Tech N' Tactile
Welcome to Tech N' Tactile, the podcast where brothers unite to explore the fascinating intersection of technology, video games, and accessibility! Join us as we dive into the latest trends in tech and gaming, while shining a spotlight on the vital importance of making these worlds inclusive for everyone, regardless of ability.
Each episode, we share our insights, experiences, and discussions on everything from cutting-edge gadgets to the most exciting game releases. But we don’t stop there! We’re passionate about advocating for accessibility in tech and gaming, highlighting innovative solutions and tools that empower individuals with disabilities.
Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a gamer, or someone interested in how technology can create a more inclusive world, Tech N' Tactile is your go-to source for engaging conversations and practical advice. Tune in as we celebrate the power of technology to enhance lives and break down barriers, one episode at a time!
Tech N' Tactile
Accessible, Ambitious, and… Unfinished? The Switch 2 Verdict
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The Nintendo Switch 2 has arrived, promising enhanced performance and a new generation of gaming experiences—but does it deliver? We've spent two weeks extensively testing Nintendo's latest hardware to bring you the unfiltered truth about what works, what doesn't, and whether it's worth your hard-earned money right now.
Nintendo's latest console offers substantial hardware improvements, featuring larger, more comfortable Joy-Con controllers with magnetic attachments that replace the problematic rail system of the original. The Pro Controller stands out as a particular highlight with its programmable G buttons and improved ergonomics. Performance upgrades are noticeable across compatible games, with many titles running at higher resolutions and steadier frame rates in both docked and handheld modes.
Surprisingly, accessibility features represent one of the Switch 2's greatest strengths. The dedicated accessibility menu includes a screen reader, text customization options, color adjustments, and button remapping—features that Nintendo has historically overlooked. This commitment to accessibility is genuinely praiseworthy and long overdue.
However, the launch experience is marred by significant issues. The system UI remains disappointingly similar to the original Switch, lacking the whimsical personality that defined previous Nintendo consoles. Many backward compatible games actually run worse than on original hardware, suffering from frame rate problems or crashes. The new GameCube NSO offering looks fantastic but features nearly unplayable online functionality due to severe input lag.
The launch lineup is similarly mixed. Mario Kart World impresses visually but feels light on content compared to its predecessor. Street Fighter 6 and Yakuza Zero Director's Cut shine as third-party highlights, while Nintendo's controversial decision to charge for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom upgrades feels unnecessarily greedy.
For most players—even die-hard Nintendo fans—waiting until later this year when more exclusive titles are available and compatibility issues have been addressed would be the wiser choice. The Switch 2 shows tremendous promise, but its potential remains largely unrealized at launch.
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hello everybody and welcome back to the tech and tactile podcast. My name is Cody
Michael:and as always I'm Michael
Cody:and we're back. It's been a while. Life happens.
Cody:Thanks, uh, life
Michael:haha, yep, we've had about roughly what two weeks hands-on since post-launch
Cody:yep and uh, there's been some initial, there's some good, there's some bad, and I can't wait to honestly get into talking about it. It's quite a. It's quite a meaty episode today, honestly, as I got a lot of thoughts,
Michael:oh yeah
Cody:so I just wanted to get back in, I guess, get into honestly. Does it feel any different from using the normal switch? If I'm being honest and well, the short answer for me is someone who's been using the switch since launch is not really, I mean, other than bigger joy cons and everything uh, it feels about the same.
Cody:I kind of like the UI and everything uh is like slightly changed because they added a few new icons, oh my. But in terms of how the system is, uh, presentation wise, it's not really uh, much of a difference and, to be completely honest, I I kind of wish that they did something a little more. I I kind of wish they did themes or they added music to the home screen, like Nintendo used to have these like magical uh. Like their ui used to be really cool, like the Wii- U, for all of its crap, had a really UI with with all the MII's waddling everywhere and everything, and then before that you had the Wii uh, like the normal Wii, and its home screen was so relaxing and chill, with all the channels and everything. It was pretty cool. And then the GameCube. Oh man, I used to fall asleep to the GameCube music. It was kind of a weird tangent, but I did, and you know.
Michael:All right, I just wish they had something more yeah, I definitely can say with with this console launch. Yes, it's got a little bit better hardware and it's definitely got some, some improvements on like the, the physicality side, for like the size of it, um, with its new screen and its refresh rate, and the new um, more comfortable joy cons and the better pro controller, which we'll touch on at some point this episode as well oh for sure, at least for me, especially when it comes to the internal system itself, when you're using, like, the, its services in the system.
Michael:Yes, it's upgraded, yes, it's got more physical new things, but as far as what to expect with, like you know, all the shiny polish that you visually get to see, it's a very lackluster launch because it was just new hardware with not a lot of new stuff. If that, if that makes sense, because right, at least for me growing up, if you remember, back to the 3DS days, the 3DS came out with their own custom themes. A little while I'm down the line that the Nintendo used for um specific games that you could trade for badges that you could use for all your open item slots on your um, your touch, I had the Majora's Mask theme.
Cody:I love that theme yeah, they.
Michael:They had themes and a lot of their older consoles had a lot of visual improvements and a lot more mechanically. But visually and what it's offering in terms of its service is nothing new and a lot of its stuff that it's had has greatly decreased in quality just based off of its horrible compatibility between console to console and kind of what to expect with its software. With this new system it's it's not. It's not being great at all yeah it.
Cody:It feels like they kind of just stopped trying like I don't know what it is like exactly. So you know, it feels like they really just kind of stopped trying after the Wii u and 3DS. Like the Wii u and 3DS like was like their last bastion of like I like to like, I like to think of. It's like kind of whimsical, like you know, you put, you turn on a Nintendo system and you're like wow. Like you know, I'm I'm just in the gaming mood now because, like all the noises and all the things it does, this one it just it's very cookie cutter, it's very basic and bland and, honestly, not that exciting very by the book, and nothing new right.
Cody:I really hope that they we see some kind of huge ui improvement as the system goes on, or hopefully by their next system, uh, we'll see some improvements. I don't know. It just seems like during the iwata era of Nintendo, a lot of their stuff was a lot more whimsical and fun, and now it's very basic and bland.
Michael:Yeah, and I get that the Switch was trying to improve on Iwata's last vision since he passed with the Switch 1 to Switch 2. Again, they tried to make it a a little bit better, but overall there's not really a lot to talk about improvement. Wise, because when there's not a new library of things to support the new system, when you're relying on all of your old catalog and the majority of your old catalog runs worse than it did anywhere else, or it's marginally the same with no difference, then what's the point of the new hardware? You know?
Cody:right, so I guess we'll take that. You know, with all that, there's some serious gripes here, but uh, we'll get into what. What uh is new? And obviously so with the new update they added something called virtual game cards and uh, what this is?
