Anyone getting this? I couldn't find a Switch when it and Zelda came out so I bought Zelda for the Wii U. It was great. I since did find a Switch (and now they seem to be available everywhere) but the only good game on it is Zelda. But I already played that. Ok, maybe Mario Kart, but I have that one on my Wii U also. Oh and maybe Street Fighter II 56 billionth remake, but I had that on xbox360. But I re-bought Mario Kart and Street Fighter II and we're already tired of them.

Looks like Super Mario Odyssey is coming out tomorrow. I put in an order at Amazon (to save ~8 bucks I guess) and I'm hoping it doesn't suck.

I feel like Nintendo wasted the launch excitement for this console by having only one new/good game. Now when I go into the store everyone is looking for the SNES Classic and just sort of glazing over the Switch crap. It doesn't help that the accessories are insanely overpriced but I think the main thing is the game selection.

The game showed up yesterday and it went over with my son about as well as this thread went over. He opened the box, saw the game, rolled his eyes, and left the game in my office. No interest whatsoever. I played it for a little while. It's similar to Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, etc. Nothing special so far. Well, not "nothing" special (Mario turned into a giant t-rex), but I honestly had more fun with the newer 2d Mario games (new super mario bros). I'm on the 4th world (I have no idea how many there are) so maybe it gets better. I'll post more if/when I play more.

lol. That’s about accurate.

Miyamoto thinks Mario was perfected by Mario 64. That’s why the series crawled up a star / shine / star coin collection butthole and never crawled back out. Between that and Nintendo’s policy and culture on game pitches you guarantee that every Mario game will be identical to Mario 64 plus just enough gameplay changes to convince the leadership team to sign off on it.

I don’t even know anything about the game, and I already knew just looking at it that the point wasn’t going to be finishing levels. It was going to be collecting some widget over and over again. I have already played that game.

Instead of collecting stars, you collect moons. It's a game changer.

I mean, is he wrong though?

Maybe it's a self-fullfilling prophecy.

If every band thoufjt that music peaked with the Beatles, we'd only have Beatles tribute bands and nothing else.

If you think Mario 64 was a great game, I’m not going to change your mind (and I’m not especially interested in trying). There is a good reason Mario 64 was successful; I enjoyed playing it, and it was a decent enough idea to try at least once.

My problem with the Mario 64 model is that it reduces the conflict between Mario and Bowser to this horribly reductive and abstract event, to the point that nothing makes any sense at all anymore, not narratively and not even in terms of gameplay. Mario 64 handwaved it away with their magical painting thing, saying that because everything happens inside a magical pocket universe and there are magical locks that require stars, it’s okay that they didn’t bother building an actual world for Mario to exist in. Every game since then has made things a little more abstract and made their excuse a little less believable.

But now we’re at the point where Mario isn’t even fighting Bowser anymore. He’s jumping on magical sky cubes until he finds enough hidden stars that the game lets him move on to the next bunch of sky cubes. It’s gross design. The last Mario game I played was Super Mario 3D World, and they don’t even try to hide this anymore: it had the kind of world and level design you’d normally expect from a lazy indie boxes-in-the-sky puzzle platformer, not from Nintendo.

I enjoyed the Galaxy games. So I guess, for me, the 3D series peaked there. I'm aware of their flaws but at least they kept things interesting for me to check out the next environment/galaxy/whatever.

I hear that this is praised as the true sequel to Mario 64. But I find myself asking "...but why?". It seems like there are a LOT fewer environments crafted for player progression and more open stuff-in-a-skybox places to just go around collecting a mind-numbing amount of things. I've also heard this is chalked up to promoting "experimentation and exploration." Eh

I thought Mario 64 was great in its time and place. But it's 2017, why go back?
So should we just be happy there aren't lootboxes? Oh man, if they did that, they can make them look like Question Blocks!

Maybe it's the same principle as with those comic books that repeat certain stories every 3-5 years or so due to generational shifting, cuz "kids don't care"* or whatever. So w.r.t video games; making the same old game again for the newest/current console generation.

