Nintendo Switch 2 Thread

[Helikaon]

Played a bit more of Mario Odyssey earlier. I'm stuck, lmao. I'm in a hole in a ground under an inverted pyramid. The floor is slippery and there are blocks in the way of progress. I know how to break them, but I keep messing up the timing of the hat toss and my position on the very slippery floor. I keep dying over and over, my coins are rapidly disappearing. I'm kinda tired of this icy desert world, would like to experience more of the game.

Also, got off the Great Plateau in Breath of the Wild. Now, the sense of freedom I felt up there has increased exponentially. Everywhere I look, there's something and somewhere that I want to explore.

Both games are brilliant, and absolutely stunning and buttery smooth on Switch 2.

[NateDog]

Just played some more of Air Riders aware that Air Ride is only offline for the test drive so I just dove into City Tour without any holdups and actually really enjoyed it. When you get enough power ups you can become absolutely ridiculous, and with all the different Machines having different pros and cons or playstyles there's a lot of strategy to which ones you decide to hop on when they're available. If you've got a bunch of power ups that make you glide farther for instance you may keep an eye out for a machine that's better in the air to lean into that playstyle and bank on a final showdown option that benefits from gliding. I don't fully get how the final showdown works...it seems everyone can choose one of four and then they compete in that one? So if you win your mini-event I'm not sure whether the game cares about your rankings against the people who chose the other three-instead the match just sort of ends? Not really sure. Maybe it's best that it doesn't care about how you did against people who obviously amassed totally different stats to you, not impressive if a cheetah outruns a falcon with both on foot.

I just played a match where I got sooo many power ups that during the final showdown I didn't even need to drift or boost, I just steamed ahead and nobody could touch me even if I drove on the dirtroad. This was the result of a particularly good session of driving around collecting power ups and doing mini-events during the preparation time.

oh god its Baby Park 200cc all over again

[Dirty Duck]

oh god its Baby Park 200cc all over again

Tbf this isn't one of the game's tracks, it's just one of the numerous final bits of city tour.

Baby Park rocks tho

[Toll]

I saw that you were playing the demo yesterday, Duck. I played it for a bit myself too. Still can't believe this game is real. CANNOT wait for the real thing in 10 days.

I was a bit confused about the city tour events too, but I don't really give a shit about those. I'm here for the city map. I just love boosting my machine and destroying my opponents' so they have nothing left when the timer ends.

[Dirty Duck]

I was actually trying to join your game when you were on, Toll! But it would go from "not in game" to "city tour already in progress" instantly so I couldn't.

I'm missing not being able to play so I think I'll have to pick this one up even though I already have so many games to get through. It's just a lot of fun and I wanna have a go at the single player stuff as Sakurai is always good with that.

It's made me excited for an eventual Switch 2 Smash, if we get one.

[Helikaon]

Bought Cult of the Lamb as it's on sale. £15 something for the game and it's DLC.

Played the first half hour or so in a break between working on an assignment for uni. 

WTF is this game? I was expecting like an Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley clone, not some mad hack and slash against rival cultists and profound writing. 10/10 can't wait til later on so I can play it some more.

[Toll]

I was actually trying to join your game when you were on, Toll! But it would go from "not in game" to "city tour already in progress" instantly so I couldn't.

I'm missing not being able to play so I think I'll have to pick this one up even though I already have so many games to get through. It's just a lot of fun and I wanna have a go at the single player stuff as Sakurai is always good with that.

It's made me excited for an eventual Switch 2 Smash, if we get one.

Odd...  We'll have to connect when the real game is out!  

Yeah me too.  I'm really bad about buying games and never finishing them.  I have Hades 2 and Silent Hill F to complete still.  Now I'm buying fucking Kirby next week.

[Dirty Duck]

I 100%'d Metroid Prime 4: Beyond yesterday and I've written a very long thing about it for whatever reason. Here it is:

After a rough decade for Metroid fans things felt like they were finally looking up when a proper follow-up to the Prime Trilogy was announced. Then a couple of years later when an apologetic Nintendo revealed they weren’t sure their build was up to snuff and that Retro Studios had stepped in to restart the project, players everywhere were reassured that this was a title that was being treated with the utmost respect.