Cody:This is a little dumb, I don't. I mean, I don't. I understand the concept of it, but essentially, if you want to play your digital games, you have to load the game cart onto the console and, uh, it just. It's like giving your console the license key to run the game, even though you purchased it from the e-shop, and everything like that, like it's. It's weird. Once you put the game cart in, you don't have to load it again, like you know. But if you have another Nintendo switch, you'll have to load that game cart onto that console and then, if you want it, I guess, back on your original console, you have to reload the game cart, which doesn't take anything. It's just, it's a weird mechanic and I don't Nintendo doesn't really do a good job on explaining why or what, like why they did this or what. What's the worth, the change?
Michael:premise with the virtual game card that they were trying to kind of promote and pitch was a lot of the um, the family aspect of it, like sharing between specific family members and bringing family members closer together. Um, which was a good idea on paper but in execution this was probably one of the most horrible things. That kind of has backlashed with the community because a lot of with um just the um, the virtual game cards themselves. A lot of people don't get to use them because the majority of people are working and they travel around for work. They don't stay in one household 24-7 to swap back and forth every 14 days for their leases, as they call them, which again, I get the premise behind it. But considering the execution, with how a majority of life works for a majority of their market with their people, it just was it didn't work the way they were expecting it to because they didn't have the the turnover and success and profit that they were expecting at all yeah, I don't think that the switch to if I'm being to be completely honest, this isn't like a system for little timmy, like I'm sure, like you know, parents are going to be buying their children the switches and everything like that, but the way it is it doesn't feel like it's a system meant for children it
Cody:doesn't, even though, like you know, Nintendo demographic is, you know, a lot of younger gamers, or gamers of all ages, I should say. But that that lets gamers that are younger, you know, get into gaming a lot easier with Nintendo games. But, um, I don't know it. Just there's the, the game card thing I think is a really stupid thing. It's just not, I'm not, it's not clicking with me. But uh, moving on from that, I guess we can talk on the game chat functionality. They put discord in. Guys. We have discord, the discord in our switch.
Cody:Yes, it's discount discord, it's kmart discord the dist discord like it's it just straight up.
Michael:Looks like discord I don't know any other way to describe it. It's Nintendo discord.
Cody:Yes, like, don't get me wrong, it's cool, they put a mic on the goddamn console. I'm so glad they did that, like, oh my goodness, there's a mic and it doesn't sound horrible.
Michael:They finally remembered how they built their old 3DS console and they were like hey, why don't we do this again?
Cody:yeah, you know we we had a mic on the original DS. It was kind of shitty, but it was still a mic. We still did it. Yeah, let's do it again.
Michael:Cool, it's funny because a lot of like quote-unquote new Nintendo ideas and these new projects that you're seeing. Unfortunately, when you really look back and you think about it, they're just recycling old ideas that they've done years ago yeah, they are, but, uh, I'll tell you what they need to improve on with it.
Cody:When it comes to this game chat and maybe it's because of the hardware and maybe there's not much they can do I would have, uh, probably had a dock with a little bit more junk in the trunk to give the switch to a little bit more power if this was the case. But the game sharing idea of sharing your screen with your friends, is cool, because I love doing that. I love like being able to play my games and have my buddies watch what I'm doing, cause, uh, I blind ass needs help playing some video games every once in a while, so I need somebody to yell at me about what direction I need to go to if I'm missing something. But, oh my God, it looks terrible. Whenever you stream, like it's really bad. It almost get a headache from it. I mean so low frame rate.
Michael:Yeah, to give all of you an idea of what we're talking about here, imagine if you took a YouTube video from 2005 and you stretched it to a 4K OLED TV that was still in the old, like 24 and below FPS on the old captures for how YouTube used to run with its uploads.
Cody:It is horrifying it's bad, oh my god it's bad. And, like you know, streaming Yakuza 0 on there watching all the people run around and stuff while you're running around the open world. Oh my God.
Michael:It's the worst stop motion film I've ever seen in my life.
Cody:I was getting like I was almost getting nauseous looking at it. I was like I can't watch this.
Michael:No, it's it's unbearable dude Like again good idea.
Cody:Worst execution I've ever seen yeah, it's not what I would call very good. Now can they improve upon it? Only time will tell, and I hope that they can. This is a launch title like this is a like everything is at launch. Everything may not be as optimized as it could. You know, things are kind of hectic at launch and everything like that. I'll give them a little bit of grace. We'll see how it is a year from now. Then I'll really rip into them.
Cody:But like right now I'm gonna give a little bit of leeway, but not, but not much there's.
Michael:There's a lot that I uh am not a fan of uh whenever it comes to this and I can't wait to see what they do, because I know that they're well aware of the mistakes they've made with the response they've gotten from many of the community.
Cody:Yeah, they made screen capturing and recording better. You know you upload things at higher resolutions now which?
Michael:is fantastic.
Cody:That's a new feature, but you know it's just what you could do on the Switch, but slightly better and that's cool. Uh, I'll get into the uh new thing that, uh, uh, that they added and that's the new NS0 expansion app GameCube. We did it, boys. We got GameCube on Nintendo. Everyone thought that you could get it on the switch one. You know, there was just no flipping way. That's gonna happen because, uh, it works on game on Switch 2 and it looks great. Like there you could tell there's a little bit of upscaling, like it doesn't like.
Michael:It definitely looks sharper than what I remember on a GameCube it definitely takes advantage of some hdr with its new um setup and settings definitely.
Cody:Yeah, for sure, but they're running into the same issue that the original ran into whenever it came to everything, and that is, honestly, input latency. This is an emulation curse. Unfortunately, a lot of emulators deal with input latency and I mean there's not much you can do about it. It's, it is what it is. Even the best of emulators are gonna deal with it, but, uh, like this one, depending on how things go, is pretty bad. Uh, especially when it comes to fighting games. We're only got three games at launch. We got f-zero, gx, soul, caliber 2 and the legend of zelda, the wind waker, which are all fantastic games. Two of these games, in fact, can go 16 by 9 widescreen. Yep, the GameCube had the ability to do widescreen gaming with certain games.
Cody:I wish one waker was honestly, yeah, like um, and I love it. Does the dolphin approach, like you know, not to bring an unofficial emulator in here, but I love how, if you go into a game and you set it to 16 by 9, like you know, the emulator will automatically adjust and the game will be widescreen. It'll just fit your full display and it looks fantastic. You don't have to go in, like to the display settings after going to 16 by 9 and then put it to 16 by 9 in the emulator settings. No, it just does it for you and I. I like that and it looks great.
Cody:But, uh, the games are great and the input latency is a little bit of a shame. But what are you gonna do? It's emulation. If you want the real thing, just go dust out your old Wii or GameCube, which I like my GameCube, I like my emulation a little more. Want the real thing, just go dust out your old Wii or GameCube, which I like my GameCube, I like my emulation a little more. So I'm a little. I can put up with a little bit of input latency If it means that I have the um, the uh convenience of taking my old classic games wherever I want to go. It's just a little bit of bitter pill to swallow, but it is what it is. I'll tell you what is not good, and that is the playing GameCube games online with your pals oh, not oh yeah, single solitary bit.
Cody:It is not good. It was never good, like whenever they did that for n64 back in the day, you know, whenever you're trying to play like mario kart, mario party and shit like that. It was bad then and it's still bad now.
