Switch 2/MKW thoughts 2month-ish in
Switch 2: it's 2
(Typed up a month ago, spellchecked a few weeks ago then got sick.)
The Switch 2 Is the weirdest launch console to my memory. It’s a month in and there’s still weird launch hardware/firmware gripes. Pieces of the system software are very Switch 1. Can’t help but wonder what Nvidia’s involvement is with it. Remember when they tried to buy ARM? Seems like its been sitting around but firmware is undercooked. No thorough pre-release coverage, no review units, devkits and debugs outside of Nintendo offices were super rare. There’s that video of someone with a die scan that shows the SoC is 4 years old and might be a slightly tuned 30 series gpu. Normally this would show the system’s age, but Nvidia’s own stagnation in the PC space doesn’t make the gap feel big. No direct comparison on PC because Nvidia never really made comparable low power GPU hardware. Closest is maybe the RTX A2000? and those were ~$250 a few years ago, now $100 more thanks to stupid gpu market crap. For a long time Nintendo required devs to submit an icon at a high enough resolution for a UHD display. Finally this year I can see these files. A few carts I plugged in showed the lower resolution icon and then popped in the sharper looking one a second later.
My early purchase is mostly for Switch 1 games I wanted to play but then found out they made the fan in my console spin up all the way. My fan is grinding though and irritates my ears. A few of those games I want to play also don’t run too well on their original hardware. For a long time, Switch 1 games will be the bulk of its library and will always have important games. So. It seems like while there’s a system wide compatibility layer/HLE based emu/etc. it does mean games need specific fixes to run beyond their original settings, and that appears to require the developer (and publisher, and cert) to have the game patched. I would hope every Nintendo IP game eventually gets an update, but I do think they’ll use it to incentivize newer games. Would love Peach and Splat2 to get patches. Or every Kirby game. Lots of older titles I have can boot faster than the Nintendo and Switch bootlogos. Everything seems to run fine but its clear some games are still running funny.
If I used handheld mode a lot, I would be very disappointed. It has to run at whatever handheld profile to probably work with the touch screen, maybe other system features. 1080p screen, 720p (or lower!) game render. If you’re nostalgic for PS3/360 games that ran at lower resolutions and then were upscaled you can now experience that on the go. Some games just are filtered upscale. I think Star allies is doing something weird because it’s still bright and lacks some of that blurriness and replaces it with awkward aliasing. 720->1080 was never a clean upscale but we put up with it back then, it just feels weird to return to it. . No secret button combo to make games run without scaling like you can on 3DS for DS(i) games has been found yet. This is all compounded by the various slowly refreshing screens that people are getting in their switch 2. Mine is not as bad as some people’s videos, but it is in the same group as my first LCD. In fact, there is a chance my “5ms” advertised LCD I bought at CompUSA over two decades ago refreshes faster. Many people will not notice 120fps games once we get some on that screen. Almost wish they sold a portable-less console so I don’’t need to worry about a lithium something battery.
I 100% finished Echoes of Wisdom entirely on Switch 2. SW2 patch adds HDR and raises the resolution. No hiccups until a late cutscene, but that could’ve been loading limitations. I was playing on cart. However, because HDR wasn’t looking right when I first setup the console, I threw my monitor into 400nits mode and it seemed to look ok there when it switched to HDR. Mario Kart World looks fine now in more full range hdr but has not looked 100% correct. All UI elements look grayer and maybe too dark, but after watching a guide it finally looks good. Nintendo’s HDR settings page is the worst. Absolutely absurd. After trying a few other games that got updates, most of the games hover too close to the “brightness” setting. If you turn up the “brightness” it raises the sorta base level image so while it might make weird taped on HDR look fine, Mario Kart World, other newer HDR games will not look dynamic enough for blown out.
I don’t hate the joycon 2, but they don’t fit my hands right and have more accidental inputs on shoulders than I’d like. Got a Pro 2 controller and it’s better than the old pro controller but not by enough. D-pad is better but still has wrong diagonals inputs when doing a cardinal direction. Worked fine for platformers but got awkward doing menus. The improved gyro seems nice though. Haven’t felt well enough to get into Splatoon 2 enough, originally dropped it on Switch 1 because camera stuff was making me sick and controls felt off. Switch 2 seems to have magically fixed it enough for me from first week testing.
I do not like the pricing. It honestly makes me wonder how much is Nvidia’s influence in prices. To me, a lot of game stuff is priced fairly arbitrary. On disc consoles, the pressed plastic is nearly a non-factor. Switch uses carts but the flash is more related to average consumer flash. High prices are probably more indicative of uncertainty, unrest, and other business bullshit when things aren’t going well. If it’s nvidia setting price of hardware to Nintendo and that’s dictating price that might make sense. They’ve always done manipulative market horseshit and controlling pricing and availability. if it’s Nintendo themselves then I think in better times it would’ve been closer to 350 or 400 with a game and maybe more accessories. That pro 2 controller is too expensive but I’m sure we’re paying for that rumble and other shit in there. I’m not going to say “they should’ve used hall effect or TMR” because I think there’s something preventing that from a 1st party product right now. Replacement products have not been 100% performant, just close. I do wonder if potentiometer can report more data or something vs hall effect in general.