The direction the story was being taken also seemed promising. Phazon, the substance that the previous three game’s stories revolved around, had been confirmed to not be returning, giving Prime 4 a chance to explore new concepts. Sylux, one of the bounty hunters introduced in Metroid Prime: Hunters, was positioned to be the new antagonist in Dark Samus’ absence. A rival bounty hunter with a cool design whose only known character trait was despising the Galactic Federation-a more human character with his own past and motivations. This seemed a way to make sure Prime 4 differentiated itself from what came before. Given that the Prime games take place long before Samus is eventually given a reason to despise the Galactic Federation of her own I thought Sylux was an especially good pick as her foil-what had the Federation done to scorn him? What would he reveal about them to Samus? And how would she rationalise continuing to work with them after? There were many interesting avenues the story could explore.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond however explores none of them. Despite the song and dance concerning Phazon’s storyline being done the great defining trait of Prime 4’s new planet, Viewros, is a substance that is essentially Phazon in all but name-Green Energy. Green Energy was harnessed for its power but corrupted the local Lamorn, stripping them of all rationale and leaving them mindless beasts. It feels like an abridged rerun of Phazon that’s given less time to breathe, and is only made worse by the fact that new villain Sylux is completely unrelated to it. Whereas Dark Samus served as a physical embodiment of Phazon whose development mirrored the plot concerning the substance, Sylux does not show up at all after the intro until the final battle, nor do you really feel his impact on the planet. You instead encounter robots disguised as Sylux, and he (or a robot disguised as him?) destroys a door at one point. The plot on Viewros with the Lamorn and Green Energy does not tie into the confrontation with him, nor does his final boss battle tie into any of the plot from your journey. The great reveal about Sylux is also that he was just a dick who was once part of the Galactic Federation and disobeyed the orders of his CO, getting his troops killed before Samus could arrive. That’s why he hates the Federation. A very subpar answer to a question that’s been shrouded in mystery and made a deal of since Hunters, but it makes sense given that this game is completely uncritical of the Federation featuring several (designed to be) likeable NPCs from it who tag along on the journey.

The game spends a lot of its runtime concerned with the gaggle of Galactic Federation soldiers who were teleported to the planet with Samus. The characters themselves could have been done a lot worse, they end up being perfectly serviceable NPCs that help you through dungeons-we’ve seen similar in Corruption. The issue however is that unlike Corruption’s Bounty Hunters these Federation Troops do little to grow the world of Metroid or tie into the present story in any way besides simply being there with Samus (which, regardless of how well they’re done, still subtracts from the feeling of isolation and loneliness the series is known for). Whereas the Bounty Hunters were one by one corrupted with Phazon (serving as a reminder of the fact that this was gradually happening to Samus as the game progressed too) the Federation Troopers engage with neither the Lamorn storyline nor the Sylux storyline in any meaningful way. Sniper Reger Tokabi is a slight exception to this, having one on one conversations with Samus at several points in Sol Valley about his past, and his religion of Sollan. They’re some of the most meditative bits of writing in the game and do serve to flesh Tokabi out more than the other Troopers, but they’re a few scarce moments and still feel divorced from the main scenario. The game ends with Samus teleporting away while all of the troopers hold Sylux back, dooming them to death at his hands or to spend the rest of eternity on a dead planet. This ending baffled me to the point where I had to repeat the final boss as I didn’t activate the teleporter, thinking it was simply going to be a “Bad Ending” option. Instead it is the only option. In a game that spends half of its story meditating on a race named for “lamenting” and “mourning,” who tried to the last to save their brethren even when faced with despair, and the other half of its story humanising a group of soldiers who help Samus even at the risk of their own lives, Samus leaves them all behind to essentially run away from Sylux. She plants the Lamorn memory seed and hangs Tokabi’s symbol of Sollan on it. This is supposed to be emotional and poignant but it falls flat when I have a hard time believing that Samus Aran would just leave those people to die so freely. Previous moments in the game saw the Troopers one by one stay behind to let Samus proceed as hoards of Grievers pursued-this was believable as Samus was already beyond some threshold when the Troopers revealed their heroic intentions, and the Griever threat was presented as very dangerous. All of the characters survived this, despite the danger presented. To do this only to have them all then die at the end in such an out of character moment for Samus just feels cheap.