Michael:Holy crap, it's bad, it's I fully believe that this might be Nintendo worst attempt at a modern netcode I have ever seen, because well the way soul, the way soul caliber works and the way the queuing works with its lobbies, should not exist or be sent to the public in any video game like service at all, because that is just atrocious you open up a for a two-player game, you have no choice but to have a four-player room.
Cody:That that's two additional slots that are just taking up your bandwidth or, like you know, whatever you're, it's just eating away at your connection yeah, and it can't keep up. Yeah, it cannot keep up. It can I mean I've had, I tried this with, like I've got some damn good internet. I've I've got, like you know, some good fiber optics going on over here and like I'm ethernet it in.
Cody:Yeah, whenever I'm done it in when we play, yeah and like, and the game just cannot keep up like it just. Oh, my god, I don't. I haven't tried f-zero, gx or anything, because like I'm just that game's already hard enough as it is. I couldn't add input latency, like lag input latency to that. I just that would be hell. So soul caliber, but no, could not pull off any cool special moves or anything like that, like barely this is without you.
Michael:This is not so caliber with rollback netcode at all. What this is is soul caliber 2, but you have two second input delay on everything you do yeah, it's.
Cody:It's not good. Um, they need to fix that, like if you're going to put in.
Cody:Yeah, if you're going to put that into your service, like I get it like this is still a cheap, like you know 50 a year and they just added GameCube they could and I hope they don't could absolutely raise their online prices even more because you know you've got all these retro titles and stuff and it's still a good bang for your buck, especially with GameCube added to the mix. There is a lot of good games here, but holy crap, they the online is just unacceptable. It needs, they need to have like rollback or something going on in their in their code base, because it's all peer-to-peer.
Cody:Yeah, peer-to-peer connections in this kind of case is just not good. I mean, it's crazy when you can have a better, more stable online connection through Dolphin. Like not to bring it up. Dolphin again, here I am. Here I go with my emulation the king. The king Dolphin is like the goat of emulators. It is so damn good and I I played pso, I played the original fantasy star online on that thing and I had no issues whatsoever. I was playing it for hours on end, like no lag, input latency really noticeable or anything. It was good.
Michael:The gameube Nintendo has no excuse, especially when they're working with like why would Nintendo release a service for having lobbies of queuing for four peoples in a two-player match when those other two people can input mash on their controllers to affect the netcode of everyone that's actively fighting, when it's taking up all the bandwidth?
Michael:It's unimaginably dumb and I don't understand either why they didn't consider that or why they just thought that might be a good idea to make queuing faster. Because when you think about it, when you have more people in the lobby like that eating the bandwidth, if somebody crashes and you, you, you try to take over, it's just going to get worse the more you kind of go back and forth. If you don't have a good structure to stand on, why are you standing on the standing on it with the service to give it your people anyway? Like it's like they just put it together with duct tape and released it in a rush, like they didn't play, test it and they didn't bring in the actual people that knew what they were doing uh, it really doesn't seem like it and this is, uh, this is the kind of thing that this is kind of getting noticeable with Nintendo and I'm not.
Cody:I'm I'm noticing it more and more and it's really pissing me off. Nintendo knows that they are sitting on a Scrooge McDuck's worth of goldmine of nostalgia and good video games and so they don't have to put in the effort. It seems like they're just putting in the most minimal effort absolutely humanly possible, because Nintendo fans and casual gamers alike will just eat it up and buy it, no problem, and it's kind of backfiring on them. Don't get me wrong Switch 2s are going to sell out like hotcakes. It's going to be pretty hard to probably get your hands on one, or maybe it's not. Scalping is not really going too well for people these days, right, but I mean mean, it just seems like they're like yeah, we have all these games, we're not really gonna put in the effort you get the first party game developers.
Cody:They, they've got some good games in there. I mean that new donkey kong bonanza looks. I got a. I got almost emotional looking at that. That trailer, it was so good, I loved it I've already got that direct. Yeah, I get the pre-order like on the e-shop. Good thing they don't take your money until, like I think, a week before. But like I'm already locked in, I'm ready to go for that. But uh, if I'm honest, that game should have came out for the launch of the system.
Michael:Uh you shouldn't have just, we'll get into.
Cody:We'll get into that when we talk about the launch games, because I've got some good, there's some good here. It's not all negative, but it's definitely not completely positive. No, this is not what I would call. This is definitely Not at the moment, not something you should run out and go get Immediately. It doesn't matter if you're a Nintendo super fan or what not. You're Well, you know, and go get immediately. It doesn't matter if you're a Nintendo super fan or whatnot, you're well, we'll, uh, you know, we'll save it for the end, final thoughts and everything like that, but definitely you can. You can pass on this, at least until bonanza comes out, then maybe. But we'll get into the next. Uh bit of how things are. So good. Gamecube games really bad.
Cody:Multiplayer execution for online still good GameCube games and we've got more to come. They've already announced pokemon coliseum or xd gale of darkness. Those are coming. Uh, I didn't, I don't remember what else, I just I saw those two and I was like oh yeah, that's right.
Cody:Fire path of radiance not the best fire emblem, but still a good one. Um, like they've got some good ring dingers coming into the service later, that is going to be amazing. Like Luigi's Mansion is coming. Like that's a good launch title. Kind of don't know why they didn't lead with that, because that was like a tech demo for the GameCube, and a really memorable one too. But I digress, maybe they have to work out the emulator, maybe I don't know. The fact that f0 gx runs the way that it does is impressive, because even that game used to bring dolphins to it to its knees back in the day, and you know they've got that. But good games, bad execution still a good thing to come from.
Michael:Uh, Nintendo nice to see GameCube finally hit the surface for sure.
Cody:Um, next in the docket, I'll go ahead and talk about the uh honest to god, the controllers, the uh joy-con twos with their magnetic grips like I love how they're magnets. I've had joy-cons because I I've adopted the switch uh at the very beginning and I can't tell you how many times the rails on the joy cons themselves and the original get fucked up over time because of either snapping or you might drop them or something just happens. They are very easily like my, my uh, the ones that I had on my switch oled uh. They don't stay in place, like if I hold the switch the wrong way, they could just slide off and I'll just drop my tablet a lot of people don't realize that those rails were all made of, like, pure metal.
Michael:So, like if you did anything to like bend or loosen those screws that held them there or like slightly alter the tracks like with the teeth that they had to slide in and out of, then they wouldn't work at all.
Cody:Yeah, mine are definitely damaged, like with the teeth that they had to slide in and out of, then they wouldn't work at all yeah, uh, mine are definitely damaged, uh, that mine has seen some wear and tear over the years because, uh, they're actually my original joy cons. They haven't drifted. I got it with the launch of the uh switch oled when metroid dread was, uh, you know, coming out or whatever. Um, and yeah, that they've seen some shit, but, yeah, I wasn't a fan of that. But these new Joy-Con 2's I don't know, I can't tell you what kind of issues that they could run into. I'm sure that there could be some issues, but I vastly.
Cody:They're still made the exact same way as the old ones, so they still have the potentiality of drift yeah, in terms of how they work on the system, the magnets idea I think is a much better idea than the rail system. Like I love the magnets absolutely and I love how they're bigger. I I you know, I've got bigger hands finally fit in a hand yeah, like they.
