Switch in handheld):

I almost always buy Zelda, 3D Mario, Mario Kart, and Smash Brothers. The only exception of mine since GameCube may be Twilight Princess.

I missed Metroid Prime 2 (and Federation Forces...), but I think I've owned all the Metroid games since MP2. Including Samus Returns.

I missed the Animal Crossing for the the Wii and Wii U, but bought the 3DS game and plan on buying the Switch game.

I've never played a Fire Emblem game. The last Pokemon game I owned was X, and I got that for free somehow. Before that Pokemon, the last one I owned was Yellow or Snap.

I loved F-Zero GX and am astonished they haven't released a new game.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

F-Zero doesn't sell.

Racing games are very niche: it seems what sells is fun/whacky stuff like Mario Kart and realistic stuff like Gran Turismo/Forza.

 

[Gecklund]

The only things that convince me to buy their consoles every time is Zelda, 3D Mario, and Metroid Prime.

I will usually get Pokemon, Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Pikmin, plus Fire Emblem although that series is going in a worrisome direction.

I'd add F-zero but they decided to stop making that series after releasing the best racing game ever.

For Fire Emblem, Three Houses was absolutely amazing. Probably second best for my favorite switch game so far with Zelda first.

 

[Pilky01]

F-Zero doesn't sell.

Racing games are very niche: it seems what sells is fun/whacky stuff like Mario Kart and realistic stuff like Gran Turismo/Forza.

Futuristic high speed racers are dull.

Arcade racers are the absolute best and they used to be all over Nintendo consoles. Not so much anymore.

The San Francisco Rush series, Beetle Adventure Racing....those are my all time favourite types of racers.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

plus Fire Emblem although that series is going in a worrisome direction.

I was saying that before I played Three Houses. I'm quite fine with the direction Fire Emblem is heading now, though. Strong candidate for my GotY.



My Nintendo preferences are definitely going to be different than most.
Tier 1
Fire Emblem - I wanted these games to come over so badly before they ever did, but by the time they did I was basically out of Nintendo's ecosystem so I didn't dive in until I finally got a 3DS in part to play Awakening. In the early GBA days you could put the (System) Wars series here. Turn-based strategy is my jam.
Pokemon - This hasn't always been the case, but I was all about the first generation and when I revisited the series deep into my college days I fell back in love with it. I don't always love like half of the shit that they do in each generation, but the core concept and gameplay just work so well that I can put up with it. I imagine whatever disappointment I have with the direction of Sword & Shield will melt away once I start playing it.
2D Donkey Kong - I loved the DKC games back in the day and I loved what Retro did when they brought the series back. Even if the playable Kongs weren't always good, I've always had a blast with these games and DKC2 is one of the few games from my childhood that I still revisit regularly.
Hmmm...the last one of these series developed by Nintendo proper was Donkey Kong '94. That legitimately surprises me considering most everything I loved up through 1994 was made by Nintendo.

Tier 2
Super Smash Bros - Along with Rock Band these games will go down to define gaming in my college years. The only reason its not higher is because I'm not 22 anymore and opportunities to play the game the way I best enjoy it are few and far between. Ultimate is the best version of the series, but I've played it maybe 5% as much as either Melee or Brawl even with it having a good single-player mode.
2D Mario - These were my absolute favorite things in existence as a child. This is also why I don't buy systems for one game anymore...I bought a DS specifically because of 'New' Super Mario Bros and never came close to finishing it and have had little to no interest to play any of its numerous sequels. The 'New' games can die in a ditch...but the second they finally move to the next generation of 2D Mario I will be first in line again. So long as its for a piece of hardware that I already own.
Mario Kart - I usually love these games, but that fact rarely is reflected in play time. MK8 is nearly perfect for what it is, yet I have not gotten my money's worth out of buying it twice. I don't know how I logged so many hours on the SNES original now. Still great games and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't expecting to buy whatever the next game is on its release date.

