Okay so I’m back, didn’t really think about how I might have to rant about this so I’m taking a break from my blogging break to talk about this.

So I’m a big Nintendo fanboy, but I also fucking hate Nintendo. I will always buy the Nintendo consoles and games, but they keep doing stupid shit that they should really know better.

Switch 2 is exactly what we have been wanting for a long time. A Switch, but stronger. And now we had the first big showcase, and boy do I have things to say about this. I will buy this shit at launch, but it has some things it really should fix.

So… let’s go I guess. I will talk about the good and the bad. Mostly the bad though. I’ll start with the good shit, because there was, indeed, much good shit. But there was much bad shit too.

The Good

The console

Really, other than some things I’ll mention later, there’s not much to complain about here. It’s a much stronger Switch, capable of 4k60fps and having performance mode for up to 120fps at lower resolutions. It can play even recent games like Star Wars Outlaws so it might legitimately be stronger than I expected (the Steam Deck struggles to run that). It has better joy-con connection with the magnets. It has mouse controls. The bigger screen is great (the screen is legitimately better than the Steam Deck’s spec-wise). It’s actually less expensive than I was expecting (in the US… being in Canada sucks man, our PMs have been pretty shit). It’s compatible with Micro SD Express which is literally 10 times faster than SDXC so that’s pretty great, but it’s also not compatible with SDXC which is a bit shitty, just kinda losing that option feels a bit shitty.

Honestly, good shit. Yes, it will eventually be obsolete, but it’s less obsolete now than the Switch 1 was at launch. It’s better than the Steam Deck, as far as specs.

Mario Kart World

This game looks fucking good man. Like, holy shit it looks fun. Mario Kart is always good, but this one with the trick elements like grinding and wall riding looks so cool, and there’s 24 racers now instead of 12 which will make things crazy. It also has some interesting modes to it like an F-Zero-style knockout mode, open world exploration (really curious to see what this is about) and you get to play as a fucking cow from Moo Moo Farm (the only character that matters). Fuck yes.

Donkey Kong Bananza

Everyone thought the big announcement of the Direct was gonna be a new 3D Mario. No, fuck you, 3D Donkey Kong. It looks so fantastic too. It’s fucking Donkey Kong Odyssey, and you can fuck up the environment to mine gold and shit. What even. Look at that trailer. I’m actually happy it’s not a new 3D Mario. We can get that next year. And it’s coming out just a month after the Switch 2 so it’s right around the corner. Amazing.

Also I like the new DK design, it gives me a weird old-school feel for some reason.

Kirby Air Riders

I must confess I have never played Kirby’s Air Ride. It just never happened, I was still a teenager when that came out and didn’t have the disposable income to buy every game that comes out, so this was a skip (I could’ve rented it but I never even thought to do that). I did constantly hear good things about it, especially City Trial mode. So the fact that a new one of these is actually happening is fucking amazing.

I really hate when trailers don’t show gameplay, but this is a rare case where just a title screen and a simple “2025” and the name of the director is almost enough. Cool to see Sakurai working on it.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

I actually predicted this on a fake leak twitter account that is floating around somewhere. I am very cool.

One thing I find lame about this is the possible characters because you’re stuck in the Age of Imprisonment so it’s likely you won’t even get to play as Link and the other characters aren’t quite as interesting as what we had in Age of Calamity… But hey Zelda looks fun to play. I haven’t played a Warriors game in a bit so that should be fun to get.

Fast Fusion

I noticed this upon rewatch, just thought I’d highlight it really quickly. It’s a sequel to Fast RMX which was a launch title for the original Switch, and Fast RMX was good shit and one of the more technically competent Switch games. Fast Fusion looks great too.

The Whatever

The Duskbloods

Yeah I’m putting this in “Whatever”. It’s interesting, but the problem is that, based on descriptions, this seems to be a multiplayer-focused game. This could’ve been “Sony refuses to do anything with Bloodborne so we’re doing it”, but the “PvPvE” thing is making me not hyped. But maybe it will still be a regular Souls-like and the multiplayer is optional, so it’s on my “wait and see” list.

GameChat

GameChat is basically Discord voice chat, on Switch 2. It’s actually pretty cool as a feature, but it also feels… kinda niche. I feel like people won’t use this, generally. I certainly won’t. Basically no one is gonna care about the camera accessory either.

Both GameChat and the camera should’ve been left out of the development budget. Maybe pass on the savings to the customer and not charge 80$ for the games (oh wait I haven’t mentioned that yet).

Drag x Drive

This is a new first-party game that is fully mouse controlled with both joy-cons being used as mice. You use both joy-cons to control the wheels on a wheelchair, and it’s basketball. Wheelchair basketball.

In a way this is the same kind of new IP announcement we got with Arms. The thing with Arms is that it actually looked fun and was, in fact, fun. Drag x Drive just looks… really boring and personality-lacking and drab and why the fuck did they make this. The characters are so generic and… nothing.  The graphics are just a big pile of nothing.

I should’ve put this in bad, maybe. I dunno, maybe it’s better than it looks, I’ll be nice.

The third-party stuff

There was plenty of third-party stuff here. None of it was interesting. Even the few seconds of Silksong, finally seeing it for the first time since the 2022 Xbox Showcase (where they promised it would come out before the 2023 Xbox Showcase… that worked out nicely), was whatever. Because this is all shit that’s everywhere else. Yes, the Switch 2 will be the second best way to play them because of the portability and it is seemingly able to run some games better than the Steam Deck… but it’s not particularly interesting overall.

