You read that right, folks, the day has finally come. After years of waiting for price cuts that didn't happen, years of not buying that Black Friday deal with the Switch at full price but at least it came with Mario Kart 8 bundled in (which I scoffed at because I already owned that game and the DLC on Wii U), I gave in and just bought a Switch. No special deal. No bundle. Just a Switch, a Pro Controller, and a copy of Super Mario Odyssey. Each item at full price.
There's a couple reasons for why I just ate my pride and bought one. One being that the shortages over the last few months (due very understandably to the GLOBAL PANDEMIC) created a mindset where I felt like if I didn't swoop in and get one when I had the chance, the chance might not appear again for quite some time. The other being, well, I'll be frank, Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise. Now, I haven't played that game yet. My copy (which like the Switch, I ordered prior to reviews for the game because I hadn't pre-ordered a game in years and thought, "what could possibly go wrong?") is in the mail, due to arrive in a day or two. I will play that game, and based on what I've read in reviews, and heard anecdotally, I will have many things to say. Most likely both positive and negative.
Anyway, I've been spending a good amount of time with the Switch, and I think it's a neat little device. Emphasis on little, because the thing that struck me the most as I opened the box and saw one in person for the first time, is just how small it is. Yes, it's huge compared to the handhelds I used all the time as a kid (aside from one comparison I'll get to soon), but for whatever reason, the whole of the Switch was smaller in person than I expected.
Especially smaller than expectations were the Joycons. I knew from the moment Nintendo first showed off the Switch that I'd prefer using a regular style controller, just like I did with the Wii U, as opposed to its bulky and unwieldy Gamepad. Years of other people using and talking about Joycons (never mind their drift, which seems like a problem any controller can get these days, one of my DualShock 4s has a slight drift problem) only cemented that into my mind.
But I was astounded to find that the Joycons were actually lesscomfortable for me to use than I predicted! I used to laugh any time Vinny would talk about using a Joycon, thinking it was just because of his enormous gorilla hands, but no. The Joycons are just teensy.
More specifically, their buttons are. The physical size of them (at least with the rail attachments) is fine for my hands, but the buttons and sticks aren't. The Joycon is the first video game thing I've held in decades that feels like it was sized specifically for children. Not like, super young kids, I mean kids old enough to be trusted to use something like this without breaking it, but before hitting the teen years and reaching sizes approximating adults. Not only are they tiny, but they're clustered together in a way that means I have to be pretty careful to only hit the ones I'm specifically trying to hit.
Here's maybe the funniest thing about these mini-buttons. I've been trying to clean up some stuff around the house recently (or rather my dad was complaining about how we have multiple rooms just filled with disorganized junk and that we should try to organize them). Anyway, I was going through old video game stuff, and found my GBA. My original, non-SP GBA. I was holding it, marveling at how I spent hundreds of hours playing games on that minuscule, unlit screen (at the time just thinking it was bigger and better than the one on my GameBoy Color). Then I looked at the buttons, and had to bring my GBA over to my Switch, and compare the two.
You might not believe me, but the A and B buttons on the GBA are bigger than the buttons on the Switch. Spaced apart more comfortably too.
The only other handheld comparison I made was with the last handheld I spent a significant amount of time with, my PSP. In this case, it was a later model unit, a 3001, I think (the white one that came with Assassin's Creed PSP), and that too had bigger buttons. Better feeling D-Pad, too (which is to say an actual D-Pad). But the PSP's analog disc thing was never great...though I don't know that I'd say the Joycons' sticks are any better.
Here's another thing that surprised me about the Switch. The Wii U Gamepad never felt great to me partly because it was big and unwieldy, but largely because the sticks jutted out so much. I could never position my hands in a way when using one (or especially both) where it felt like I had both a good handle on the controller, and like I could use the sticks comfortably. I was expecting the same issue here (at least when connected to the Switch itself), but instead the sticks are tiny too! Also too tiny! There's not much throw on them, and moving around in 3D space (at least in Odyssey), or moving the camera around just doesn't feel great.
Then, and I swear this is the final complaint, the shape of the darn things, especially attached to the Switch, make it real awkward for my thumbs to reach down and hit either the "D-Pad" on the left, or the stick on the right.
So, in other words, the default Switch experience doesn't jive with my hands. Part of me wants to make a sweeping generalization, and say it's bad, but tens of millions of Switches sold to people who use it almost exclusively in handheld mode, or only using the Joycons when docked because the Pro costs 70 (SEVENTY) dollars, they can't all be wrong, right? It's just me, right? They make an even smaller version of this thing, and people like that one too, so those people just must have more flexible digits than me.
Anyway, all those pages of me complaining are moot because the Pro Controller, for all the blood money it cost to greedy Nintendo, is a pretty good controller. Feels good in the hands, the battery lasts for like a week (40 hours, according to the back of the box), and it's just an all around solid controller. The sticks don't feel quite as good as the DS4, neither do the buttons or the D-Pad, and I'm still surprised Nintendo hasn't made a controller with analog shoulder buttons since the GameCube. I suppose that wouldn't fit as well on the Joycons.
