Nintendo Switch

Well, I just got a copy of YU-NO for the Switch. I’ve been interested in seeing what all the fuzz was about for what seems decades now, so I was really curious to finally play it.

So far:

  • I guess Steins Gate was really inspired by this… Like reaaaaaally inspired. The main character is equally annoying too.
  • The age of the game shows. Most specifically the game’s origin as an adult game is obvious as hell (although this is a remake of an already sanitized version, the dialog is full of teenage “edginess” and sex jokes. Which works for the unlikable protagonist, but still…) and make it so that you need to play it with a historical mindset to get over some questionable stuff.
  • Other than that, it is very, very promising, with much more “gameplay” than other VNs (certainly way more than Steins Gate). It’s a pity the remake didn’t change some of the badly aged stuff, but at the same time it’s good that it preserves more or less the same experience, I guess?

I played it when I was 20, had much less Japanese knowledge and was much more easily forgiving of Japan’s casual woman-hating in games (thinking (wrongly) it was tongue-in-cheek). Once translated, I am not much surprised the main character, who is supposed to be quite cynical to begin with, comes out as being simply a douche.
In any case, and bear in mind I am not drawing a parallel between the two games, I suspect I might not enjoy my time in Yuno much nowadays, in the same way I had a very tough time finding Planescape Torment not immature when I played it for the first time 10 years after its release.
I’ll be very interested, if you manage to stick with it (it’s very long) to hear about the game once you finish it. It’s near impossible to evoke anything without the risk of spoiling it.
Finaly, I’m a bit surprised they kept all the innuendo: most of the sex scenes in the original game were so tackled on I would have thought very little rewriting would have been necessary to bypass them.

Tieing this to the recent discussion about pixel art, the original PC98 game use those monochromatic or pastel backgrounds (because of the 16 colours limitation of the hardware) in these kind of games and especially Yuno that I find super evocative in a hardcore way. Looking at the higher definition art, I feel like a little bit is lost.

Just catching up on an Animal Crossing preview and LOL, Edge Magazine…

Slitherine/Matrix making a surprise entry in the console realm with the release of Battlestar Galactica Deadlock.

What is going on with the Switch? Will we get Qvdriga 4 players local coop with commercials showing grizzly men having the time of their life next?

Graviteam tactics!

Distant Worlds 2!

Oh man, I never realized how much I wanted couch Qvadriga until you mentioned it. To be able to destroy someone’s chariot and watch them react in real time as their charioteer is dragged along. Sounds divine. I’m not sure how inputs would work, but I guess they could bind moves to buttons and have them entered simultaneously like picking plays in Tecmo Bowl.

Monaco!

Actually, that one really is coming to switch. Next week in fact.

Ring Fit Adventure just arrived.

First impressions: the ring is bigger than i expected and feels nice and sturdy. It does have active hardware inside (There are pins in the joycon connector).

Gameplay impressions coming

Looking forward to your thoughts. I’ve got one preordered.

Also curious to hear fitness impressions, and how much space it needs.

Only had a chance to do the initial setup, first tiny bit of adventure mode and a couple of the standalone exercises.

Initial setup is your usual slick Nintendo work.

There is a decent amount of resistance from the ring.

You can tell it your current fitness level and weight. You jog for a bit to calibrate your running style.

The individual exercises show which muscles they target, give you a score rating and have leaderboards to compare against your friends.

First mission of adventure mode is just some jogging on the spot to get you used to the controls.

I don’t think you will need a ton of space. A yoga mat sort of area should be fine.

Review embargo has ended

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-10-17-ring-fit-adventure-review-pure-nintendo-magic

There’s only a couple of “middling” reviews in so far, but they seem consistent with each other. Nothing that keeps me away from the Switch version, really. Just saying there’s some performance issues on occasion, and resolution even in docked mode is only 720p. But it’s supposedly perfectly great in handheld mode.

If only I could download it… It’s weird, I checked at midnight EST when games usually launch in the store, and it wasn’t yet available. Now, nearly 12 hours into the official release date, it’s still not available for download. Is this typical?

Nope. Sometimes there are delays (I suspect most publishers don’t bother to specify an hour, which is why it goes live at midnight).
But… Hat in Time showed up in the Japanese store at Midnight yesterday, and I was surprised to not see it in the European one 7 hours later. Maybe they pulled the worldwide release a bit because of the issues you talk about?
Sometimes, really weird things happen: Vlambeer released Super Crate Box for the Switch a couple of weeks ago. Well, you can still buy it in the US, but you can’t anymore in Europe (“The title isn’t available for purchase anymore” it says). But I guess it could be just the usual Vlambeer drama since they lost their minds releasing Nuclear Throne.

And I just checked and it’s there. Grabbing it now! It’s huge (16GB!) I’m all in with the “Seal the Deal” expansion, figured might as well fully invest, based on the kids’ interest. Especially since the YouTubers they’ve watched playing this were all onto the expansion already, of course.

I’m looking forward to your impressions. I’m stil stuck somewhere in the first hour of Odyssey though :D

These may be the worst load times I’ve ever experienced. Sure, at 16+ GB it definitely had to go onto an SD card, but so have several other games and I’ve never seen this before. On first load I stared at the splash screen for at least 40 seconds. Maybe it was closer to a minute. I nearly forced the game to quit.

Seems pretty smooth once you’re playing. The co-op play is both appreciated and problematic at the earliest (non Seal the Deal) levels where it’s clear that it’s not true coop, but rather Hat Girl is very much primary and Bow Girl is secondary. Only Hat Girl can activate dialogue, for example. And the camera is really pinned to her. If you’re playing Odyssey, it’s more like the Mario / Cappy relationship that your typical Mario / Luigi partnership.

More impressions to come.

Dang that’s a shame. Loading times are really a big showstopper here as I can’t stand them in the least. Thank you a lot for telling me.

Hyper Sentinel is 12 cents for now on the Switch.
It’s a sort of very retro shmup (probably drawing inspiration from a C64 game whose name I forgot). You are swiping a level left and right, and you have a small invulnerability window when you are changing direction/looping. It’s a bit too fast paced for me, and the power ups don’t feel balanced from what I played, but I kind of like it as it is a genre I’ve never been quite exposed to.
Here is the Steam store page which holds more info than the Nintendo one. The trailer was so horrible I almost passed on it though.

I think that discount is to try to promote the release of their Silk game.