Topic: Nintendo Switch Discussion

@SplooshDmg Pikmin 4 and Metroid Prime 4 are the only Nintendo games I'm excited about since Switch launched in 2017. Pikmin 3 is a bit disappointing because it is easier than 1 and 2 but I still like it. Luigi's Mansion 3 is supposed to be a highlight for me but it isn't as special as 1 and 2. Although Breath of The Wild is the most overrated game in history (in my opinion), I love Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess. Those are some of my favourite games on any platform but Breath of the Wild has nothing to do with them so it's not surprising that some Zelda games are my favourite games and some others I can live without.

In short, I'd recommend you Pikmin 4 🤣.

EDIT: I was also excited about Super Mario Odyssey but it's the most boring Mario 3D game.

EDIT 2: I played Pikmin 3 on Wii U where I think it's better.

@Banjo- I'll probably wind up with Pikmin 4. I was pleasantly surprised that Nintendo didn't expect me to redeem both vouchers at once. I had never bought one before, so I just had this expectation that you redeemed them both at once. So, I just have that other voucher on the back burner now. So, who knows, maybe something will crop up at 'not E3' that wins me over and claims my voucher. But right now, it's def looking like Pikmin 4.

@SplooshDmg Since Nintendo games are only 33% off once in a blue moon, those vouchers aren't that bad. I miss Nintendo's Player Choice and all that.

@Banjo- Yeah, I'm not too chuffed to pay $50 for a good deal of Nintendo's 1st party stuff, especially if it means a day one discount on something like TOTK and Pikmin 4. Plus I've grown to like digital better on Switch, since I'm having to carry tiny cartridges around with me. So it works out.

@SplooshDmg The vouchers are an insanely good deal if you stack them with discounted eshop cards. TotK cost me the equivalent of $45 at launch!

Really impressed with the draw distance in this game for a Switch title, btw. Link is seamlessly falling from the sky islands, and as he's descending, I can spy shrines dotted across the landscape and mark them on my map before hitting the water.

@Ralizah That's actually exactly what I did. I cashed in for $50 of Walmart gift cards with my MS rewards and bought some digital eShop cards there. Then I have those GameStop PowerUp Pro accounts for myself and my wife and I get two $10 eShop cards for $5 a piece every month with the $5 coupons. I then bought the remaining credit I needed at Target with my RedCard and got the 5% discount. I paid next to nothing for Zelda. Lol

But yeah, so far I'm really liking the game. I like that I can attach an apple to a stick. 11/10.

@SplooshDmg Way to game the system!

What sort of games is your wife into?

@Ralizah She doesn't game, really. She played ACNH a bunch when that set the world on fire, but she just has a PowerUp membership so I can double dip on the monthly discount. She's more of an Asian drama/book geek.

@Ralizah Okay, I'm so beyond hooked on TOTK. I just finished this shrine where you had to attach rockets to a mine cart and blast to the other side. Well, I defied physics and only put a rocket on one side of the cart. So rather than shooting to the other side, I just spun through the air wildly and all the way up to the end of the shrine. 😂
Everything about this game has just been a joy so far.

@SplooshDmg lmao

Once you play the game, you really understand why previewers were saying they felt like they were Wile E. Coyote with his Acme devices.

I feel like the ultrahand mechanic has given the physics suite from the last game a chance to shine. You could do some wacky stuff in that game with enough effort, but the mechanics didn't encourage creativity quite as explicitly.

Of course, brute forcing your way through puzzles can be funny, too. There was a shrine where the intended solution was to get a ball from one end of a body of water with a rushing current to another by constructing a boat. I said "nah," dragged a car I'd made from earlier in the shrine into the room, disassembled it, and combined its materials with the materials in the room to create a rickety tower of tires and boards that I used to bypass the water solution entirely.

Combined ultrahand, recall, and an insanely long series of boards glued together to just barely manage to cross a massive body of water in another shrine as well.

@Ralizah It was seriously a Looney Tunes moment. I was genuinely laughing by the time it was over.

The Ultrahand is seriously just such a game changer. I love that the puzzles feel like they just all have a number of solutions. It's kind of that same fun of replaying a Bethesda game, and just choosing different solutions to different quests. At least in Zelda I don't have annoying companions that tell me how to solve the puzzles after nine seconds of looking at them.

Finally finished up XC3: Future Redeemed last night. Don't want too say too much because the whole thing is kinda spoilery, but it was pretty great. Kinda like Torna, I kinda liked that it was a tighter, more concise adventure. That said I kinda wish it were a bit longer, but that's just because it was so good (without getting too spoilery, I would have loved it if that "memory" was fleshed out into an entire region).

I think the only thing I have left to do is clear out the last 4-5 unique monsters, but I think I'm going to leave them alone because there's no way to organically grow stronger to fight them (the only way I could see is to constantly grind the one closest to you in level until you're strong enough for the next one). TBH, I'm almost level 70 & I can't beat that level 60 T-Rex thing (don't know how I'd begin to take on the level 70, 80, 90, & 100 unique monsters).

Would love to start on Kirby or Zelda, but it's been a few months since the last time I touched my gaming laptop (since Prime Remastered released, I think), so I should probably play through something in my Steam library in order to put it through it's paces.