Nintendo Switch

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.

Looks just like Andrew Braybrook’s Uridium.

Thank you! (again)

Dang, this thing is, in fact, a workout.

I did the setup and the first three missions, which I think was the first complete “world”. So I fought Dragaux once. As you said, it’s all incredibly polished, as almost only Nintendo games can manage.

I’d say you might need slightly larger than a yoga mat area, but what do I know, I’ve only just begun. I would add two warnings. Watch for ceiling fans. I didn’t do any exercises that had any rapid overhead movements, but I did raise hit the fan the first time I was stretching with my arms above my head. And second, you probably do want some kind of mat, because you will sweat. You probably don’t want to drip sweat all over a carpeted living room floor, for example.

I just picked it up as well and agree it’s a pretty good workout. I haven’t been doing much exercising in the past 4 or 5 months and a ‘moderate’ workout set for ‘someone who doesn’t exercise much’ had me sweating and worn out after about 13 active minutes. I hope it’s got just a little more depth as a game than what I’ve seen so far but I’m fairly confident it will meet my low-ish expercations. It’s already easily the most fun I’ve had working out at home, so I’m hoping it will continue to keep my attention at least until I feel like I am back to “decent” fitness shape. Either way I’m happy to financially support this kind of idea and I’d love to see it take off and get this genre off the ground.

Why-oh-why does Ring Fit require a ROM card? I get that it comes with one and that you might not want to let anybody buy it alone via eshop. but no download code in box seems kinda short sighted for those of us who use only downloads with our devices.

Diego

The upside of only ever downloading games is that I can just leave this physical cartridge in the Switch and still not have to swap games out.

I agree with the general sentiment but I don’t mind it for Ring Fit, specifically because you also need the ring and the leg strap to play it. So it’s not like I’m going to want to play this on a plane and then realize oh yeah I left the card at home. You can just leave the card with the other physical parts.

But yeah cartridges are gross.