The Steam Deck isn’t really a 1:1 replacement for a home console though, it really depends on your use case. It’s great at what it does, but not everyone is looking for a handheld. And if you’re into more demanding games the Deck also struggles to keep up. I love my Deck but if I had to choose between it and my desktop gaming PC I’d choose the desktop every time. Although it admittedly also was quite a bit more expensive.
If I had a Rappen for every time I’ve heard this joke I’d actually be as rich as you all think Swiss people are.
I liked Metroid Dread a lot. I feel like it’s a good starting point for Metroidvanias too because the game does a good job nudging you in the right direction e.g. by closing off certain areas but still letting you explore and figure out where to go. I especially enjoyed the movement, it feels very fluid and satisfying.
The only major issue I had with the game was that performance is really bad in a few encounters. Most of the time it runs fine though. It’s also not super long. I prefer a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome, but if you’re looking for something that is good value for money in terms of playtime there might be better options.
Yeah, it may not be as popular as Mario or Zelda, but I wouldn’t say it’s “unfairly forgotten”. People who have played the game tend to be pretty vocal about it. And justifiably so, I’ve never had a comparable experience in another game. I wish I could forget about it and play it again.
MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 are a great way to play together. With 5 players you can exactly fill a party in both games.
RTS games like Starcraft 2 (which is free now) or Age of Empires could also be fun, but 5 players is a bit awkward because it’s too many for a single team and uneven so you can’t play like a 3v3. But at least in SC2 there’s a 2v2 and a 3v3 ladder so you could always split into two teams or play a free for all. There are also a bunch of cool custom games in the arcade like Ice Baneling Escape or Zealot Hockey you could try.
Very different, but Trackmania is also fun with friends. Not the right choice if you enjoy ramming your friends off the road, but there are probably other games for that too. To set up and play in a club/server you’d need club access which costs like $20 a year, but you can try the game for free first to see if you like it. You can compete for records on a map, play an RPG together (a map style where the focus is on finding the right way instead of just racing) or build tracks for each other.
You could try an ARPG, unfortunately most of them (Diablo, Grim Dawn, Last Epoch) seem to limit parties to 4 players, but Path of Exile allows up to six. And if you’re not serious about the end game you’ll never need to spend any money (if you are it’s like $40 for stash tabs one time and you’re set forever).
It sounds like you’re actually looking for turn-based tactics/strategy? In that case maybe check out Civilization VI and the Advance Wars 1+2 remake. They’re both supposed to have local multiplayer on the Switch, although I don’t know how good it is. I don’t think you can play the Advance Wars campaign co-op, but it sounds like you can at least play individual battles like that.
If you’re really looking for real-time strategy, Pikmin 3 seems to have a good co-op story mode. Pikmin 4 technically has one too but the second player isn’t able to do much, so it’s probably not very fun.
That’s a good point, but I feel like there are reasonable solutions for that like a disclaimer when buying the game digitally. For the physical version they could either put a sticker on it or just delay the physical version only. I also think that people who are informed enough to know about specific features like that are more likely to hear about this discourse.
The S was just a bad idea from the get go.
Yeah for sure. I agree that pushing the One X as the cheaper/entry level version would have been much better. Even for much longer than 1-2 years. People wouldn’t get as mad if they gradually started to phase it out and stopped releasing the high profile games on it after a few years while still supporting it somewhat. Even the feature parity thing wouldn’t have been that much of an issue if they’d just clearly communicated an expiry date beforehand.
They COULD blame it on the S, but, again, Microsoft won’t allow it.
I don’t get how blaming the S for a delayed feature would be different than blaming the S for a delayed game, which is what they’re doing right now.
But I definitely agree that this is bad for Microsoft and they should do something about it. Not sure whether dropping the S would be the right call but they definitely need to reconsider the feature parity requirement policy.
Can’t they blame it on the S either way?