Then there's the "HD Rumble," which I haven't actually experienced in the Joycons, but it feels pretty weak in the Pro. Like, it's kind of neat to feel it rumbling in a specific direction, and having that correspond to something, but the rumble itself is weak. Conversely, if that's the price for the battery lasting so long compared to the DS4, I'll take it.
On a more consistently positive note, I like the UI in the Switch itself. It feels very much like Nintendo looked at the UI on the PS4, and just made a simpler, streamlined version of that. Big squares in the middle starting on the left, and going right for every game on the system, a row of icons underneath for more option-y things, and one to the top for a profile page. Those big squares are taken directly from the PS4, and honestly, that's fine. It just makes it familiar, since I've been using that interface for seven years now.
It's all pretty speedy too, which always feels good. Some things were a little annoying at first, like it always asking which user was doing something when starting a game, even though there was only one user (me) on the Switch. Luckily there's an option to not ask that every time, and I quickly turned that on.
The fact that Nintendo went back to friend codes after the Wii U didn't use that is baffling. Especially when the Wii U let you send a message along with the friend request, so you could tell the other person who you are, in case of something like, let's say the Switch just saying someone with just a regular name sent a friend request, with no other information, despite the fact that I may know that person entirely by whatever their online moniker is.
Then again, I don't have any Switch games with online multiplayer, nor their yearly service (I intend on doing the 7 day free trial to play Super Mario World, but that's about it), so this is more so that I can look at the friends list and not feel so lonely. I'll put my friend code, in screenshot form, here in case anyone wants to be my Switch friend.
Last oddity I want to bring up, is getting screenshots and videos off the Switch. It's very easy to post them to Twitter, which I do because that's a fun way to share silly stuff with friends. But, when writing these blogs of mine, I like to use my own screenshots whenever I can, and I like to get them off the system in a way that isn't through Twitter, as it's a hassle to save them back to my computer, one by one. Never mind the potential for wanting shots that are too spoiler-y to just post publicly.
On PS4, I do this by copying what I need onto a USB stick, and then from there to the computer. On Switch, the easiest (and maybe only?) method is to take the SD card out (I had a spare 32 GB one lying around, that I bought years ago thinking I could use it to expand my Wii U's storage (despite it having an SD slot, the Wii U didn't support that)), and put it into my computer. My decade old laptop may be nearing the end of its life (keep holding on, Ole Computey, still gonna be a few months before I get a new one), but it's got an SD card slot! So, that all is easy, and works fine, but the folders that the Switch saves things into...
On PS4, I go to a game, copy stuff from it, and it gets saved to a folder with the name of the game. Makes perfect sense. On Switch, at least this time, I just copied everything over, and it was in a folder named... "07." And inside that were folders named, "03," "04," "05," etc, up to "11."
This is when I realized Switch organizes screenshots/videos by month and day.
I think that covers all my thoughts on the Switch itself. It's a neat thing, conceptually I get the appeal of being able to use it handheld, but it just doesn't feel good in my hands. It was okay when I tried playing the Boxboy + Boxgirl demo, but in the end I'm going to spend all my time with this thing docked, and playing on the TV. Which is totally fine, I like it that way! Quite a bit, honestly!
Okay, here's the last thought: It's whisper quiet. Quite an improvement over the jetliner PS4 right next to it. I'm still using headphones (my USB set plugged in to the dock and work with no fuss), but because I want to, not because I have to.
Anyway, I've also played Super Mario Odyssey, and a handful of demos of Switch games, so you better believe I have even more to say!
Super Mario Odyssey.
If I had to sum this game up in a single word, it'd be delightful. It's a jaunty fun time, jumping and frolicking about, finding Moons around every corner. Probably too many corners, but the game certainly isn't making me try to get all of them (I'm in the 600s now, out of...well, I dunno how many there are), I just want to keep playing it! You know me, I always like a good janky game that doesn't feel good, but is compelling for the story (I say, preparing myself for DP2), and the last game I was playing before this (Dragon Age Inquisition, I was replaying it to get up to the Trespasser DLC, which I didn't start because my Switch arrived and I couldn't resist the shiny new thing), I wouldn't quite say is janky, but I also wouldn't say moving in that game feels good.
Mario Odyssey is one of those games were just moving around feels good, and doubly so when the last game I was playing wasn't so joyful in its base movement. The simple act of moving through these spaces, even when they aren't challenges to be overcome, or environmental puzzles to be solved, it's just fun! Even though I haven't played a Mario game in about six years, stepping into Mario's shoes just felt natural, even with some new moves in Mario's repertoire that allow for some cool new stuff. Like throwing Cappy out, and diving onto him for an extra mid-air jump. Just feels great once I finally got that timing down. Now if only I could keep chaining those together without landing, but it feels like the game prevents that from happening. Please tell me if I'm wrong, though.
