Nintendo Switch - Games You Can Play Right Now

Spikeout wrote:

The much touted Hades is now in my library on the strength of reviews & word of mouth on here. I'm not Supergiant's biggest fan, enjoyed Bastion, didn't like Transistor & didn't play Pyre but I do quite enjoy roguelikes. Please let this click for me.

This is exactly where I stand with Supergiant.

Hades is incredible. Feels great, weapons are all very unique, abilities are great. Dialogue, voice acting, animations, art, music.. all fantastic.

r013nt0 wrote:
Spikeout wrote:

The much touted Hades is now in my library on the strength of reviews & word of mouth on here. I'm not Supergiant's biggest fan, enjoyed Bastion, didn't like Transistor & didn't play Pyre but I do quite enjoy roguelikes. Please let this click for me.

This is exactly where I stand with Supergiant.

Hades is incredible. Feels great, weapons are all very unique, abilities are great. Dialogue, voice acting, animations, art, music.. all fantastic.

To my mind, mechanically Hades is Bastion except they figured out how to get me to engage with all the systems. Instead of sticking with my favorite weapon loadout they give me a reason to use a different weapon for each run. Bastion had a "customize your own harder difficulty" system that I looked at once and never touched. Hades makes that the core of the meta-game advancement, and I'm enjoying it.

I also dig that this is a roguelike where every run is in continuity. That's not a conceit that would work for any game, but I like the story they're telling with it here.

Is it a rogue-like or rogue-lite? It sounds like you aren't 100% reset on every death. I know there's the "God Mode" people discuss, but even before that was brought up I feel like people were discussing elements that allow you to continue to grow stronger somewhat.

Lite. Every single run* you are making some sort of permanent progress. New weapons, unlocks, decorations, something.

* I suppose if you really suck and get killed in the first room you won't make any progress

Yup, absolutely a lite.

Vargen wrote:
r013nt0 wrote:
Spikeout wrote:

The much touted Hades is now in my library on the strength of reviews & word of mouth on here. I'm not Supergiant's biggest fan, enjoyed Bastion, didn't like Transistor & didn't play Pyre but I do quite enjoy roguelikes. Please let this click for me.

This is exactly where I stand with Supergiant.

Hades is incredible. Feels great, weapons are all very unique, abilities are great. Dialogue, voice acting, animations, art, music.. all fantastic.

To my mind, mechanically Hades is Bastion except they figured out how to get me to engage with all the systems. Instead of sticking with my favorite weapon loadout they give me a reason to use a different weapon for each run. Bastion had a "customize your own harder difficulty" system that I looked at once and never touched. Hades makes that the core of the meta-game advancement, and I'm enjoying it.

I'm not a huge fan of meta progression in general, but you nailed why I'm enjoying Hades but haven't enjoyed their output much since Bastion.

FYI Hades has a thread. Since it's also on PC.

But yeah it's fantastic and I've played way too much this weekend.

ccesarano wrote:

Is it a rogue-like or rogue-lite? It sounds like you aren't 100% reset on every death. I know there's the "God Mode" people discuss, but even before that was brought up I feel like people were discussing elements that allow you to continue to grow stronger somewhat.

Might want to poke the Conference Call crew about this, where run-to-run metagame advancement is talked about as if it's become a core feature of "rogue-like" as opposed to something that puts it into an adjacent category...

By the terms you've described, it's rogue-lite-lite because not only is there advancement, but the runs are all in continuity with one another. Characters remember successes and failures and will comment on them later.

Then again it's also possible to toggle off most of the advancements and difficulty options, so you can do a full mechanical reset if you like. But not entirely... there's one category of upgrade that I don't think can be rolled back. Though that's got a tree structure and it's awfully difficult to max out everything there so you could probably select a branch that was still at zero.

For further musings on the nature of rogue-descended games, see my post on the @Roguelike games thread.

"Run-based game" I think is a better way to begin to describe this type of game at this point.

Vargen wrote:
r013nt0 wrote:
Spikeout wrote:

The much touted Hades is now in my library on the strength of reviews & word of mouth on here. I'm not Supergiant's biggest fan, enjoyed Bastion, didn't like Transistor & didn't play Pyre but I do quite enjoy roguelikes. Please let this click for me.

This is exactly where I stand with Supergiant.

Hades is incredible. Feels great, weapons are all very unique, abilities are great. Dialogue, voice acting, animations, art, music.. all fantastic.

To my mind, mechanically Hades is Bastion except they figured out how to get me to engage with all the systems. Instead of sticking with my favorite weapon loadout they give me a reason to use a different weapon for each run. Bastion had a "customize your own harder difficulty" system that I looked at once and never touched. Hades makes that the core of the meta-game advancement, and I'm enjoying it.

I also dig that this is a roguelike where every run is in continuity. That's not a conceit that would work for any game, but I like the story they're telling with it here.

r013nt0 wrote:

Lite. Every single run* you are making some sort of permanent progress. New weapons, unlocks, decorations, something.

* I suppose if you really suck and get killed in the first room you won't make any progress

These two posts sold me on buying Hades (on PC). So thank you. I'll continue my post over in the dedicated thread.