While I’ve only touched on the story so far that is obviously not the main element that comes to mind when discussing the Metroid series. The gameplay is what you’d expect of a Prime game. Samus still feels great to control, and the Prime series’ lock-on gunplay definitely feels like a nice change of pace in a genre that hasn’t really dabbled too far outside of the systems started by Halo back when the first Prime released. The Switch 2 edition introduces mouse controls which, while not as immersive as the Wii’s motion controls setup, feel surprisingly good to play with after remapping the buttons to something more natural. New mechanics like the psychic Control Beam where you fire off a shot that you then steer in slow-motion are fun if not slightly under-utilised. The standard gameplay loop of Metroid still hits, and it always feels good to find an item after remembering a previous area you can use your new upgrade in, or from simply having a keen eye when navigating around. There were actually a few puzzles where the item to use to solve it weren’t immediately obvious, which made them actually feel especially rewarding when you figure them out.

The game’s presentation is still great. Viewros and its inhabitants will often elicit the same feeling of wonder that the earlier Prime games were known for and that’s in large part due to the art direction and music. Fury Green’s music and design is a real highlight and works perfectly for the first introduction to the planet, with the massive Sacred Tree towering above and a magical melody that’s up there with Prime’s best. This high is maybe not reached again but the locales that follow still have a good amount to offer visually and sonically, even if they might feel as if they’re somewhat ticking the same boxes at this point with the forest area, lava area, ice area, mine area. However, the environmental storytelling feels lacking when it comes to the scans across the board as the story is often little more than “this place used to do stuff. It doesn’t now. Green Energy happened and we went extinct.” (annoyingly this is also the first Prime game where 100% of scans are needed for 100% completion). It is revealed that Viewros had distinct ‘eras’ as the Lamorn stopped mass production of machines at some point when they shifted towards psychic powers which is an interesting concept…but besides reading the lore I don’t know if this really comes across much in the environments. Samus looks great and I found it bold to ditch the iconic colouring of her Varia Suit so early on. The entirely red Vi-O-La suit looks nice but ended up a bit disappointing as it’s essentially the only suit you see until the very late game when it is replaced by the Legacy Suit which, unfortunately, wasn’t cool enough to feel worth the wait. Sylux looks very cool and Sylux’s theme is great, even if he’s lost a lot of his punch by the end thanks to all the fake-outs.

While Metroid Prime 4’s moment to moment gameplay doesn’t fall as foul of the series’ standards as the story, it isn’t without issue. Many standard enemies are annoying to deal with and show up a lot, with enemy variety being one of the game’s weakpoints. Grievers and Psybots especially became absolute banes by the end and I was never choosing to engage unless I had to, despite having lots of fancy new upgrades to use. There also aren’t as many truly new tools for Samus as I’d have liked, Beyond sees her given new psychic abilities but these are mostly just thematic reskins of older abilities besides the Control Beam. The joy of realising where to use your new upgrades is also quite firmly dashed to the ground by the irritating addition of an NPC who will not leave you alone. He will radio to tell you where to go next, even if you’re headed there, and the game will put an “Open Map” UI element over your screen that will not go away until you press the button and are treated to a slow animation of the cursor making its way over to an area, opening the mini map, and then making its way to a room in the mini map. Early on I was relatively accepting of this, but it never lets up. By the endgame I was still constantly being barraged by radio transmissions telling me to collect Green Crystals, then when I’m collecting Green Crystals it’s telling me to explore areas I haven’t fully explored, and then when headed to such areas it’s telling me there’s Galactic Federation debris nearby. It sucked a lot of fun out of the ‘figuring out what to do’ part of the gameplay loop and really ruined the feel of Metroid exploration (though I appreciated that he was mostly silent when ‘inside’ an area).

