Forgot to update the thread with Switch 1 games I tested:
Bloodstained: loads are much much much better, and the game feels like it’s up to parity with the other consoles and PC. Unfortunately the game is still locked to 30fps but it’s very very smooth and most importantly, stable.
Balatro: lol
Monster Hunter Rise: load times are improved but the FPS is capped at 30. I think it might’ve still dipped during my hunt but I can’t tell if it really did or if I’m too used to 60+ FPS from playing the PC version too much.
Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance: initial and other random short loads are very fast, but loading from a save file is still very very slow. The game seemed to perform basically the same besides that? Might’ve gone below 30 FPS at times, but felt better than on Switch 1, but might be placebo.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond: I think the loads have gotten faster? But besides that, no change.
The main change seems to be any game with long load times originally are much improved. I should test out Samsho 2019 to see because that game had long load times on every console except for PC and Xbox.
Now trying to imagine what an open world Mario Party game would be like where you can go off-road/off-board. Still continuing to roll dice somehow to get around?
Was creepy buying a Switch 1 game recently and it turning that into a ‘virtual card’. I wonder if any users who don’t keep up with this stuff were freaked out
Played a few rounds with the S. Butt community. IIRC Splatoon 3 handles matchmaking with friends pretty well, so I was surprised to see that MKW is dumb. You can’t party up and then join a larger group. You either individually try to join the same public lobby, which fills up too fast for everyone to get in, or you create your own private lobby that random people can’t find.
We ended up playing 4-player Mario Kart against 20 bots, which I like because it’s much calmer, but it’s not what we were going for.
Yeah some of the P switches are pretty fucked up. I spent forever trying to do one in the fantasy Japan area where I needed to double jump off of a ramp, and I can’t for the life of my figure out how to consistently double jump. Sometime I can do it and sometimes I can’t. No rhyme or reason to it.
“Board your chartered flight to the city” is so sadistic. Of course I can’t turn away until I slowly board each of these seaplanes in my pink corvette.
I played far too much Mario Kart this weekend. I was commuting this morning and thought, “what the hell? How come I’m not draft boosting right now?”
Getting gold in a knockout cup seems more unpredictable than a regular Grand Prix… The time trial ghosts area really difficult…I think I might be driving the open road and playing multiplayer exclusively from here on out.
yeah, I golded every grand prix on 150cc the first try [after restarting the first track once in some cases] but can only reliably get top 4 in knockout
I experienced a journey of doing one of the knockout tours and being in first for the first four legs and then getting to the last section and getting aggressively Mario Kart-ed 5 or 6 attempts in a row
I started being able to time when the blue shells would come
The 24-racer lobbies are so traumatizing that failing to get 3 gold stars in single-player is actually a nice excuse for me to say out of them and grind something else.
Also, if it helps anyone who doesn’t know, time trial records are at MKWorld WR History and on their channel at https://www.youtube.com/@MKWorldRecords. Some of the tricks are speed runner hard, but you don’t need them to beat the staff ghosts.
Oh, ALSO, you can use rewind (d-pad down) in time trials to practice shortcuts over and over. Clock keeps running, but it’s better than restarting.
spent a lot of time with Mario Kart World and the thing i’m really thinking about is Super Mario Odyssey. This game, like Odyssey, is bigger, more detailed, more enriched, more “to do” but in my heart of hearts… is it functionally better than the game on the Wii U before it? am i gonna just play this until there is nothing left and then never touch it again, like Odyssey? i don’t know. im sure they’ll have DLC for this (but hopefully it’s just more random little enemy guys to play as)
i’ve been playing Mario Kart 8 for basically ten years with other people, in real life and online, and to me World doesn’t have too many QOL improvements over 8 Deluxe besides automatically loading your item behind you without holding the button. the boosting is the same, the tricking into boosting is the same and even lots of the aesthetic choices are the same. i think the grinding is another wrinkle but overall it’s functionally another boost mechanic that’s not as tight as it should feel imo.
but because the courses are bigger, more intertwined with transitional levels, and now with ample grinding spots, it suddenly makes doing races feel like playing 3D Sonic games, with a variety of ways to short cut/navigate around.
and to that point, the open world missions are really giving me strong Sonic Frontiers vibes except for these you don’t seem to get anything? maybe a sticker that you can put next to your face or the kart? i feel like the vibes of just driving around a huge world is nice but it still is no Forza Horizon or even a little Burnout. (the one thing i have a major gripe with that i wish was like Burnout is that you should be able to earn a boost when you near miss traffic on the road)
this mostly feels like a negative post but trust me when i say that besides these little gripes that i only ever bring to SB, i am having a fucking great time with it. the Knockout Mode (i always keep wanting to say the Knockout Game lol) can be chaotic but it’s fun with proper online, and honestly the Battle Mode with balloons felt even better than it ever has (i think the more karts make it feel more casual death match-like).
overall this is a crowd pleaser and when you have stuff like this it’s hard not to smile