I do not understand game key cards. I get it for a launch year special, but after that? what’s the point? So far people on YT testing things have onboard flash being the fastest loads, SD express being close 2nd, then a gap for switch2 cart loads. If it’s somehow a game where the extra seconds per load somehow makes it worth taking up console storage then why not digital code? Why not eShop. If it’s going to take up a bunch of space on the SD express card I now need to buy why not just gamble with eshop drm service future shit and get it there? The only situation I see where I buy a key card is if a ringfit 2 or labo 2 only ships on one. (Ringfit is not on eShop, I’m turning my switch 1 into a Ringfit machine)
Quick side rant: Fuck off using SNES or N64 game prices to compare to now. These are not MaskROMs. Manufacturing is very different for current games and almost nobody is printing a manual. N64 is the way it was because of how Nintendo did business back then, Nintendo is clearly being run (slightly) differently now. N64 didn’t really care PC existed, perhaps the entire console lifetime. N64 wasn’t that worried about multimedia CD games or Macromedia Shockwave games. The big 3 were worried about mobile games, should be worried about losing eyes to other media. Losing markets and players to legal gambling. Honestly the closest comparison to now is PS3 (Large capacity consumer media, online service, local storage, digital storefront) and even then I’d point to early PS4 for any comparison to now. Tired of convos framed with gamers are spoiled/entitled or Americans are finding out what the rest of the world gets when there’s probably something else to look at. Possibly more interesting. People go “it’s inflation” and then stop thinking. There’s more out there to look at! Debt, wage increases, relative cost of living stuff, rental availability, used ecosystem. I’m not smart on that stuff but even I can see there’s things we’re not looking at. We’re being sold a product they want consumers to buy, at the end of the day it needs to be a price consumers can pay before it can be a price they want to pay.
Mario Kart World: Huge soundtrack.
Mario Kart World is weird. Mario Kart has definitely become a race where it is a game that expects the player to drift. A drift here typically is a slow move to sharply and build a boost once released. MKW also adds a charge hop, a rail grind, and a wall ride that also can build boost, wall ride and rail grind being situational risk/reward trades. To incentivize knowing when to drift, top driving speed is awarded to smooth racing lines almost like car driving. The usual lap tracks are a new fun riff on what Mario Kart does with record time trial times and winning shortcut strategies being built around practiced tricks, choosing the fastest route based on surface. Karts now float on water, ditching underwater sections from a few previous games. a rail or wall may help your race around. To assist in all this, the feather item that makes your kart hop is back.
The new moves help with the new free roam mode where P Switch challenges and reaching collectables may require knowing how to execute these moves. Every track is present in the open world and is connected by routes. A ton of routes made up of the various roads and highways. Some call them intermissions online. In normal Grand Prix right now, you do a full 3 laps on the first track, then drive to the next track. However, what this actually ends up doing is you drive on the route and one lap on the track. or a part of the track. or less than that in a few cases. If you liked Mount Wario or Maka Wuhu, tracks that were long courses not loops, A few of these approach that level of quality. In practice, nothing is quite like those. The roads and highways between tracks are closer to real roads in that if one were to race, you would be driving in a straight-ish line and driving around smooth curves. All those new fun skills that new 3 lap tracks get are not here. Few routes have anything resembling a short cut or alternate path. Get bad item rolls? probably not catching up. Or not being able to hold place. It’s not too bad on these, but right now it makes up quite a bit of the gameplay. One of the cups puts you driving to Peach stadium and just has you drive in a circular route at the end instead of part of the track. Can’t get an item or stay in 1st there? you will lose. routes have long wide turns, wide highway. Drifting, charge jump are slower than just driving. Lakitu “out of bounds” placement is very paranoid and awkwardly placed. Since there are few opportunities to drive better given the moveset, winning can be very roll dependent. Online this worked out to be ok fun for me, but single player this was annoying.
Knockout tour is all the way into driving through routes from one end of the continent to the other. Drive through a selection of tracks mostly on the route sections, with a few tracks requiring some driving through the normal sharp turns. Every checkpoint eliminates people below a certain place. Thankfully, these are fairly well curated and to me have fewer of the issues with routes being common in grand prix or online. However, this becomes much more item tactician than just routes. The slowdown of charge jump is apparent as it punishes players who feel the need to press buttons. Knockout tour can also favor character and kart choices that favor a type of terrain speed. Against online players it feels fair. Against cpu, it just makes all the issues hurt more. MK rubber-banding and rival CPU driving can lead to situations with the rival actually gaining so much it’s impossible to top 3. If you can avoid the main pack chaos and get into top 4, the cpu can just be so spread out you won’t win without getting specific items. Aggressive CPU later on can make it particularly aggravating as the pack of racers hitting each other with items can be so chaotic that you can instant lose more than online. Though I wonder if some of the speed/accel weirdness is just not knowing how effective the hidden stats are. (As I was getting this spellchecked before posting, they just pushed an update that supposedly made the CPU easier in everything but battle. We’ll see how this works)
Mario Kart World has new moves, but has the fighting game issue of it only being applicable to the people organizing lobbies outside of the game and practicing in training mode, here using time trials and free roam. The game forces two different racing game mentalities and doesn’t have a sufficient way to practice either. Some of the routes and knockout tour feel like “market research said gamers just like getting to the end and don’t like the journey or practice anymore” where other parts feel much more deliberate. Not everyone is going to like both the same amount. In fact, I bet most people are going to favor one or the other play style. Yet, it doesn’t support either player well in practice. Free Roam feels alive with actual npc routes and activities but feels more empty and lacking purpose than Road Trip Adventure/Choro Q HG. At least the soundtrack is amazing.