The second aspect that clashed with the Metroid feel was the massive Sol Valley desert area. Metroid Prime 4 is more similar to Prime 3 than the first two games, with its exploration areas mostly consisting of smaller, more-linear zones that are isolated from one another. In Corruption these were individual planets that had been attacked by Phazon, with Samus using her gunship to navigate between them. In Beyond they are different areas on a single planet, which conceptually sounds more like the earlier games, but they are separated by a massive desert meaning no element of the areas lead to one another or interact. Level design wise this means there are no late-game shortcuts for hopping from one area to another, and instead Samus is mostly on her new Vi-O-La motorbike constantly riding across masses and masses of expansive desert with little to no landmarks along the way. You spend a lot of time here and there really isn’t a lot to do besides collect Green Crystals (which is quite a dull activity, though you end up collecting a lot just through the sheer amount of times you drive through here) and collect Mech Parts (which is another of the Prime series’ late game scavenger hunts which has, unfortunately, reverted to the Prime 1 model where regardless of when you find them you cannot collect them until the end). There’s a handful of items and shrines that lead to small dungeons that reward you with beam upgrades, but it’s not anything to write home about. The Vi-O-La itself seems to be a big part of Beyond’s identity, with the first large section of the game being the factory where they are made. Controlling it never manages to feel cool enough to justify how much of the game is spent riding it through sand, there is one boss where you must ride the Vi-O-La and it just ends up feeling a bit half-baked and irritating in a combat setting. Honestly, just getting into Samus’ gunship in Prime 3 and navigating to another area that way was a lot cooler, even though it objectively makes the areas feel less connected.

Also while the game mostly runs well and by no means looks bad, there are moments where you notice that textures are actually very low res for a “Switch 2 Edition” game, but maybe these weren’t changed at all between the Editions and they just upped the resolution. The most glaring issue though is the sheer amount and length of loading screens, which is an area where the Switch 2 Edition definitely shouldn’t be the same as the Switch Edition. I suspect that this is mostly a side effect of Sol Valley, as these long loading screens take place when entering and exiting Sol Valley. This means that a lot of the time you will have to encounter 4 lengthy loading screens before being able to actually move on, as you frequently have to return to Fury Green just to have a small cutscene where an NPC installs your new upgrade you just found. This leads to a lot of padding that could have been done without, as returning to Fury Green rarely added much to the experience. The Sol Valley design choice meaning there’s no shortcuts between the different areas already doubles the amount of loading times you need to progress, why arbitrarily double it again with a trip to Fury Green?

Overall Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is enjoyable enough to play but feels as if 18 years of technological advancements weren’t put to the best use. Approaches towards its world design, overuse of certain enemies, and ways to direct the player wind up getting in the way of a lot of the Metroid feel a little too often and with diminishing returns that mean by the endgame it wound up feeling more annoying than novel. There wasn’t enough new to feel worth the wait and while many of its liberties with the formula are simply continued from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption it lacks the narrative grandeur that won that game a bit of a pass. Most of Beyond’s attempts at innovating on the series formula unfortunately feel like roadblocks rather than improvements, and it also manages to resurrect some annoying elements of previous games that were already done away with long ago.

I’m not going to judge the game based on this but I really felt as if it would have a multiplayer component and the lack of that is disappointing. With Sylux back and the new mouse controls (that have seen hardly any significant use in Switch 2 titles) something like a Hunters followup as an online mode had potential to be a killer app for the Switch 2 that would give Prime 4 longevity regardless of how replayable it’s main campaign was. I feel as if this was intended at some point too, as during early discussions there was mention of an evolution of the Multiplayer mode from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and once development was underway Bandai Namco had a separate division in another country working on the game as well as the main dev team. If this is something that was lost in the project being restarted it’s a real shame, especially since Metroid Prime 4’s single player doesn’t feel like one I’m eager to replay too soon.

In conclusion:


⭐️⭐️⭐️★★

[Jassassino]

I 100%'d Metroid Prime 4: Beyond yesterday and ... it ... doesn’t feel like one I’m eager to replay too soon.

Nice!

[Dirty Duck]

I 100%'d Metroid Prime 4: Beyond yesterday and ... it ... doesn’t feel like one I’m eager to replay too soon.

Nice!

There's no catharsis in typing just that I'm afraid. And how dare you remove the video.