I do have a few minor gripes, though. Like some recent Mario games, the path through to just finishing the game is fairly easy, and short, which isn't bad. Probably a good thing for not preventing people from finishing it because it's too difficult, but I do wish there'd been a bit more challenge to the main stuff through. Then again, now that I'm pretty sure I did the hardest late game thing (I spent multiple hours to finish the Darker Side of the Moon, only because there's no checkpoints in it), some of that might be running into the opposite problem, and being a bit too tough.
But I am into late game, entirely optional stuff, so I can't complain too much. A much more serious complaint, is that while this game claims to care about the history of Mario, the series' origins, and all that, clearly it neglected one thing. Despite naming a whole city after the great and kind Donkey Kong, despite this being a globe-trotting affair across numerous kingdoms, not only do you not visit the Donkey Kongdom, DK himself is nowhere to be seen! I mean the actual, current, lovable DK, not any representations of him from the 80s as a malevolent villain.
Very rude of Nintendo to name a city after him, and not even put him in the game!
That (mostly) joking complaint aside, I had a lot of fun with it. The whole gimmick around possessing enemies is cool, and if anything, I wish the game had gone even further with it. There's plenty here, and some good and clever use of it in spots, but that doesn't stop the imagination from running wild with even weirder and wackier things that could have been. Maybe if they make a Mario Odyssey 2?
Last thing I want to say about Odyssey, is that while the game is presented as going back to something more akin to Mario 64, or Sunshine with the smaller number of levels/emphasis on exploration (as opposed to Galaxy 1 & 2 having more emphasis on pretty linear levels, and 3D World going all the way with that), 64 and Sunshine aren't actually the games it reminds me of the most.
Those would be Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie. Something about just going into a level, and getting a bunch of Moons in a single go feels more like Banjo than anything else. Now, don't get me wrong, Odyssey has so many Moons it puts even the most collectible of N64 Rare games to shame. But it felt more akin to those, than Mario 64 bopping you out of the level after every star, and making changes to the level for specific stars.
That's all I've got to say on Odyssey. Really good game, but pretty straightforward in terms of what's going on with it. Definitely glad I picked it as my first game for the Switch, as opposed to the game I sincerely almost got, Daemon X Machina.
Which, I tried the demo of, and while that game seems fun enough, I think I'll wait until I get the new PC and play that version. Again, seemed perfectly playable on Switch, didn't notice any framerate troubles. But it'd be nice to get that game running at 60, and ideally with some better anti-aliasing.
Other demos I tried include Ori and the Blind Forest, some Mr. Driller game, Boxboy + Boxgirl, and Cadence of Hyrule. Of those, I definitely want to play Ori, Boxboy, and Cadence (despite still not playing Crypt of the Necrodancer). Mr. Driller, well, probably not. But those others were fun, and I'm sure I'll get around to eventually. Just one of those things, I spent a bunch of money on the console, controller, game, another game coming soon, and there's more out this week...
Yes, I know it'd be cheaper to spend twenty bucks here and there on smaller games like those (or ten or whatever Boxboy is), but also shiny new things.
Anyway, I'm probably going to play that new Paper Mario. And so far as older Switch games go, I'd still like to play Luigi's Mansion 3, and Mario + Rabbids. I've had a weird itch for an XCOM-y tactical-y game recently, and don't really want to put up with XCOM 2's horrendous load times on PS4 again.
I'd still like to play Smash Bros., but it's kinda hard to justify buying that (and I'd have to at least get the Joker (Persona 5) and Banjo DLC) with the pandemic going on, knowing I couldn't really play it with the couple people I know locally who like those games too. I'm sure I'd get my money's worth, and plenty of fun playing through the single player stuff, but it doesn't feel right to play a Smash Bros. only alone. I know it has online play, but Smash Bros. for Wii U had the most variable netcode in any game I've played in my life, so I'd rather just stick with MK 11 for my online fighting.
And, of course, I will have Deadly Premonition 2 soon enough. I'd be lying if I said the tech issues, and stuff around the game's apparent mishandling of transgender character(s?) don't have me feeling a bit leery. But the first game had its share of issues, and if nothing else, it'll give me a lot to write about, and people still read what I write here, so I'll play it!
Just fingers crossed it's more blessing than curse.
Anyway, that's my write-up on my first week or so with a Switch. It's neat, I like it, and more than anything else, it's good to be playing Nintendo stuff again. I hadn't since Breath of the Wild in 2017, and it's good to be back. Even if I still have many gripes with how Nintendo operates as a business, their games staying high in price FOREVER, etc, but that's capitalism for ya.
Thanks for reading, tune in next time for likely conflicted thoughts on DP2!
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