Tier 3
Kirby - Loved the games as a kid, which is ultimately who they're mostly designed for. The original Game Boy Adventure was the first game I ever owned myself. I rarely pick up Kirby games, but when I do I generally enjoy them...but never enough to get the next game at full price or on day one.
Yoshi - See: Kirby except Yoshi didn't properly spin-off until I was too old to get anything out of Yoshi's Story.
Star Fox - I loved the SNES original and 64 is one of the very few N64 games I legitimately enjoyed...but as far as I'm concerned the series was murdered by Mr. Miyamoto after that.
Metroid - I really don't know how to rank Metroid as it has played a ridiculously small role in my life, but that's only because my mom refused to allow me to get Super Metroid because it looked too scary to her (this when Jurassic Park was my favorite movie). I didn't have the agency to buy games on my own until my SNES had been gathering dust for a while and never went back to play it. I wanted a Metroid game on the N64 so bad, but it never came. Then I skipped the GameCube, so...yeah. As an adult I've gone back and played some Super Metroid and it turns out I'm not crazy about these kinds of games as an adult...but as a kid who loved making maps I probably would have loved it.
3D Mario - I just don't care about 3D platformers...or at least until Odyssey managed to strike the balance necessary to get me to stick around for more than 30 minutes.
Pikmin - Thanks to skipping the GameCube I only came to the series at 3, which I only played for a couple hours but thoroughly enjoyed. I'd play 3 more to get a better feel, but someone offered to buy it for more than I paid for it so...meh.

Tier 4
Animal Crossing - There is a timeline in which I'm the biggest Animal Crossing fan on the planet. I was deep into Harvest Moon around the time the original came out...but I skipped the GameCube & Wii, so I've only played the 3DS game, which I struggled to care about after Stardew Valley came out. Part of me is intrigued about jumping into the next game New Horizon, but the other part of me is fine with me continuing to avoid such a massive time sink.
F-Zero - I want there to be another F-Zero game because I know so many people who loved these games, but the original gave me motion sickness and I never played the N64 or GC games. These games don't sell in Japan and didn't sell well enough elsewhere for there to be frequent F-Zero games...but c'mon, it's been 15 damn years. My nephews love playing as Captain Falcon in Smash Bros. and have no clue who he is. The sales argument is legitimate, but there's also been an entire generation that's never had a chance to buy a new F-Zero game.

NA Tier
Splatoon - I don't play online games, so Splatoon has nothing to offer me. Nothing against it, it just doesn't appeal to me.
Mario Party - I did not enjoy the N64 originals and have not paid a single care since I became too old for sleepovers.
Zelda (2D & 3D) - I've been trying to like Zelda games since I was a little kid and none of them have stuck and many of them annoyed me. I keep giving them a chance and I just don't get it, so I'm done. I'm the guy who doesn't like Zelda games, I guess.
3D Donkey Kong - DK64 was everything I hated about the direction video games were heading at the time and turned me into a jaded prick at the old age of 13.

 

[bambamcam4ever]

Futuristic high speed racers are dull.

Arcade racers are the absolute best and they used to be all over Nintendo consoles. Not so much anymore.

The San Francisco Rush series, Beetle Adventure Racing....those are my all time favourite types of racers.

F-zero GX is literally an arcade game.

 

[Shareefruck]

Mainline Zeldas and Marios are musts-- the consistent quality of them iteration after iteration has been outstanding, but Metroid when done right is significantly better than either of them, in my opinion. Same with the Mother series, despite being dead. Beyond that, it's all 3rd-party indies, which Nintendo handles better than the other consoles.

Donkey Kong was occasionally solid but never brilliant. Yoshi started out great and became awful immediately after he became relevant. Kirby and Star Fox have never been all that good.

While I've grown an appreciation for the first two Pokemons after dismissing them as glorified Tamagotchis earlier in my life, anything Pokemon, Mario Party, or Smash related, I actively dislike and avoid like the plague. The unanimous love and obsession everyone has with Smash in particular gets on my nerves. The spirit of it is like... shameless fan service and needless bloat hiding behind celebration and reverence and eating up all of the credit that I wish that traditional fighting games had instead.

