liquiddragon

@cikame: In my mind, I have to take into account time and place of when a game was released. MGS2 was absolutely mindblowing on so many levels in 2001. I didn't find MGS4 nearly as impressive in 2008 considering its peers at the time. Personally, I rank it low as a mainline MGS game as well. Can't speak for Splinter Cell. I thought it seemed really cool at the time and did enjoy the demo of the first game a bunch. I've only played thru Conviction and thought it was kinda meh. That said, I've bought pretty much all of 'em and do intend to at least play Chaos Theory and Blacklist soon.

I haven’t played the remake of Mafia 1 yet but the original Mafia and GTA3 were def benchmark games for open world games.

I don’t have unique picks.

MGS2 and FFX are my benchmarks for AAA games and for their respective genres. Pokémon is a benchmark for how obsessed I got for a franchise.

Tony Hawk, Max Payne, StarCraft are my measuring stick for western games. (I’m an immigrant and didn’t play a ton of non-japanese games for a long time.)

I wanted a WonderSwan cuz I loved Detective Conan and I'd see commercials of that game when I was watching the show.

I was a good consumer aka an idiot...

October actually had better sales than Nov/BF so I'm including those.

Nov:

• DualSense ($40)
• DualShock 4 ($40)
• Xenoblade 2 + Torna ($63)
• Alan Wake 2 ($33)
• Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze ($25)
• Like a Dragon Ishin ($20) (Xbox)
• Horizon Forbidden West ($20) (PS4/5)
• Theatrhythm Final Bar Line ($19) (PS4)
• Midnight Suns ($10) (Xbox)

• Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania ($5) (PS4/5)

Oct:

• Octopath Travelers 2 ($15) (PS4/5)
• Fire Emblem Three Hopes ($15) (Switch)
• Star Ocean Divine Force ($10) (PS5)
• Vlkyrie Elysium ($10) (PS5)
• Callisto Protocol ($5) (PS5)
• Saints Row ($5) (Xbox)

I know you can skip the practice laps by exiting out of it, but the game clearly doesn't want me to, given it doesn't present the option in the menu so I've been doing it but it kills the pacing of the cups. I am enjoying the driving, so I'll keep chipping away at it but I'm basically gonna do 1 race a day cuz practice + race is like 7-9 laps which feels plenty per session.

Quick Resume/Suspend doesn't really work, which is my biggest beef with the game. QR seems to work when out in the main menu, but I suspended after practice a few times and every time it crashed when I resumed. I had to redo practice runs several times because of this...I'm too used to jumping back into games quickly on consoles now. The fact that I have to boot up the game every time is a hassle, especially for a 1st party game on a system that features QR.

No music is silly but I kinda like having the excuse to listen to a new album i've been meaning to check out via Spotify.

@rorie: Have you tried since that last patch? They added a toggle to tone down motion blur. Try turning it down to 2 or 3 (defaults to 5.) The graphics mode has always been a rather solid 30 but a lot of folks felt it was unplayable cuz the motion blur was way too intense. That could be your problem as well. Worth a shot if you're still interested in the game.

The system itself is okay but not great. I find it incredibly uncomfortable to play with as a handheld, so I rarely use it that way. It's too thin and the button placements, particularly the right joystick, seems wrong to me. I wish it was easier to insert/remove cartridges. I wish the joystick drift wasn't such a major issue. Having to buy a $70 "Pro" controller, which btw is a regular ass control with bad chunky buttons hurts too.

All that said, I've really enjoyed the Wii U ports (I never owned a Wii U) and I think games like Luigi's Mansion 3, Metroid Dread, and Mario Odyssey are excellent top tier exclusives. I thought Pokemon Arceus was a great new direction as an OG Pokemon fan and I'm really glad I was able to play it as a Switch owner. I still have lots of Nintendo games waiting to be played so I think I'll grow to appreciate the system more as I get around to them.

I bought it in late 2018 and I actually haven't used it all that much. That's mostly my felt as I'm juggling multiple systems. But as a system, personally, I could've been just as happy if it was a regular home console that just came with a regular controller. Power-wise, it'd be nice if it had more but it's not my biggest quibble with the system.

I played through this couple weeks ago. Maybe I can chime in.

A lot of the games you listed were some of the biggest games in their time and fancy graphics were definitely part of the appeal.

I'm not the biggest FF8 fan but there is still a lot to like about it, the cast isn't one of them...I'm not sure if there is even 1 likable character.

@cikame: tony hawk is on epic game store