Repented, seen the light, and played a Switch

Admit it: that is the GREATEST FUCKING POST TITLE ALL TIME. And a google post reveals that I appear to be the first person on the internet to have made the pun. Go me!

The Nintendo Switch: I have to admit, it's a lovely little machine. I never thought I'd buy a videogame console again, but Nintendo sneakily hit my weak spot by making a console that's also a portable. And I'll buy any portable Nintendo system. I've actually never played it in docked mode; as I say: for me, it's portable or nothing.

And you've gotta believe the hype: Mario Odyssey is truly sublime. Easily easily EASILY the best 3D Mario; admittedly, me saying that doesn't mean much, since I've always had a bit of a jaundiced attitude towards 3D platformers, but seriously, it is REALLY good. There's such a dazzling array of different kinds of gameplay challenges, and I love them all. Well actually, that's not true; I don't love the koopa racing segments. But that just points to another thing about the game that I DO love: the fact that it's designed such that you don't have to complete every single possible challenge to see everything the game has to offer. If you're frustrated searching for moons, you can just buy them (with coins, of course, not--*sign of cross*--microtransactions). Perfect compromise.

Of the many things I appreciate about it, one is that it has a perfect relationship with Mario history; it does nostalgia, sure, but in a good, smart way that looks to the future. Let us, for a moment, make a contrast: the mobile game Mario Run. This game is vaguely entertaining for a little while, but let's face it, that's more about the novelty of playing a new, official Mario game on a phone than anything else. It rewards you after you finish races by giving you an absolutely endless array of little doodads and bits of scenery, a LOT of which is, like, eight-bit-style statues and stuff. And BOY you have never felt the hollowness of empty nostalgia more intensely than after you've accumulated a few dozen of these suckers for absolutely no reason with nothing to do with them. Ugh. Whereas Mario Odyssey...boy. My favorite part of the game--hell, one of my favorite parts of ANYTHING--is the celebratory climax of New Donk City, where you play through a sort-of rendition of the original Donkey Kong as the game's vocal theme, "Jump Up Super Star" kicks in for the first time. It really feels like a jubliant celebration of the entire series. It's great! Hurrah! Six fireworks for me, please!

On the other hand...hmm. I don't know if I should say this or not, but...can we perhaps admit that the much-fetted Zelda: Breath of the Wild is actually...kind of...boring...? I mean, I'm not saying it's not an impressive achievement, but boy, for such a massive game, it gets VERY repetitive VERY quickly. I actually liked the tutorial-y bit, where you're getting your bearings and finding your abilities, but very soon after you leave the initial Great Plateau area it becomes clear how very little there is to actually DO. Yeah, the open world seems kind of fun to explore at first, but then you realize that everything basically blurs in to everything else, and then you realize that the entire gameplay cycle revolves around these damn shrines, and while there may be some debate about the relative repetitiveness of the outdoor regions, there can be none about the shrines: they are LITERALLY all the same damn thing. I mean, I agree that regular Zelda-type dungeons wouldn't really work in a game of this scope, but my goodness, the shrines are NOT a good replacement. Bah. Maybe I'll try to get back into it later, but so far (having done a few dozen shrines), I am NOT impressed.  It's doubly disappointing because the last Zelda game, A Link Between Worlds, was marvelous.  What I wouldn't give to see them make a new game in the series using that same engine.

What else? Right now I'm enjoying Dragon Quest Builders, and what I'm ESPECIALLY enjoying is that the dialogue is devoid of those obnoxiously intrusive cartoon accents that Squenix felt obliged to give to the localizations of the DS/3DS games. Minecraft is boring to me, but this is fun. Hurrah!

I also like that so many indie games are being ported to the system. If this is like the Wii and WiiU, there won't actually be THAT many big games that I'm interested in buying, but if there are a lotta cool indies and just a handful of further first-party AAA games (more Odyssey than Breath, plzkthnx), that'll be good enough for me.