Cody:They don't feel like I'm I'm gonna have like, like some serious hand cramping playing the system, especially in handheld mode. It's definitely a lot better. Yeah, uh, because before holy cannoli, uh, if I was playing the switch in handheld mode I used to get a lot of hand cramps. Uh, playing that thing, especially like you know uh, games like you know higher warriors or something like you know really fast paced gaming. You know, uh, games like you know higher warriors or something like you know really fast-paced gaming. You know something like that like metroid dread or something definitely the.
Michael:The buttons themselves are significantly larger, so you don't have oh yeah, either like miss inputs or you can finally do something more comfortable, so you don't have to stop and pick all the time, like you had to do with the old system oh, yeah, for sure.
Cody:And I haven't even gotten to test out all the features of this uh system because I refuse to pick up the tech demo for the Nintendo switch, like yeah, nobody's paying ten dollars for that crap at all.
Michael:But you technically don't get full access to to 100 if you don't buy $200 worth of accessories.
Cody:Yeah, you gotta buy everything the wheel, the camera, the pro controller, you need a 4K TV. Yeah, most people have a 4K TV these days, but still, it's par for the course. It's like what if I'm gaming on a 1080p monitor? Well, I guess you're kind of fucked. Course, it's like what if I don't have a? For what if I'm gaming on a 1080p monitor? Well, I guess you're kind of fucked yep yeah, it's time to upgrade loser.
Cody:I don't know, I don't know why I I I've just heard about that like you need a 4k tv. I don't know why.
Michael:Uh, it's just all the things to take because the hdr 120 with the switching between handheld and docked, probably if I had to guess.
Cody:I don't know. It's what I've heard. I have to take the word for what I've read for it. There's a lot of misinformation out there, so I don't know if I can confirm it's true or not. All I know is I'm not paying $10 for that shit. No, I'm just not doing that $10 for a 10-minute experience should not be a thing.
Cody:I'm sorry, yeah, and I mean, maybe it's more than 10 minutes, maybe there's a lot more to it. I've seen the Treehouse play it and it looks cool. I'm not going to sit here and say that the game doesn't look cool. It's cool running around a little character running around a big Nintendo Switch 2 and testing out all the features. It sounds cool.
Michael:Again, they're just trying to recycle old ideas, but their execution of these ideas, for this system in particular, have been horrible.
Cody:It's very greedy, yeah, um it should have been a pack-in title. I mean, look at yeah, you know, playstation isn't any better, because playstation is just as scummy. But at least when you got your ps5, you got astro's playroom and that sucker showed you everything the dual sense controller could do. And it's still one of my favorite experiences of a launch title. Like, don't get me wrong, this generation has sucked whenever it comes to gaming and stuff.
Cody:Like it doesn't feel like we're really in a new generation of gaming but at least when I got the ps5 it was magical playing a little plat mascot, platformer, nostalgia. And then it got to show me everything that the new system could do.
Michael:Uh, controller wise and gimmick wise that Nintendo got owned with that because, when you think about it, astra became its own series.
Cody:It was so beloved as a pack-in title it started before, like they started doing their thing, I think back on the vita, and then it moved to the ps4 with their camera. Astro was always their tech demo uh, gimmick game. And then the astro's playroom was so damn good that it got its own game and it turned out to be super damn good, like I mean, they basically did what Nintendo didn't. It gave you a mario galaxy 3, but instead of mario it's a playstation like, robot like.
Michael:But I digress honestly ten dollars for go ahead in my opinion, Nintendo has not had a good what one would call pack-in tech demo game that was actually good, since the one that came with the Wii U, the.
Cody:Wii? I don't know. For me I think it's the Wii, the pack-in tech demo game Wii Sports. I just think of A lot of people don't realize that that technically is a tech demo. The funny thing is and this is why I miss this man Originally Nintendo were going to make you pay for that game.
Cody:But, you know, at the time Reggie was there and he said, no, put it in with the title. And he got pushback for it and he got it to work. He got the game in the system and I got to say this is definitely another reggie moment that we should have had. We shouldn't have had to pay ten dollars to experience what the Nintendo switch 2 could do, because I mean it just it doesn't sit well. It really says greed, and speaking of greed, I'll move on to that. We're gonna section into the game, like the launch games, but before then one more rant. It's not a good one. There's more shit here. I hate the fact that you have to pay to upgrade certain games to the Switch 2 editions, specifically Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Like okay, kirby and the Forgotten Land is coming out with an expansion and it's $20 if you already own Kirby and the Forgotten Land, because apparently they're gonna add more. Like there's like, I guess, a short mini campaign that gets added right, cool alright fine, I can accept that.
Cody:That's. That's fine, alright. What the hell do I get, besides upscaled textures and zelda notes with breath of the wild and cheers of the kingdom? It runs at 60 fps. Oh my god. Finally, you don't have to.
Cody:You know you don't have to like watch link run underwater when he goes to the korok forest anymore in either game but, like you know, now the games and the games look slightly better and they use hdr and they run with better frame rates. And you had to pay. What is it? Ten dollars per game, unless you had the nso expansion pack, then it's a free upgrade.
Michael:But either way it's paid more for already.
Cody:But to each their own. Yeah, so you still had to. It's still gated and that is pretty scummy, so that makes breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. Both technically launch titles for the switch too. Yeah, and it's not like they're bad games, they're great games, they're amazing games. Both of these games are awesome as hell, but you've already played them and your save data transfers over. If you've uh, if you've played these games, then you're not going to notice any like, other than maybe shinier graphics, uh, a lot of textures and details and stuff like are slightly upgraded.
Cody:Yeah yeah, but that's really all you get.
Michael:There's no, there's no real difference aside from using the, the way these upgrade packs work, um to kind of boil it down, um to simplicity, just um, for sake of like kind of. What to expect is the switch to editions that we're getting now that we're having to pay for, is what the game should have been at launch to begin with.
Cody:Essentially the fact that it ran. Don't get me wrong, the fact that how they ran on the Switch 1 was a miracle. They really pushed that little Tegra chip to its limit and it's damn impressive, really damn impressive. And the games, like I said, they're great, they're fantastic. But basically, if you wanted that 60 FPS, 4k experience, you're going to get it here finally. And if that's enough for you, then I've got good news for you. Uh, you know you can definitely experience it, and if you already own them, you'll only have to pay a small fee or you have expansion. You know you can get them free, like with your expansion pack.
Michael:So I really hope they give us more with expansion, with the stuff that we get with it.
Cody:That way the incentive for that's better I think they should because, like they gave us the mario kart expansion, they gave us splatoon's expansions and stuff like that, like. So you, you do get some stuff with your uh membership, which is cool, but well, only time will tell what we get, yeah. But essentially that, gripe aside, um, other games just have upgrade packs, like Hogwarts, legacy and stuff.
Michael:You still have to pay, and I'm going to get into that because I've got a few launch titles the upgrade packs that I would like to touch on myself is a lot of companies themselves that have worked with Nintendo.
