this

I don't believe them. I saw that videochat framerate.

Not specifically, it's confusing lol. There's two types of updates:

• Paid "Nintendo Switch 2 Edition" upgrades. For older titles getting these like BotW they're adding in some extra features in addition to the performance enhancement. Like they're adding a bunch of Mario Party games that use the camera and such, and a DLC for Kirby. There's also going to be new games released in two versions, one for Switch and one for Switch 2, that will just be the performance upgrades. If you don't pay more, you don't get better performance.

• There's a few games getting free updates that improve the performance on the Switch 2. These are different games than the ones getting Switch 2 editions.

It's complex but in a very Nintendo way, in that they smooth over making you feel like you're getting screwed. Like you'll feel screwed but still buy it? Like the least interesting "Nintendo Switch 2 Edition" is the ones for BotW and Tears, so they're bundling that with the upgraded online subscription a lot of people already have.

Whatever it is what it is.

theyre red now so probably a red flavor

https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-16-nintendo-switch-2-part-4/

Thanks to the system's performance capabilities, Nintendo eShop on Switch 2 has been improved and runs smoothly even when displaying a large number of games. We believe the act of finding the game you want to play is itself part of the game system experience.

the biggest news of the day is that the eshop will run smoothly in any circumstance

With their tongues, I think

i imagine there'll be a price drop on the system in a year. either way i'm probably gonna get one used in two or three

I can't find the details, does this mean the DLC upgrades are paid, but frame rate/resolution boosts are free? This seems sensible if so.

I don't mean to defend Nintendo though, all of these pricing details are small straws upon the camel's back of Evil Activities. Metroid Prime 4 is going to be like eating that super unethical bird

Apparently that game isn't really Bloodborne and it's 8p PvPvE so who knows lmao

I've calmed down a little now that I know there's some free switch 2 upgrades, including ones for the 2D Zeldas that I've wanted to play but found the unstuck framerate eye searing. They're also gonna have one for scarlet and violet which is good cause that one needs it

$450 isn't shocking and the "Switch 2" versions might be reasonable as DLC. But I had to search up the rest, I thought it was a joke. $80 Mario Kart? The introduction tour game costs money?

I'll probably get it for Prime 4 though. I guess Nintendo has to recoup the money they paid for thay Bloodborne 2 exclusive

THANK YOU NINTENDO for putting metroid prime 4 on the switch 1 so it will still work with the old emulators 🙏

I say as I'm probably gonna get one for dk

i really tried to watch this but it made me look at streamers and bug like anime characters, i just couldnt make it through the awful screaming and disconcerting side to side stiff swaying thing they do

You posted this within the year Outer Wilds came out- topical!!

That's fair-- there are many things people like that I don't like, and don't care to put in the effort to enjoying.

But I like videogames a lot and think they're a serious art form, and given how well beloved Soulslikes are, I wanted to think about them some more.

Maybe I will play Tunic again...

This is something I can appreciate and I am grateful for your perspective :D

the upgrade materials are bullshit for sure, especially in the earlier games. I didn't finish elden ring on my play but I managed to play it almost completely blind, compared to when I went through dark souls 1 where I used a lot of external help

And like... I see this pattern a lot where people get into this state of "other people like this but i don't and i'm missing out." Which is fair and makes sense. But there are so many different games out there tailored to so many different playstyles and tastes that you're going to miss out on something anyway! I started feeling a lot better once I let go of the games that looked interesting but knew I wouldn't enjoy. I also started finding more niche indie titles that really zeroed in on what I liked.

They're fun if you like a game that demands skill building. It is trial and error at first, but once you develop mastery you start to learn how to apply what you've learned to different situations, and become able to do things like kill bosses in one try which feels extremely satisfying. It might just be you don't like that kind of gameplay and that's fine.

Like personally, I want to play a game that will punish me until I learn to approach it on its terms. I want that challenge. For me, I don't enjoy playing games that are too easy or not crunchy enough. I get bored too fast. I need that friction.

The real problem is the communities and they way they try to give this attitude that you should like this kind of game or you're inferior. They're insufferable. Stay away from them. Especially the reddits.

Also fromsoft really could stand to include some accessibility options. A lot of japanese game dev companies seem to have this "you play it our way because this is the game we designed" attitude still and it's... annoying.

im a masochist

Fortnite is something I've grown to appreciate (but never play, because I will never make an Epic Games account). The microtransactions are so silly (I feel bad about humanity and society when I think about them) but the game has a lot of technical depth and variety. There's a Guitar Hero in Fortnite. There's a Minecraft in Fortnite. It's really a lot like Ace of Spades was before Jagex killed it.

