*** The Official Nintendo Switch 2 ***

Mine was delivered from Nintendo at about 11am yesterday. I paid extra for the physical copy so I can swap it between the 2 Switch 2's in the house.
I played it for about 90 mins last night. Probably spent 45 mins in the first mine area smashing every bit of rock out of the way and finding every single bit of gold! I then played it a bit more constructively, and thought it was good fun. I've got a 9 hour flight to Antigua on Sunday, so I'll hopefully get some play time (if the kids don't steal it from me!).

The camera is a bit awkward sometimes and you end up not being able to see the character, or where you're going - but I guess that's what happens when you're smashing rocks in all direction and burying down into the ground.
 
Popped in to Argos to pick something up and they had two Switches 2s setup with DK. Spent an hour with it, its really good and I could have stayed longer. Think the Nintendo reps wanted back on it though :D that new pro controller really is nice.

Think im gonna have to pick up a Switch 2 sooner rather than later.
 
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Some further, somewhat rambling thoughts a few more weeks in.

Definitely warranted that Mario Kart 8 with all its tracks has more to offer some play styles. I'm loving Mario Kart World's more freeform style in that it is a lot of fun to simply explore and do P missions, a very nice option for cooling off after losing a 150cc on final corner of final race to a blue shell as happened to me a few times. The game knows exactly how many points it needs to screw you over by for those 1 point victories. Ever since Toad's Turnpike on N64 I always loved the real world style of tracks, also loved New Donk City, but understand that many might not like it. I love the oncoming traffic and the point to point tracks that remind me of Road Rash in a lot of ways

I'm super impressed with its visual impact on certain sections, the transitions in some of the tracks such as Rainbow Road look incredible on both the handheld mode and on my new 50inch TV that has 1300 nits with very good HDR. The blue glowing water, transition to the space station and other transitions on Rainbow Road are giving me next gen arcade game vibes. The theme music and visual extravagance of Rainbow Road feels weirdly emotional, the same was true of Mario Kart 8 on a few tracks with great music as well. There's just something magical about the overall experience. I'm also loving Nintendo at least having some next gen graphics on a new console. Some of those Mario Kart World sections in HDR hold up very well against anything. Best arcade style graphics I've ever seen.

Least expected thing for me on MKW is its rewind button, I've pressed it accidentally without knowing it existed at first, and don't want to use it in races even if you can offline.

Another bonus I've found the Switch 1 Pro controller to be just fine on Switch 2, even without chat button it's still so good I see no reason to get Switch 2 one yet, maybe ever.

The virtual console offerings for full tier are amazing as well. Soul Calibur 2 with scanlines turned off still looks amazing. Back when 3D fighting games had more visual diversity. I find that modern Street Fighter and Tekken look too similar to one another, these graphics still look incredible for a GC game, but definitely prefer without scanlines which I usually prefer for all 2D games. It actually feels a bit like a remaster that way, same for all the GC games.

Those simple GBA games are well worth a look, Wario Ware a great title to complete quickly, the Metroids, the Fire Emblems are still incredible. Freely admit to occasionally using rewind on Metroids and Fire Emblem which makes them better games overall in some ways, definitely less time consuming and frustrating. If you've never played the retro consoles you could play for years on their premium online offerings alone, shame I've played most already back in the day.

Not got DK yet as as mulling over physical or digital. I went against my long standing digital only policy for Switch 1 simply due the that physical Switch games will be a sellable asset. Maybe the last great collectable console for physical games. With many Switch cards shipping with no data on them, just codes, etc, Switch 2 may not be nearly as collectable as a retro system. I regret getting some game digitally on Wii U as they're basically dead.

Switching carts is annoying, but a good to keep on-cart data games as collectible assets. Works well for story games you might play once in a while but not so great for Mario Kart or Mario Maker type games you might play more often in shorter bursts. In hindsight actually am glad Mario Kart World was digital for us and not physical.

Though Switch 1 Pokemon games are definitely worth picking up on physical and Fire Emblems, etc, practically an investment as they almost certainly will accrue value.
 
Well tbf Ganon/Ganondorf isn't in every Zelda game lol, and for BotW only Calamity Ganon (the evil essence trying to resurrect Ganondorf) is in it. The final boss in TotK was one of my favourite ever.