And “just being the ganked version” in this case would mean not having a single feature that the vast majority of players likely wouldn’t even have used in the first place. Yes, it’s not good, but the choice here is between either locking your players out of that one non-essential feature or locking them out of the entire game. And the second option is, to me, very obviously much worse.
And it’s also not like it would be the “bad” version forever. They can just patch it in when they get it to work. And let players decide for themselves whether they want to get the game now without split screen or wait.
True, but I feel like not releasing the game at all is even worse. The consensus seems to be that PS5 already has better exclusives and now you can’t even play one of this year’s best third party games on Xbox.
I also thought they might have such a requirement but I was unable to find a source that confirms (or even mentions) it. Definitely still possible though.
As far as I can tell the article only talks about a feature parity requirement between the Xbox Series S and Series X versions. And that could be met by just dropping the feature from both versions.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t just release both Xbox versions without split screen and then try to patch it in later. That way they’d satisfy the feature parity requirement (as I understand it) and people could at least play the game. I love that they’re still doing split screen despite it seemingly having fallen out of favour these days, but it’s hardly an essential feature.
There isn’t really a “second one”. Overwatch 2 was just a patch with essentially two major changes. They changed the monetisation, making the game free-to-play and introducing the battle pass. An especially unpopular part of that is that new heroes now have to be bought with real money or unlocked through the battle pass. The other big change is the move from 6v6 to 5v5, which was controversial. There are definitely some positives, like getting rid of the “double shield meta”, which did make the game more fun. But there’s also more pressure and focus on the single tank.
The game is free and if you bought OW1 you still have all your stuff (cosmetics and all the non-OW2 heroes), so if you’re curious you can just check it out. Personally I’m still enjoying the game but there’s also a lot of valid criticism.
Maybe it’s just me then but I don’t really find the singleplayer content in Smash particularly interesting. I’ve only played it for a few hours. But yeah especially Ultimate does have a lot of stuff.
My personal favourites on the Switch are Metroid Dread and Mario Odyssey, so I’d definitely recommend those. Another game I love that I don’t see mentioned very often is Cadence of Hyrule, it’s a crossover between Crypt of the Necrodancer (a rhythm roguelike) and Zelda. With Zelda soundtrack of course! If you like 2D Mario you’ll probably want to get Mario Maker 2, but be aware that it’s not worth it if you don’t want to pay for a Switch Online subscription since wouldn’t be able to play other people’s levels.
Mario Kart 8 and Smash Ultimate are both really good, but I’d only recommend them if you intend to play multiplayer. Especially local multiplayer is fun, but online works too of course (again, needs a subscription).
The Switch also has some cool remasters and remakes of games you might have missed, like Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Metroid Prime, Zelda: Skyward Sword, or the first three Pikmin games (the fourth one comes out this week and I’d be surprised if you needed knowledge of any previous games to play it). Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl were a bit lacklustre, but if you like classic Pokémon games they might still be worth it. Just don’t expect a lot of new stuff if you’ve played the originals.
I’ve played them on PC, but Stardew Valley and Celeste are some of my favourite games. If you haven’t played them on another platform already check them out as well!
What I really like about Obsidian is that it stores your notes as plain text/markdown files on your computer. So you always have access to them, even without Obsidian itself. Markdown is also a fairly common format, so it shouldn’t be too hard to move them somewhere else later.
But your concerns are still valid and I generally also prefer free open source software.
Saying the Steam Deck is better value than a PlayStation isn’t really a meaningful statement without further qualification because they are two very different devices. That was kind of the point of my previous comment. If you don’t need any of the handheld features and just want to play on your TV then the PS5 is better value. If you want a handheld a PS5 is obviously completely useless and the Steam Deck is insanely good value.
Also, if you want to play current, demanding games, a €700 PS5 Pro surely is enough. Even a regular PS5 should do for now since the Pro isn’t even out yet. Personally I prefer a more powerful gaming PC, but if you just want to play some of the latest AAA games on your TV you don’t need to spend more than 700€ unless you have other specific requirements.