Michael:If you remember Code about the specific compatibility charts that Nintendo released on launch night with, like what games work, what games don't work, or what games work, but with slight issues. There have been quite a few different instances since launch um, either on launch night, the day after launch or within the first couple days of launch, that games have had their like switch to patch improvements. That's not necessarily a full switch to addition but does give you some peace of mind with its stability and its compatibility with the different kind of hardware and firmware, like with what it's working with. Yes, a lot of them are a lot of them are a lot better, but still have issues mine in particular, that I was looking forward to the most, that I wanted to be marginally better on a switch to was near automata um, it was so much worse than it was to begin with on an o letter base model that what was the point? Because why would you have that work on a Switch 2 when it does nothing but crash?
Michael:Essentially, yeah, yeah because these patches, for the ones that have them, they work fine. But there are so many Switch games that are waiting on patches that just work worse than they ever did because of the different compatibilities with the different firmwares and the code behind the scenes for the UI. So these patches, yes, they're nice, but they're not full switch to additions, which means that until we wait again, just based on time, for these full overhauls to give the games the light of day that they should have had at launch on the system, we're just kind of kept in the dark because Nintendo doesn't know what to do really with a lot of them, because those lists if you've seen those PDFs code are very long with a lot of them, because, again, they're running so much worse. And these patches, we're just waiting because they don't know what to do and they're either coming out in chunks or waves or what, what have you. But until we get these, switch to full editions that come some blue moon in the future.
Michael:These patches, yes, they're good, but they are not what we need and they're not consistent enough for the ones that are heavily affected. For a lot of the games that only had a few minor gripes, they've already got their patches and they run well. Are they still full Switch 2 editions? No, but they are a welcome difference that again, they kind of need to hurry up on because Switch 2 edition, patch or not, we're still very much left in the dark with a lot of these updates that are needed for it to be a good, comfortable experience for its user base that we just and a lot of people I'm gonna.
Cody:I'm gonna add something to your little thing here about this. A lot of people probably are wondering what the hell like, why it's just a Nintendo switch 2, why can't you just play your original Nintendo switch games and the? The answer is it's in, it's running through technically, software like emulation yeah it's not like it doesn't have the same hardware in it. It's all completely new tech yeah so, technically, whenever you run it Nintendo, whenever you run a game, the, the switch switches to something called compatibility mode, which sounds terrifyingly.
Michael:Like you know it sounds bad it's, but it's compatibility, because it wasn't meant for it, because Nintendo doesn't know but doesn't want to admit that they kind of screwed up yeah, they, I don't know.
Cody:Uh like, again, it might be an nvidia issue, it might just be, I don't know what's going on. Like I'm sure nvidia is probably going to work with them and figure something out, but a lot of the games they have cool and improved frame rates. Uh like hyrule warriors, age of calamity is like a good one. Like that game runs beautifully and that game was, oh my god that game was bad.
Cody:It's texture like um, all of its texture and like particle effect issues that it had that would tank its performance have been fixed greatly essentially, yeah, a lot of the games that had that dynamic resolution where, whenever the frame rate would get worse, the resolution would basically lower to, uh, improve game performance. You don't see, you won't have to see that a whole lot per se, you shouldn't see that a whole lot because a lot of games do that.
Michael:There are a lot of Switch 1-based games that are in desperate, desperate need of Switch 2 full overhauls. One that I know that you've pointed out a lot that we've kind of went back and forth on is Xenoblade, because the switching between the compatibility and the handheld and the docked for that is still running based off xenoblade 2 and 3.
Cody:Xenoblade 1 is terrible, like it seems like that one's a lot more optimized, but it still has its uh gripes. But xenoblade 2 and 3, holy crap. When you go into handheld mode and that dynamic resolution kicks in to keep that frame rate from tanking, you can get as low as like 360p or something. Sometimes, especially whenever you go to like uh, I don't it's been a while since I played xenoblade 2 but you go to the desert, uh, titan, I don't remember what it's called off the top of my head but you go there and, oh man, that frame rate is just or that resolution is going to go down.
Cody:You could probably count the pixels on Rex like it's it gets bad, and the one thing that I wish that they could do is when you go into handheld mode, it stays technically in dock mode, like it doesn't technically put the game into handheld mode because the switch to can take it and it's a 1080p screen. So, like I don't know, that might seem like something maybe they could do.
Michael:I don't know I don't know how their architecture works.
Cody:Oversight on Nintendo part, they're just yeah they didn't think about their entire catalog being affected by a complete firmware and like code switch with a different, or maybe they did, or maybe they did and they are just updating it as because this is the modern gaming mentality, uh, kind of thing where developers are like we'll release it and then we'll work on it as we go. We got to meet this quota, we got to meet this deadline, uh we're not going to give us some kind of update.
Michael:Keep us in the loop. At least I wish they would that Nintendo never does.
Cody:They would never do that. But that, all those gripes aside, that you know that's that's what you get for your, your backwards. Now, what kind of crap can you expect to play on this? Uh, handheld out the gate and uh, you know, I'm glad you asked, because you totally did right. Well, I'll tell you, I've played a good majority of them, a little bit more than Michael, and so we both have played at least a good chunk of them, and I'll get into the ones that he hasn't played after we've covered the ones that we've both played, and we'll tell you how things go. So, first off on the docket, the first thing that I loaded up was the game that came with the damn system. Oh yeah, mario kart world. Yep and um, it's a mario kart. Uh, that's it, it's a mario kart, it's, it's.
Michael:It's a bit of a disappointing Mario Kart, because, yes, it is Mario Kart World that does have the big open world aesthetic. But let's be real. What made the Mario Kart at least the modern ones these days specifically Mario Kart 8, the one that went on for decades and decades, as we all know, is Mario Kart.
Cody:Thrives.
Michael:Yeah, so they thrive off of DLC post-launch and with this game it is very, very barren. It is an open world with not a whole lot to look forward to. Yes.
Cody:You have these challenges. It's okay, I'll throw in my mix. It's got cool things where you can unlock costumes. By driving by these little Yoshi drive-thru things, you unlock cool costumes that you change on the fly. That's cute. It's cool Seeing Biker Waluigi or Biker Pauline or something like that. They've got all these cool costumes. I like that. They've got like all these cool costumes and and I like that references as well yeah, like they're, they're great and the tracks and everything is pretty cool. Also, the new wall riding mechanic takes, like you know, it took me a little bit to get used to. And then there was the rail grinding mechanic. That's cool, that's really neat. Um, but when it like when it comes to the cups, they only have a few and then, by the before you know it, you're already unlocking rainbow road and you've basically seen everything race wise that the game has to offer, pretty uh, within a few hours of the game.
Michael:Like it really doesn't take that much out of the box with specifically kind of like you. You have its grand prix mode and you have all of the standard pack-in courses that you would expect. Yes, um, for those who are wondering, it does have cow and it does have moo, moo meadows. End of story there, period. However, the mvp yeah, the mvp himself what a lot of Mario Kart World kind of goes back and forth with.