You get a Switch for the exclusive shit.

Gamecube on NSO

NSO is a scam. Just, in general, having to pay to play online is bullshit because you’re not even playing on the console manufacturer’s servers unless you’re specifically playing their games. They’re basically taking money from you because they can. Having to pay extra for the expansion pass is also a scam. That said, if you do indulge in the scam, it is pretty cool that some gamecube games are coming over to it.

It’s bullshit that you need NSO to play them. Just bring back virtual console, it’s free money you’re just leaving on the table for no reason.

The Bad

No Hall Effect sticks

Nintendo knows that drift is THE biggest complaint with the Switch. Now, if you know things about anything, you know that all current consoles have drift issues. The Xbox controllers seem to have been good at mitigating them, but PS5s are known for drifting within weeks and yet they don’t get even a quarter of the shit Nintendo gets for their joy-cons drifting after years.

BUT ANYWAYS… Knowing how big of an issue joy-con drift is treated as in the overall gaming fanbase, you’d think they’d both fix it with this new console by using Hall Effect sticks, and make a big deal out of it in the presentation. But nothing I found seems to indicate the use of Hall Effect sticks, so I can only assume they use the same shitty sticks from ALPS the Switch uses. It does seem like they did add some mitigation with better dust protection, but I feel they had an easy solution and they didn’t do it.

Maybe I’ll be proven wrong before launch but holy shit they’re stupid if they didn’t use hall effect.

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour

This is so dumb. It’s barely a tech demo that seems to have no fun value and seems to exist to point out features that aren’t particularly noteworthy about the Switch 2. It just doesn’t look good or worth having made in the first place. But this would be FINE, if it was free and included with the system. It’s not. This is a paid game.

Yeah fuck no, I hope this sells 2 copies total.

Prices

So now we run into a big problem. Game prices. This depends on the game and there seems to be no rime or reason, but it’s looking like games are 80$. Not all, but the fact that some are is insane anti-consumer garbage. I’ll buy them because I’m a fanboy and I’m really dumb, but holy shit do I not criticize people who refuse. That’s really a bit much, I assume this will translate to 100$ in Canada so… fucking oof. This is really fucking bad. 70$ is already too high for most games.

The game industry needs to check itself. Games need to go down to a maximum of 50$. This 80$ shit is ridiculous.

I blame game journos and youtubers who spent years screaming that games should cost up to 100$.

Game-Key Cartridges

They will sell physical media for Switch 2 that is called a Game-Key cartridge. This is a proper Switch 2 cartridge, that you put into the Switch 2. What it does is act as the license to play the game, but the game is not on the cartridge. Instead what it does is download the game from the eshop, while the cartridge verifies that you do, in fact, own it.

That’s just dumb. Put the damn game in the cartridge. Most games seem like they’ll come as proper cartridges that actually have the game, but this being an option at all is kinda ridiculous.

Switch 2 Editions of Switch 1 games

Talk about extreme stupidity. This is Sony levels of dumb.

So there’s Nintendo Switch 2 editions of Switch 1 games. If you have the Switch 1 version of one of those games, you can pay Nintendo a currently-unspecified amount to upgrade that to the Switch 2 version. The Switch 2 version will have better performance/graphics. This is stupid. Make that shit a patch on the Switch 2 and don’t charge your customers for it,  you fuckers. They already paid for the game. If the Switch 2 Edition has entirely new bonus content, cool, that’s fine, just sell that extra content as DLC. The performance upgrades? Keep that shit as a free patch. Idiots. Morons. Braindead troglodytes. Sons of a motherless goat. THE GAMES WORK ANYWAYS WITHOUT THE UPGRADE.

There’s no reason there should be a Switch 2 Edition of Metroid Prime 4. The Switch 2 Edition adds mouse controls and performance options. You know where they could also put that? In the Switch 1 version. Put a check in the code to see what console it’s being played on, and only enable mouse controls if the person is playing on a Switch 2. Put a check in the code to see what console it’s being played on to get the performance options. Why charge more for what should just be in the Switch 1 version?

If a game is already playable on the Switch 2 due to backwards compatibility (which most Switch 1 games are, there’s a few games that are noted to have issues and none of them are important), you should be able to take advantage of the hardware you’re playing it on, inherently.

This was stupid when Sony did it with PS4 games, it was stupid when Sony released PS5 remasters of PS4 games that are literally already playable on PS5, this is exactly as dumb. I don’t know what more to say than just continue pointing out that it’s stupid anti-consumer garbage.

Technical issues with the Direct stream

Why was this not a premade video? This was so dumb. Starting around the GameChat segment, this shit started having over a second of audio lag (verified that it wasn’t just me from looking at reaction videos). Then, during the Survival Kids segment, it just fucking froze and they struggled to bring it back as they had incorrect video playing alongside the audio. This doesn’t happen if you just play a completed, verified, QA’d video. This was embarrassing.

Overall

This is a Direct that both disappointed and surpassed all my expectations. I did not expect Air Ride or 3D DK. I also did not expect the lack of Hall Effect and those game prices and those really stupid Switch 2 Editions of Switch 1 games. It’s good things balanced with bad things.

I’m buying this shit because I’m a fanboy, but I can certainly see why people are wary.