Plainsong said:
He’s wrecking me though. Need to upgrade my armour but I don’t have enough Bobkin guts.
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It's been a while, but I think a strategy... ..or the strategy, is parrying him?

I'm finding DK very addictive, about 6 hours in, it's so polished and the pacing is so good. My only complaint is that it's quite easy, the later/post game content is usually much more challening in Nintendo games like this though.
 
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FC 26 is due out on Switch 2 on the 26th September. My son loves FC 25, and I was going to pre-order him ‘26 as a birthday present from Grandma & Granda.

All I can see is covers with “GAME KEY-CARD” on them. Does that mean a code in the case rather than a cartridge?

If so - what’s the difference between this and ordering a download from the Nintendo Store? I’m trying to keep to games on physical cartridges since we have 2 Switch 2’s in the house and it’s easier to swap them about.
 
p3eps said:
All I can see is covers with “GAME KEY-CARD” on them. Does that mean a code in the case rather than a cartridge?
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It's a cartridge, it just needs to download the whole game before you can start playing.

Other than the download requirement it can be used just like a normal cartridge - can be sold on, swapped between consoles etc.
 
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Cavallino said:
In MKW, is the rubber banding even worse? Or is it just my imagination?
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I don't think there is any rubberbanding, not in the tradditional sense of the game speeding players up or slowing them down for the sake of competition anyway.

It sometimes feels like the game is adjusting players speed to keep everyone together, but it's just becuase of how items are distributed, and other things like getting hit slowing you down less than in previous games, easier slipstreaming, 'mushroom stealing' etc.

Sometimes the CPU will briefly take over for a player to keep things smooth when there is lag, or perhaps when the network side of the game can't keep up with the chaos, so the actual position of a player is slightly off at times. I think the biggest impact of this is that an item will sometimes appear to hit a player but actually didn't, or it actually hit someone else.

I don't think MK8 had rubberbanding either but it wasn't as good at handling lag, so you'd see players teleport to their correct location more often when they 'lagged' behind. I find the teleporting effect from lag is far less apparent in MKW, I only really notice it when someone 'appears' to go off the track (when they actually didn't).
 
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megalomanic said:
Well tbf Ganon/Ganondorf isn't in every Zelda game lol, and for BotW only Calamity Ganon (the evil essence trying to resurrect Ganondorf) is in it. The final boss in TotK was one of my favourite ever.


It's been a while, but I think a strategy... ..or the strategy, is parrying him?

I'm finding DK very addictive, about 6 hours in, it's so polished and the pacing is so good. My only complaint is that it's quite easy, the later/post game content is usually much more challening in Nintendo games like this though.
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It was the journey to get to him that hurt as I used all my healing items and gloom food. Second phase I had nothing left. I’ve put a teleport down there so I’ve left to stock up.

The whole Demon King design is off the scale brilliant. Amazing job they’ve done with that.
 
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Though BOTW had massive success, I do wonder how it would have been received if first we saw of it was the technically superior S2 version. I've said it before but it's so apparent that my enjoyment of it was massively hampered due to technical aspects back then. Also I don't recall it being so sad, just did the divine beast (water) and yeah, it's like I wasn't taking notice of the cutscenes the first time around or something.
I get melancholy fits the whole theme of the world having been destroyed but christ.
 
I couldn’t finish ToTK in the Switch for that reason. Performance tanked too much. This is a joy though it looks beautiful at times and with a solid framerate. Looking forward to BoTW it’s been a while since I last played it.

The cutscenes or memories in ToTK are as good if not better than the first game. Both brilliant though.
 
Had terrible connection issues with my controllers (8bitdo ultimate c, OG pro controller and joycons) with about 10ft distance line of sight. After much annoyance found a thread on reddit suggesting changing HDMI cable as poor cables can cause issues. I didnt really have much hope but it worked great. I have 4 cables running through a wall 2 of which are newer and seemingly better made, after switching to one of these issues are completely gone.
Just incase anyone else has a similar issue.
Edit: (Just checked order history those cables are now 14 years old and werent expensive back then.)
 
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Looking at getting a grip for handheld play, cant decide between the Savage Raven Neo Grip 2 and the mumba Dockable Case ....

Anyone have first hand experience of either?
 
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