Michael:At least what I've experienced in my time with it is the new mode that it comes with, which is Knockout Tour, to make sure that you can go through every cup backward and forward, and doing the Knockout Mode, which is essentially, you go through nonstop from track to track to track, from one corner of the continent to the other, and you basically every flag that you would race through is a different checkpoint and you have to be on a certain rank or a certain place or above, to be able to continue the race without getting kicked out and by the end of it, you need to aim for being number one, to quote unquote knock out the competition as you go to make the pool of people smaller and smaller and smaller until you, um, get within the top three and aim for first it is a really cool mode it is a really fun mode and it yes, that's a lot of replayability because, let me tell you them, npcs are no joke, because this is probably the most brutal mario kart in terms of like that, because, like these npcs don't play grand prix.
Michael:These new modes, free roam, what have you? They are out for blood. This is probably the most difficult mario that I've had to play in a while, just on Mario Kart standards, because, oh boy, it ain't a walk in the park at all.
Cody:I gotta tell you I went online with that game and I just I don't know, I don't want to talk about it. You know my age is showing and I don't like this, yeah it's definitely different.
Michael:It's very, very much different.
Cody:You go online on that game and you find out just how senile you're getting in life.
Michael:Yeah, because, man, let me tell you some of these speedrun strats that you see people doing and using all these new mechanics and like completely cutting things and like doing things you would never expect to do in a mario kart before with either these new mechanics or new items, is just mind-blowing.
Cody:Because I saw someone rail hopping, rail grinding and hopping between rails like they're goddamn sonic the hedgehog just right over my head and I'm just sitting here like what is my life? What am I doing wrong? I could barely damn drift around this corner and this motherfucker is fucking rail hopping above my head yep I hate him.
Cody:It's, it's, it's a real come I need a, I need a tylenol yep but other than that, the new feature is free realm, and free realm is well, free realm. You drive around and do whatever the hell you want. You got these little challenges that you can do and you complete them, and that's it. You earn coins, and those coins unlock new costumes and carts for you.
Michael:I believe as far as the carts go. I know to get every vehicle in the game you have to collect a total of 3,000 gold coins.
Cody:Huh, I was not aware of that, but that's good to know. I probably will not do that for quite some time.
Michael:Yeah, 3,000 gold coins for the carts themselves. Of course, to get all of the outfits, you just need to go to Freeroam and just continuously go through the drive-thru as every character until you unlock all of them, which doesn't take that long. It might take you an hour roughly, depending on, of course, with that probably.
Cody:I mean, it's cool, although I don't know if you can free realm with your friends I have not figured out how to do that so you can yes, you can.
Michael:Um, I'll admit me, and you have not done this yet um scheduling work life, stuff like that, you know, but it is definitely something that we plan on doing at some point, but it is possible, yes.
Cody:Oh, thank God. I was like, oh, I've not done that and you know, maybe that might add some cool fun factor to it. But yeah, definitely it's okay. I've never really been the biggest Mario Kart person. To me, the MVP is either Mario Kart Wii or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Michael:Wii for nostalgia. We both grew up with Wii. Wii is me and your OG.
Cody:Yeah, Wii. So I mean I grew up. Super Mario Kart was a little too like, I was a little too young, but I have some memories for with it. My real first foray was 64 and uh I got an official pc port.
Cody:We'll have to talk about that sometime, uh. But uh, yeah, I mean I played through all of them and Wii for me was like the MVP, and then 8 Deluxe with all of its DLC. It's going to be a while before Mario Kart World can dethrone 8. I know everyone has been clamoring for a new Mario Kart, but definitely it's definitely lacking in the content department. For now it ain't lacking in the graphical or gameplay department, it's damn, it's Mario Kart. I mean, you know, if you don't like Mario Kart, if you didn't like the previous one, you're not going to like World. There's nothing I can say to change your mind. But I mean it's a solid game. Definitely. Don't think it's worth $80, though.
Michael:Nintendo what the hell are you doing there? Not at launch? No, with what you kind of tend to expect.
Cody:If I'm paying $80 for it, then the rest of those DLCs that you add better be flippin' free All I'm saying. You better be offering to me those updates like free updates. I better not have to pay a single solitary dime more.
Michael:What Mario Kart World needs to be is basically the Mario kart version of smash ultimate. Give us the ultimate mario kart that has everything from new, old, in between, start to finish. Give us all the tracks, the all the characters, all the old outfits, everything you can give us Nintendo, please throw it our way
Cody:throw a double dash mode in there
Michael:yes,
Cody:that would be cool if you did
Michael:I love.
Cody:Double dash is very underrated, like people like
Michael:double dash was a really cool one-off that they did nothing else with
Cody:yeah, like they, they really don't talk about double dash and hey, maybe they'll add it to the NSO service so I can, you know, bitch about the online some more with that. But I mean I'll take more. I'll take double dash. If they put it on there, I mean why the hell not? I'll take it.
Michael:It's cool, um, at least with mario, like with mario kart world again. Yes, it does have some content that you can do, but with a lot of the the round like challenges that you have in the open world, aside from just stumbling upon them every once in a while and doing them really quickly after about two minutes each, there's not really a whole lot in terms of the world with its landmarks and stuff, because there's not really a lot to go and look at Give us a story mode or a mission mode. Yeah, exactly.
Cody:Mario Kart DS and I think Wii had it in its code or something like that, one of them. They had these mission modes you could do. I get it. The mission modes might be the challenges that you could do in the open world. I was thinking that this game would have some kind of plot. Not that it needs a plot or anything. I don't need every game I play to have a story to it. All I'm saying is they a mario golf game and a tennis game a story?
Cody:about like waluigi and wario up to some shit and you have to like mario tennis aces was great. The story with that actually made you want to play the game yeah, like you know you, you kind of I mean it was pretty interesting, not that the story was good or anything, it was just it was a, it was incentive to do better at the game, and I like that.
Michael:I like that a lot yeah give us, give us something to do and like, give us a reason to go around and do stuff. Because, yes, free roam gives us, like, I believe, the like the official breakdown as far as like what is where in free roam last I looked at it is for the the different p switches that you can find. There are 394, with um question mark panels there's like 150, and then with the peach medallion coins there should be about 200.
Cody:Ah, gotcha.
Michael:Other than that, with just the massive collect-a-thon and go hit this button and go pick up this there. All you get for them at least that I've seen with my time going through them bit by bit is you just can fill out your sticker catalog for each challenge, because everything you do and you complete and you get gives you a sticker and your little like memories book. Outside of that, I'm not really sure what the point is, because you get these stickers to look back on and nothing else right.
Cody:I mean, you know the same can be said about, like you know, older games like kirby, air ride back in the day or super smash brothers. You just kind of fill out a sticker list and then you know it's a form of completion rating, which is fine. Um, it is, but it is. But to me I'm just not the biggest racing connoisseur. When it comes to mario kart, it feels like the content is a little more lacking. The gameplay is there and and the, the presentation is phenomenal.
Michael:I mean, I got it looks possibly the most competitive mario kart I think we've had to date, because a lot of people at least from our generation.