I get the feeling that I might be into Fire Emblem's gameplay if I could get past its aesthetic look and creepy waifu sensibilities, because I love Advance Wars, but I can't-- too much of a dealbreaker.

Basically, 2D > 3D, and if your game has anything Metroid-influenced, it pretty much automatically has my attention and good will.

 

[aleshemsky83]

F-zero GX is literally an arcade game.

The arcade game is different, but a modded gamecube can access the arcade game still on the gamecube disc.

 

[Winger98]

Mainline franchises I care about: splatoon and Zelda, though the Zelda stuff is only very recently. Depending what the sequel to BOTW looks like I might not really care about Zelda, either. Maybe Pikmin, but that franchise doesn't seem to grow or change with each iteration and my interest has waned a bit. Used to care more about Mario games, but I just couldn't get into the hat thing.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Donkey Kong was occasionally solid but never brilliant. Yoshi started out great and became awful immediately after he became relevant. Kirby and Star Fox have never been all that good.

I get the feeling that I might be into Fire Emblem's gameplay if I could get past its aesthetic look and creepy waifu sensibilities, because I love Advance Wars, but I can't-- too much of a dealbreaker.

DKC definitely was mediocre early on with the barrel sections, but it got much better as it went.

I agree with modern fire emblem, but I think the wii and gamecube games avoided that stuff much better.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

I'm kinda bored of Luigi's Mansion.

It does exactly what I expected it to do and pretty much exactly what I wanted, but thats only good for so much gameplay. I am on like the 11th or 12th floor and just have no motivation to keep going.

You're just going to leave Mario, Peach, and company held hostage in their picture frames? It's no wonder people don't care for Luigi.

Seriously - I feel you on this point. I got to the boiler room and haven't played it over the last week or so. I think it's a game that you can enjoy in bursts and can become tiresome after ~5 hours or so, so I'll probably take a few breaks before completing it.

 

[bambamcam4ever]

The arcade game is different, but a modded gamecube can access the arcade game still on the gamecube disc.

True, AX has one different mode with checkpoints and time limits, but the game engine is the same and it uses a subset of the tracks and characters in GX.

 

[Shareefruck]

DKC definitely was mediocre early on with the barrel sections, but it got much better as it went.

I agree with modern fire emblem, but I think the wii and gamecube games avoided that stuff much better.

Agreed, but even despite massive improvement in Tropical Freeze, I still don't think that game is brilliant or anything-- merely solid, and nowhere close to Nintendo's cream of the crop, in my opinion.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

The only game that's an absolute must-buy for me would be a 3-D Donkey Kong.

DK64 is everything I love about video games and turned me into a Nintendo fan at the old age of like 6 or 7.

 

[PilotRedSun]

I tend to greatly prefer Mario over Metroid and Zelda, although Mario Odyssey bored me pretty hard.

 

[HanSolo]

I tend to greatly prefer Mario over Metroid and Zelda, although Mario Odyssey bored me pretty hard.

Same. Also hated that you basically had to play with joycons.

 

[Supermassive]

Same. Also hated that you basically had to play with joycons.

Yes. An absolutely awful design choice for a Mario game that keeps it from achieving 10/10 status, imo.

 

[Supermassive]

So, question. My family has pretty much destroyed the left joycon‘s thumbstick on my Switch. Do I pay the $120 CDN and trade in my Version 1 Switch for a new Version 2 Switch, or do I buy the Zelda left joycon with d-pad for $35 CDN, and send my old left joycon to Nintendo for repairs? I’m trying to play the 2D Zelda, even after recalibration it’ll just start drifting all of a sudden. Very frustrating to keep walking into pits, lol.

Edit: Found that rubbing a q-tip with isopropyl alcohol under the thumbstick cleans the dust out and restores full functionality to it. Saved a few bucks.

 

[HanSolo]

Yes. An absolutely awful design choice for a Mario game that keeps it from achieving 10/10 status, imo.

