Are you disappointed with the Switch in 2019?

[The Boston Crab]

Let me be clear first of all, I absolutely love my Switch. It completely rejuvenated my love for the medium when I felt disillusioned by pretty much everything besides the Souls games and a few notable exceptions. It got me playing a far bigger range of genres than I ever did before. It got me into shoot em ups, which are now probably my favourite games. It's made commuting and working away something I actually look forward to. I won't go into numbers but I've bought a lot of games for it, more than on any other system ever, by far, and I've really enjoyed the majority of them.


And yet, when I think back to Christmas of 2017, looking back at that astonishing launch year, the transparent road map of big first-party releases they'd laid out, and all the hopes I had for what was yet to come, I can't help but feel somewhat disappointed now.


I'm not knocking the ports. To be honest, I love the ports and maybe I'm therefore part of the bigger problem. I  had a Wii U but didn't have much for it or much interest at the time. MK8D, Tropical Freeze, Bayonetta 2, NSMBU, whatever else. They're excellent games which were underappreciated (and under-compensated, no doubt) because of the small user base. Money for old rope on the Switch maybe but I don't begrudge them this and I'm very happy to have them on the system. Beyond the first-party ports, I was unbelievably excited to have Dark Souls and FF7 and RE4 and Skyrim on the system. I can't knock the indie stuff, either, even though I'm pretty tired of many of the tropes at this point. At very least, it's made me try a lot of different stuff which I've then been able to deposit in Abandoned Games (2018-19).


So, in summary, it's a uniquely versatile system with more excellent games on it than any other I've ever owned and I probably have enough games there to last me through the entirety of the next generation even if I bought nothing else.


My disappointment, really, is with how conservative Nintendo have been with their own development. BotW and Odyssey are all-timers. ARMS is genuinely fantastic once you get over the initial few humps and learn how to play properly, many of my best online sessions ever have been with this game. I'll give them the wonderful Splatoon 2, though there's a fair argument that it's not too far removed from being a port of sorts. And I'll also say that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was at least attempting something different and ambitious, even though it's not to my taste and it seriously lacks polish for a first-party game. Honestly, though, at this point I would have to say that's it, for me.


All the software released and announced since that first year has felt like they've been cycling through their IP ticking the boxes. There's been a real lack of ambition or spark to everything else I've seen from them, including the otherwise excellent Smash. I appreciate that Pokemon Let's Go, Kirby and Yoshi are probably just not for me, but they did nothing beyond hit the exact points you'd expect them to hit, at bare minimum. Pleasant, but pedestrian. Even the interesting stage flip mechanic from Yoshi ended up being smoothed into something much more perfunctory. I'll be ready to eat my words but I fully expect that the next Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Luigi's Mansion and Fire Emblem will follow suit. Is that me being negative or looking at the evidence of the last 18 months and coming to a fair conclusion? Even Mario Maker appears to have taken out the quirky costume stuff and the stranger elements of the first game to round off the corners. I'm not at all surprised at this point.


Now, Labo is clearly the elephant in the room here. It obviously hasn't taken off as they'd hoped but I have to applaud what they've attempted. The initial trailer was one of the most exciting and jaw-dropping things I've ever seen from a videogame company. Whether it's good or not doesn't really matter. It's ambitious and curious and either genius or very daft. It's a win in my book. Tetris 99 is also a pretty inspired twist on a couple of well-established genres. I just wish they'd extend some of that creative spark and ambition to their major releases.


If they don't, OK, I'll go back to playing Darius Gaiden, Virtua Racing, Dragon's Dogma, Rolling Gunner, Cuphead, MHGU, Psyvariar Delta, SF30AC and all the other brilliant games on there, but from a first-party point of view, the Switch is becoming a disappointment.




[brat-sampson]

I'll give them E3 etc. Pokemon, Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem are all certainly entertaining enough, and as mentioned it's an unbelievable home for Indies (looking forward to Slay the Spire, Goose Game and others coming soon) but yeah, the 1-2 of Odyssey and BotW kinda set expectations far higher than the following 18 months have lived up to, but also really higher than they had any chance of living up to.

I still play it regularly, but I haven't really gone in deep with anything on it this year, or tbh most of last year...

[Delete Delete Delete]

[Ham Bap]

I initially bought if for myself. Loved Mario Odyssey and BOTW.
My 6 year old plays on it all the time now. I haven't played a game on it for over a year now.

Probably would have sold it if my son didn't take it over.
There's nothing that's come out recently that I would have played.
Nothing coming out that I want to play.

[The Boston Crab]

I probably spent about four/five grand on the eShop since the Switch launched. I should have just taken my wife to Mauritius for two weeks and done something else with the hundreds of wasted hours of fun.

[Consignia]

No.

[Kelvin]

I'll give a proper answer later, when I'm not on my phone, but in short; Nintendo have always had also-ran titles like Kirby and Mario Tennis - games made by smaller, less capable developers outside of Nintendo. Just by looking at the teams involved, I can tell you which games have the potential to be brilliant, and which will just be 'good enough'. Animal Crossing is in house, so will likely be great, if that's your bag. Unless Nintendo are more heavily involved this time, Luigi's Mansion 3 will be competent but unremarkable (it's made by a team who worked on LM2 and who have never made a stone cold classic), Mario Maker will be amazing as it's in house, Fire Emblem will likely be excellent, but technically limited (as it's made by their 3DS team), etc, etc.

My point is that Nintendo have not suddenly become lazy. They are just doing what they always do for better or worse, which is put out decent, but unremarkable mid tier titles, to fill out the gsps between their incredible, internally developed games, this year represented by Mario Maker, and presumably Animal Crossing.

They also have some top tier external developers, like Retro and Platinum games, who are capable of a much higher quality of support than companies like Next Level. This is the normal cycle for a Nintendo system, only with a much higher rate of releases due to the ports and the fact they're only really focussing on one system now.

[The Boston Crab]

It's a great answer, to be honest. I know we've touched on similar before with the conclusion that I don't actually like the bread and butter Nintendo product. I guess this relative fallow period also coincides with being bored to fuck with all the dreck pushed via the PlayStation over the last couple of years and the fact that the XB exclusives are not even existent enough to give me AIDS.

I'm also sick to death of indie games. I can't think of one released in the last year that isn't complete shit or just nicking someone else's decent idea and having different graphics. There's also stuff like Into the Breach which is probably very good but boring as fuck to me. I'd rather fire up Excel.

Nevertheless, I do think that this is the least ambitious Nintendo have been in a long while. I don't blame them for filling their boots and playing it stultifyingly safe until enough people start to feel like me, like they're a creatively moribund company. They had a shit time with the Wii U and the Switch also means that they don't have another handheld revenue stream to guarantee billions rolling in for cunt tier iterations of Pokemon and whatever chod the wankers buy in the bucket load.

I guess most games are actually just crap.

[The Boston Crab]

It's so charming. Charming. Pokemon is so charming. Marriott + Rabbids what charm. Yoshi is bursting with CHARM AND JOY. Kirby is delightful with kiddies. They are CHARMED to fuck. It make you feel like a CHIELD AGAIN.

[Emotional Support Peacock]

Still mostly playing Rocket League, stupidly.

So far nothin new this year has excited me.

However I am massively looking forward to Animal Crossing and especially Mario Maker.

[madhair60]

Yeh

[Thursday]

I mostly just play Destiny now, so I don't care enough to be disappointed.

Then again, if it was better, maybe I wouldn't be one of those people that mostly just plays one game.

It's partly my own fault though, I was kidding myself that I'd be able to get into some of the lesser titles, but in the end I just wasn't interested when they actually came around, and I should have known.