Michael:We play mario kart to have fun and do it casually and have some good old, you know, friendly rivalry. But mario kart world takes the brutal, like competitiveness of this game to a whole different level that, honestly, when you get down to it, with like actually trying to play the game and play it for what it is, with all of this like heavy hitting, like going back and forth with how people are with the online, really can take the fun out of it. Right, that mario kart is supposed to be known for with, like you know, bringing families together. But that is not the case, because the online with this game and the way people are with this game just is ruthless.
Cody:Don't let little Timmy play this game online. He might develop some new words you might not ever have heard him hear before.
Michael:Exactly yeah.
Cody:I mean don't get me wrong, I think playing this game with my I haven't tried playing this with my family yet, or anything like that, but I would imagine it's going to be a heck of a time. But, oh my god, the online next time we're definitely having our mario kart night oh yeah, I mean, maybe when we're done with this, I can try out the uh free realm. Uh, I would like to actually try that. I've never done that before and that sounds pretty cool yeah but uh, that's mario kart world.
Cody:It's lackluster, a little disappointing, but still fun as hell to play and just not worth 80. I hope you get your mario kart with your system.
Michael:Uh, definitely would not imagine paying the like spending like what, 30 bucks for the game in the bundle versus like paying 80 for this.
Cody:Because yes, yeah, it's a good game, but there is a lot left to be desired for $80, I'm sorry that's the only reason why I give this game so much shit, because if it wasn't $80 I'd be praising it a little bit more. But, like, for the price that you're paying, mario Kart World is not worth $80 it's not, and fortunately yeah, and right now at launch, it's not, and unfortunately, Nintendo will.
Cody:Now at launch, it's not, and unfortunately, Nintendo will not be lowering this price anytime soon, if ever, because I mean, for god's sakes, by breath of the wild was a full price on Wii u up until its death yeah like, yeah, I don't know it's, it's uh crazy. Well, you can. That's more of a. That's more of a rant for later about Nintendo, the Disney of gaming. We'll definitely get more into that later, but that's Mario Kart World.
Michael:Kind of moving on to the next big ones, because we've already touched on what you can expect with the other technical launch titles, with the Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and also the really crappy Welcome Tour that shouldn't have really ever existed for what it's priced at.
Cody:I'm going to talk about Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild one more time, since they are launch titles, because I didn't really go into detail. The new things that they added to the game, besides all the technical improvements, is the Zelda notes on the Nintendo Switch app on your smartphone device. Now, a lot of people will probably never use this, but there are a few handy, nifty features for someone like me.
Michael:Yeah, me and you both actually me and you both actually.
Cody:Yeah, so they have a daily challenge wheel that you can go spin and you can use this new daily. You can use this daily item in your inventory and activate whatever daily challenge you get from the switch app so you can have all weapons are repaired or like you'll get a speed boost or a stealth boost or you might do double damage for a limited amount of time, like it just depends. It depends on what you get for your daily bonus for using the app yeah, I believe.
Michael:I believe, with the specific weapon repairing that you're referring to as well, it's not all weapons at once, it's the like, the ones that you can land on for each section of weapons, for all of them to be repaired, so you can either have all of your swords, all of your shields, all of your bones repaired at one time. It's not everything, it's each individual section can be repaired all of them yeah, absolutely.
Cody:Uh. So they have that. And then they have the new exclusive memories for both tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, where you can hear voiced audio messages for different characters like Zelda I guess it's Zelda talking about her experiences and stuff. I have not really used any of them yet. I have not figured out how it works, really used any of them yet. I've not figured out how it works.
Cody:Uh, I've been using the uh guidance feature for me, especially with wrapping up breath of the wild. I have uh tried to complete that game and for me personally, as someone who can't see shit, uh, I don't see details very well. Uh. So even though I have my handy dandy corot tracker and stuff like that, it doesn't help sometimes. So what you can do is literally get voice directions on where to find certain things in the game and it'll lead you straight to them. Uh, and the thing that really gets me is the Korok tracker. It leads you to the Korok, but it doesn't tell you how to get the Korok. It leads you to it and you have to discover.
Michael:Yeah, you have to figure it out yourself.
Cody:Yeah, and I like that. It's like having a handy guide point me in the direction and then I get to figure it out myself. So I still get the reward of solving the puzzle. As redundant as it might sound, a lot of people will probably not use this. A lot of people don't really like the idea of using a lot of guides and games, and I get that some. The whole point of the point of both of these games is to kind of explore and figure it out yourself. But for those of you who are like me, you know you get those rare gamer moments where you don't see detail as much as other people do. This definitely is, uh, really handy and I really appreciate like and I've never really known Nintendo to do anything really accessible and for this, uh, it makes breath of the wild.
Michael:This is definitely a really big highlight for them in our book yeah, because it actually makes this game completable.
Cody:I used to ask I would have to ask someone to come over to my TV and, you know, point out something to me that I wouldn't be able to see, and now my phone can do it for me and that I appreciate that more than it could ever. You know, I've not really got to talk a whole lot about accessibility for a while in this podcast. That was started about accessibility, but in terms of, uh, being more accessible for those of you who have visual impairments, this one will definitely. This is for you guys.
Michael:This one is a definite help yes, this is definitely a plus um for us as as a like franchise brand, that we can give this specific title and like this upgrade for for both of these titles, is it? It's a definite plus and an improvement in our book with its overall like score with us. Because, yeah, it is greatly an enhancement, because what used to be tedious is actually something fun to do now because we have an interactive app.
Cody:Yeah, like instead of having to rummage around and look for something and like get frustrated because you can't find something and you're running in circles, you could just have it tell you and I get it To some people. It would take what the game is about away and you know what. That's fine. That's why this is a smartphone app. It's not baked into the game.
Michael:It is a feature that you do not even have to fuck with at all. You don't have the game gives you. When it comes to zelda notes, is it literally only gives you the qr code to scan, nothing else you do not have to enable, you don't want to yep, it's completely optional.
Cody:It's disabled by default too yes, yes um, so, but for those of you who don't care and uh just would like a little bit of help, uh, it's there and it is a I. I would give it, honestly, the tech and tactile uh.
Michael:Seal of approval whenever it comes to accessibility for these two specifically. Yes, they do get our tech and tactile seal of approval without a doubt.
Cody:110 all day long uh, and I kind of forgot to talk about this, but I'll go ahead and ramp in this uh, a new bit of hardware with here's the kingdom of breath of the wild, and that is the pro controller. I completely, I was talking about the joy cons and everything like that and I don't remember talking about the pro controller.
Michael:That is a damn shame I can't believe I did that. Why the hell that we bought that we have used the most for both of us?
Cody:like. Anyway, I'm just not talking about it. You let me get off track, you little shit. God I gotta tell you, this pro controller is freaking incredible.
Michael:It is one of the most comfortable controllers it is the best used by Nintendo it's the best controller since the Wii u it is.
Cody:Yeah, I love, love, love the way it feels. And specifically the programmable g buttons on the back of the controller. I use them so much like breath of the wild, right. So in breath of the wild and cheers the kingdom, you sprint with the b button, right. So when you're sprinting you have to take your thumb off of the right analog stick and that's annoying because if I want to like use the camera and stuff, I would either have to change the controls or, like I don't know, it was just, it was just not working right.