* = When they grow up into manchildren YouTube personalities making YouTube videos about how the versions of those stories from their era were obviously better than whatever came after, that's when they "care".

Nintendo is pretty clearly targeting mid-30s who played Marios 1-4 and Kart 1.

Did you hear the one about how Bowser kidnapped the princess this time because he wants to marry her? And he's going to each different kingdom stealing stuff for the wedding? Like a dress, flowers, and a ring? Don't think about it too deeply.

Also FWIW the story in any mario game has never meant anything to me and the gameplay has always been either "progress through the world to the end" or, starting in mario 64, "collect as many widgets as possible" so it's not like this was a huge surprise. There are some clever little puzzles and some fun little things to do but it really just feels like a collection of mini games. The controls aren't very precise either which really hurts the game. I'll probably play it through to the end and I'll probably enjoy it overall but I definitely won't get all the moons or even most of them. I did get all 120 stars in Mario 64 but this game just isn't interesting enough. In the desert land there were at least 4 stars I could see and 2 of them I could see plausible ways of getting to but I was already so bored of the land I just wanted to leave. The water land was super busy and compact but again, as soon as I had the required number of moons I was ready to get out of there.

I grabbed a Switch for my daughter but she won't be playing it until her birthday in December. However, I fooled around with it a bit & like it as a device, though it's probably a bit fragile in its default state for a 7 year old, so I'll probably be looking in to ways to protect it. I haven't purchased Super Mario Odyssey yet, but I have toyed with it in a store & thought it looked pretty solid. I'll probably grab it soon. I did play Mario Kart though, & since this has been the first Nintendo console I've owned since the Gamecube, I rather enjoyed it. I'm also interested in getting Zelda & several other games that I either don't already have on Steam, or that my daughter hasn't yet played (Axiom Verge, Cave Story,Stardew Valley, etc.).

Zelda is the best game on the system. Mario Kart is fine if you like Mario Karts in general.

On the device itself, is it decent to hold for extend time? Feels solid?

It feels fine. Feels solid except for the kickstand. The screen is small. I use it 99% of the time hooked up to a tv. The default controller is waaay too small for a male adult with reasonably sized hands. Even when hooked up to the included grip thingy. The thumb sticks are fine but the 4 buttons on each side are way too close together and they're too small. Split the joycons up and use them sideways and they're worthless. The L/R buttons are pathetic in this configuration. And the buttons are way too close to the thumbsticks. We basically don't play multiplayer mario kart because of this. Will eventually buy the pro controller if some more games come out that are worth playing. But the damn things are $70!!

I haven't played Nintendo games since the Wii, and really only Smash Bros and the Zelda where Link can turn into a coyote. I didn't care for that Zelda; I also didn't care for the cell-shaded gamecube version. I pretty much wrote off Nintendo after gamecube because all of the games were childish or cartoonish and I found the Wii remote to be incredibly annoying. That said, my little sister and her husband bought a Switch which they bring over to my house sometimes and we all play Mario Kart. It's good fun for about 45 minutes, then my wife and I get tired of it (and I get tired of my sister).

I agree with you about the crappy controls. I 3D printed a pair of these for her and they're much better than anything else she had.

Edit: I did play some strange animey-looking fighting game that involved characters with long gangling weapon arms that was pretty fun.
Edit 2: Turns out the game is called ARMS https://arms.nintendo.com

My son keeps bugging me to buy Arms but I'm so unhappy with the other games that I'm hesitant to drop another $60 (+$80 for another set of joycons so we can play MP) for a fighting game.

The 3d-printed thing you linked looks pretty cool, but the photo shows exactly what is wrong with the joycon when it's used in that configuration -- the 4 buttons are way too close to the thumb stick. (not to mention the crappy shoulder buttons which are shown in the third photo)

Anyway; I know I never stop gushing but if you ever get a chance, you should try the new Zelda, it's really worth giving it a shot.