So I'm playing some Mario's Super Picross. It's primarily in Japanese, so I feel like I've gone back to the 90's and imported a SNES game. It is still Picross so it's perfectly playable. Looking at Wikipedia, this was helpful:

In Mario's puzzles, if the player marks the wrong cell, they get a time penalty. The amount of time lost doubles for every mistake (one minute, two minutes, four, and finally eight). In Wario's puzzles, the time counts up from zero, and the player is not penalized for marking the incorrect cell. However, the player will not be notified if they make a mistake.

Since it's on the SNES emulator, it has built in save states and rewind, and it is just wild to rewind a Picross puzzle when you misclick.

I've also picked up Hades and I"m having way more fun with it than I thought I would. I bounce off of rogue-likes often, and I found myself tonight before bed saying "I think I can do a quick run." Before long, I've beat the first boss for the first time, and unlocked more upgrades and story. When I get low on health entering a new chamber, I think "I'm going to die" and I'm just fine with that, since I have made some sort of progression every time.

I have memed.

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/68KBn7Y/gamin.jpg)

I found the most infuriating game level ever. I've died dozens of times on this level in all kinds of ways.

The "underground levels" are the only good part of that game.

Mario 35, the platformer royale, dropped today. I fired it up and played a few levels, and even made it to 4th place once. It's basically the original Super Mario Bros, but with incentives to keep collecting coins or killing enemies to extend how much time you have. And there are a lot more enemies, based on what the competition is doing. I've seen seven or eight Goombas all clumped together in 1-1, and I've seen several Bowsers on 1-2, since somebody was going very fast I guess. It seems neat.

Popped in to see if there was any Hades love after the boy showed me the trailer... We'll be picking that up then

Well, I stuck with it and I just finished Mario Sunshine. First time ever. I really liked it. I wish the camera was reworked and the controls improved, but overall I feel like I got my money’s worth.

I'm 3 stars into Mario Galaxy and it feels like an overreaction to criticism of Mario Sunshine.

- Not only are there not bottomless pits, but you literally can't fall off the level.

- Rather than a bad camera, they frequently take away the camera.

Mario Sunshine is so much closer to 64 than this is. This feels more like 3D World or 3D Land.

After listening to multiple reactions (Giant Bomb and such), I thought I was the crazy one. I remember really enjoying Sunshine. That isn't to say I didn't like Galaxy, I just never knew Sunshine was so despised.

DSGamer wrote:

Rather than a bad camera, they frequently take away the camera.

Remember that Galaxy released on the Wii where there effectively was no right analog stick to control the camera with. Completely building the levels so that the camera almost never gets stuck behind something or needs adjustment was a very clever design solution to the lack of easy camera access in the control scheme.

As to not being able to fall off the planets... Wait until you're more than three stars in.

I'm pretty sure I fell into a black hole on the first star.

Okay. I got to the bee world and found places I can fall. Lol.

I forgot about the Wii lacking a camera control. The design decisions make a lot more sense with that in mind.

Having missed both of these games I’m getting a quick history on 3D Mario. 3D World will also be relatively new to me, so looking forward to that as well.

Sunshine is definitely my favorite. The movement in that game is just so much better than anything else offered in a 3d mario. I have never nor will I ever understand how people think it's the weakest mario game.

b12n11w00t wrote:

Sunshine is definitely my favorite. The movement in that game is just so much better than anything else offered in a 3d mario. I have never nor will I ever understand how people think it's the weakest mario game.

That’s my takeaway so far. The camera controls are frustrating and some of the levels are difficult, but moving around the world is a joy. I had a lot of fun with it.

I saw a tweet that maybe describes Sunshine. They said it was a fun game to beat, but a nightmare of a game to 100%. Maybe that was my problem back when. Trying to do everything led to a lot of frustration?

Anyway, 2002 was a long time ago and there's little chance I revisit it now. Left a sour taste then, and I'm not super up for analyzing why at this point. Just ready for 3D World.

Stele wrote:

I saw a tweet that maybe describes Sunshine. They said it was a fun game to beat, but a nightmare of a game to 100%.
.

That lines up with my experience back in the day. I can still remember bashing my head against the post-game fruitlessly.

Oh yeah. I have no illusions that I’ll go back and 100% it. It was worth the $60 for that game alone, though.

Stele wrote:

I saw a tweet that maybe describes Sunshine. They said it was a fun game to beat, but a nightmare of a game to 100%.

I can't think of many games that are fun to 100%, and all the ones I can think of are Metroidvanias.

Funny enough isn't the problem with 100%-ing it is that they take away your water pack for some sections so you're forced into more of a mario 64 style movement?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I can't think of many games that are fun to 100%, and all the ones I can think of are Metroidvanias.

Likewise.

Picross comes to mind; I like doing all the picrosses.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Stele wrote:

I saw a tweet that maybe describes Sunshine. They said it was a fun game to beat, but a nightmare of a game to 100%.

I can't think of many games that are fun to 100%, and all the ones I can think of are Metroidvanias.

I loved every single minute of 242 stars in Mario Galaxy, and 242 more in Galaxy 2.

Have done all 120 stars on SMW at least 3 times in my life too. That cape is so good.