What I mean to say is "I think you and I think about games similarly and I read your post with that lens." I think the main contention is that "fair" is necessarily subjective, and tricky to define.

If I were to suggest a definition, I'd say a singleplayer game which feels fair is one communicates well, does not have difficulty which demands a huge time commitment, and (counter-intuitively) has generous hitboxes. E.g. Celeste is fair because everything is clearly communicated (you can see the level and know what will kill you), the tricky levels send you back to the start of the screen, and the hitboxes feel sensible by lying to you up and down. (Celeste has three hitboxes, and hazards have tiny and sparse hitboxes.)

And often these games are not as good as From at realizing what players can take or not.

This is something I really liked about Tunic. I could beat any Soulslike I think, but I usually don't want to put up with that. But I had this experience in Tunic, where the first boss was very difficult. I thought I might have sequence broken to an impossible boss. Then, (spoilers; rot-13, you can use DDG to un-rot13 V unq pbyyrpgrq n cntr bs gur phgr va-tnzr znahny, juvpu unq n oyheel fperrafubg bs gung obff ng ebhtuyl zl fxvyy yriry, jvgu na rapbhentvat "LBH PNA QB VG!" zrffntr. Gur tnzr nagvpvcngrq zl pbaprea naq gbyq zr, npghnyyl, lbh pna orng guvf obff.

Then I beat the boss, and I was able to trust that I could beat any of the bosses in Tunic. They were just about the edge of what I was willing to put up with, though. I liked that experience very very much.

This contextualizes it a lot and I appreciate it.

To add on to this, the Dark Souls and related wikis seem to be pretty bad (Fandom??) and a lot of the knowledge seems to be on YouTube videos, which is a culture of knowledge I don't respect and don't want to put up with.

I did try to get into Elden Ring when it launched but it didn't run on my computer, and the community was insufferable. People on r/eldenring got personally offended by the criticism of "it has a launch bug" so I gave up on them.

I've given them a cumulative 10 hours maybe; investing 30 minutes as a Hater with an open mind seems like it might have art payoff.

I'd invested 20 minutes in Outer Wilds before I was encouraged to see it through by a friend, and I am so happy I did. Maybe Dark Soulses can be like that too

I am going to offer a counterpoint to the Dark Souls promoters here and as someone who hated Dark Souls when they first played it and then came back to it years later and finished it and thought “That was pretty alright this time” what made it click with me was accepting that the game is badly designed and fails to tell you how shit works properly and, despite what everyone says about these fucking games, it actively punishes experimentation. After that I just looked shit up. Just read fucking stupid, annoying wiki pages to understand basic game mechanics and how I should be using upgrade materials and shit.

People who think Darks Souls is intuitive have either played so much of these games they have forgotten what the first experience is like or watched other people playing it first before playing it themselves or were playing it at the same time as a bunch of friends and sharing information.

To put this in a nicer way and meeting the game more on its own terms: These games were designed to be collaborative. That is why they have messages from other players. That's why you can summon people. They are not intended to be sat down and played by yourself with no extenral input. You aren't actually meant to figure everything out, you are meant to collaborate and share information. And if you aren't caught up in the initial frenzy and excitement of a release and have a bunch of friends sharing information the first time you play one of these then you are not getting the actual experience the game was designed around and you need to look up forum posts and wikis about how upgrading your weapons works.

Or just play a better game.

elaboration that hopefully doesn't make me sound like an obnoxious git gud person:

It's really about the expectation that you'll have to try again, which is a different design philosophy from a lot of other games. The thing that I personally think is satisfying about a souls game is that you can encounter a scenario like a boss that you start out dying to in 30 seconds and barely hurting it, have another go and analyse what you're doing, what's going wrong, where you're getting hit, and work on those individual aspects over the next few encounters, and a lot of the time you can go from losing almost instantly to beating the boss over the course of a play session. This is what I mean when I say "it's easy" - it is still a challenging game but individual encounters let you speedrun that system mastery and get the enjoyment from overcoming a difficult challenge relatively quickly compared to a lot of other hobbies.

The optimal outcome is that you get to feel like Neo in that scene near the end of The Matrix where he starts to see everything as code and he can just effortlessly beat Smith. When you get it, that feeling is extremely satisfying, and there aren't that many single player games that have given me that experience before. The thing is that it's a decent amount of work to get there and it can feel unrewarding on the way. If you don't enjoy soulslikes you can do one of two things - play something else, or work hard to enjoy the acquired taste. I'm personally glad that I beat my head against the wall and I like them now but I can't recommend it one way or the other.