Idk if I'd give it a ten even after that. Maybe like an 8 in my book. Mechincally, visually, from a music perspective...everything about it was mostly perfect but the collectathon elements (particularly that for all the benefits the player gets from a nonlinear reward chase, when you don't have all the stars you need and you end up running around, backtracking endlessly, it got incredibly frustrating to me) and the fact that most new mechanics get one use for their respective worlds and are discarded sort of made the game uncompelling about three worlds in and the rest of the game, to me, felt more like an obligation to get to the end rather than something to continue to be amazed by and have fun with.

As Mario action on the Switch goes I've had more fun with Mario Maker.

 

[Shareefruck]

Idk if I'd give it a ten even after that. Maybe like an 8 in my book. Mechincally, visually, from a music perspective...everything about it was mostly perfect but the collectathon elements (particularly that for all the benefits the player gets from a nonlinear reward chase, when you don't have all the stars you need and you end up running around, backtracking endlessly, it got incredibly frustrating to me) and the fact that most new mechanics get one use for their respective worlds and are discarded sort of made the game uncompelling about three worlds in and the rest of the game, to me, felt more like an obligation to get to the end rather than something to continue to be amazed by and have fun with.

As Mario action on the Switch goes I've had more fun with Mario Maker.

Yeah, personally, I don't see how having to use stick controls is a deal-breaker at all (they control very well), but the collect-a-thon-driven progression system of Super Mario Odyssey is total trash, and ruins an otherwise great game, IMO.

It would be so much more satisfying (not to mention a trivial adjustment and a total no-brainer) if you just completed Kingdoms by defeating the bosses, and Moons were just a random, non-essential collectible that at most unlocked secrets or extra content.

Instead, for no reason, it's like "Wait, you can't leave until you've wandered around aimlessly and completed this random number of arbitrary (in most cases completely uninteresting) tasks." Gross. And if I'm not mistaken, doesn't that also mean that you can just collect moons and leave for the next Kingdom without even bothering to engage the climax of each Kingdom? What the hell kind of system is that?

Another minor quibble is that I also don't like certain moves being walled off by motion controls (they should just have button combination equivalents for everything), but luckily, the game works fine without them.

I do think the movement mechanics in Odyssey are incredible though. Pulling off acrobatic hat-jumping tricks to get to seemingly unreachable areas is ultra satisfying.

 

[HanSolo]

Yeah, personally, I don't see how having to use stick controls is a deal-breaker at all (they control very well), but the collect-a-thon-driven progression system of Super Mario Odyssey is total trash, and ruins an otherwise great game, IMO.

It would be so much more satisfying (not to mention a trivial adjustment and a total no-brainer) if you just completed Kingdoms by defeating the bosses, and Moons were just a random, non-essential collectible that at most unlocked secrets or extra content.

Instead, for no reason, it's like "Wait, you can't leave until you've wandered around aimlessly and completed this random number of arbitrary (in most cases completely uninteresting) tasks." Gross. And if I'm not mistaken, doesn't that also mean that you can just collect moons and leave for the next Kingdom without even bothering to engage the climax of each Kingdom? What the hell kind of system is that?

Another minor quibble is that I also don't like certain moves being walled off by motion controls (they should just have button combination equivalents for everything), but luckily, the game works fine without them.

I do think the movement mechanics in Odyssey are incredible though. Pulling off acrobatic hat-jumping tricks to get to seemingly unreachable areas is ultra satisfying.

It was the parts that required...or more aptly stated, are easier to complete with motion controls.

 

[Shareefruck]

It was the parts that required...or more aptly stated, are easier to complete with motion controls.

Oh, by joy cons, you meant motion controls, right.... I always get that mixed up with the analog controller sticks.

I agree that motion-control-specific capabilities is silly, but honestly, I went through the game without being remotely aware that motion controls were even a thing, and I don't remember any tedious roadblocks. It also helps that I thought a lot of those moves looked kind of dumb, too. Like moving your cap around in whatever direction you like after the throw? Feels like cheating or something.