Cody:But right for sprinting, I literally put the b button on gr, which is the right uh button on the back of the controller, and now I can hold it down and I can just use my thumb to see where I'm going while I'm sprinting away. And then on gl, I put the x button, which is jump, so if I need to jump and run I don't have to take my hand off of the camera, and it is a godsend, let me tell you I I'm so glad Nintendo did that. Personally, I wish they had two programmable buttons, like you know, the steam deck, um, or the ps5 controllers, uh, the dualsense edge or whatever, because I think they have two programmables too, but I'll take what I can get and this. This is amazing. And that's not even talking about the way the buttons feel and the way the analog sticks are and how smooth.
Michael:They are referring to how the ally is also set up, because it has um its own two edges outside yeah well right, right.
Cody:Yeah, like I love those programmable buttons, like I'm so glad that we're getting those on controllers now and I'm glad Nintendo finally did something like that, like they skipped out on that, on the pro controller originally, which the pro controller, the first pro controller on the switch, was fine. It felt good, I liked it, it was very big and it felt good in my hands.
Michael:This was the big difference for me when it comes to the switch 2 versus the switch 1. I had both. I did not like using the switch 1 version of the pro controller because it was all made of the same really like creaky plastic and it felt very hollow. And what was really bad about it? It was shiny. So you like, if you turned it around to like plug in your um, your controller, or press the little sync button on the back, it was that really high gloss reflect everything plastic that you. That was just really rough on your hands and it again it didn't have any of the buttons, it was just purely the controller with the um, the same plastic um triggers on them.
Michael:But with the switch to pro controller it's all like a matte finish, feel Joysticks, all of it plastic. There's nothing shiny about it, it's all the same kind of flow and the same material. It is very comfortable. It's a lot bigger, it's a lot more meaty and it's got actual weight to it, which is nice. So it feels great, it works great and the joysticks are silent. There's no clickiness, there's no, nothing.
Cody:All of the entire controller is quiet as a mouse yeah, it's, it's wonderful and you know, uh, now that I've said what I needed to say, at least about here's the kingdom and breath of the wild. Um, you know, I might touch on it a little bit more later. Whenever I've done more with the, the apps and everything like that, I'll touch into the game. That was the mvp. Whenever it comes to this pro controller, for me that is street fighter 6 oh, holy is my baby, yeah yeah, street fighter 6, holy crap.
Cody:So we both we both decided to take a different approach to how street fighter is, or at least how we're playing the game.
Cody:Yeah, michael focused more on the online and I focused more on world tour and uh, um. So I'll go ahead with world tour, because it's the meatiest part of the game, because they, they, they put a full fledged RPG in street fighter six. I mean, it's been out for a while. If you've played street fighter six, you know how it is. But if you don't know how it is, essentially imagine Yakuza, but with street fighter. Whenever you get into fights. So you're just wandering around your city, you know you're doing your thing, and then a punk comes up to you and then you throw hands and then it turns into a Street Fighter match. You beat the crap out of them and then you go about your day. But the difference is there might be little monkey wrenches thrown into the occasion, like these little Roomba robots that shoot lasers at you, or you might be fighting.
Michael:You can also.
Cody:Go ahead.
Michael:You can also yeah, go ahead. Yeah, you can also initiate fights with absolutely any of the NPCs you come across. There is no limitation to who you can pick a fight with.
Cody:Right, go ahead and talk. Hold on, go ahead and talk about your. I gotta think about what I'm doing here with my, with how the story mode is, but I want you to talk about that online netcode. Go ahead and talk about that, like I gotta hear all about this, because this is what I've been more interested in knowing, honestly.
Michael:Its edition is it's the exact same game, the exact same kind of what to expect. The only difference with the Switch 2 version is it's the Fighter's Edition. So it comes with all DLC that has been released for Street Fighter 6 up until this point. So it comes with all the characters, all the stages, all the outfits, everything. As far as the online with SF6, it still keeps its native rollback. So you have full rollback that you would on crossplay right yes, it is full crossplay.
Michael:So you you can see kind of everything. You can tailor your experience, you can make sure you can limit um either who you play with or the network that you play with. So you can limit your networks either to worldwide, in country, in um, in uh time zone, in, in specific like quadrants, so you can expand it or minimize your pool of connections as much as you want. So if you don't want someone halfway across the world, you can put your search capabilities to limited or um just to where you want it. So if you don't want to constantly get bad connections with rollback, you can limit either have where someone is located, when or what your search capability is, or you can limit the minimum or maximum connection strength that you have the potentiality to be matched with, whether it's ranked or casual now, how have you been uh faring online?
Cody:uh, before I go back into, you know, my single player experience, because I I'm more interested in the uh. I'm interested because I've a lot of Nintendo uh games that I played online, or at least a lot of games that I played a lot on the switch, have not been very good. They've been pretty damn, they've been bad. So how, how's your experience been?
Michael:online.
Michael:So as far as the netcode, I will say Nintendo netcode really has nothing to do with how Street Fighter is, because this uses everything that's made in-house by Capcom that you would expect by SF6.
Michael:So everything is essentially as still buttery smooth as you would expect Capcom server network rollbacks to be. I have not really had any issues on matches that had good connections with rollback. On matches that had good connections with rollback, I have had a few instances where if I was on a specifically notified weaker connection match that that yes, the rollback would kind of step in and do what rollback does when you have the like you know, five plus rollback frames, as one would expect. But as far as, like when you're playing an actual online match with someone that has good netcode and you're on a zero rollback frame game, I have had no issues whatsoever with how smooth it is or how it runs. Everything is always have been at tip top with both the online quality and the visual quality, because between handheld and docked it switches between 1080 to 1440 um, yeah, that's what I was kind of getting at like whenever I was playing world tour on a single player.
Cody:It was 1440 60 fps yeah like it was yeah yeah, like it was full on 60 and I was damn impressed. And in world tour I noticed a little bit of stutter in in main world and the overworld and everything, but it's a single player part, so it's not too much of a big deal when you get into fights and everything like that, because the fights, you know you can either be fighting normal people or you could be fighting and then, like you know, you might be fighting in a construction site and there might be like a crane dropping boxes randomly in the arena and stuff, so like there might be a lot of crazy shit going on.
Michael:and it all ran butterly smooth, like it was just not an issue at all and I was really impressed street fighter 6 is definitely a personal highlight for both of us, because it's probably the one game that we were looking forward to that actually surprised us the most yeah, it had the most.
Cody:It has the best character. Creator. I've played a fighting game in quite some time, for all the good reasons, but uh, but it, and so you know. If you know what street fighter 6 is. I don't really want to review the whole game because, like it's been out for a while, you have your single player, you got your online, you got your arcade and then you got your battle hub where you can take your custom oc and you can fight other custom ocs around the world like that's basically the gist now that you bring that up as well, I do want to touch on the the mode exclusivities that you get on Switch 2 that you don't get anywhere else.
Michael:I will admit me and you have not touched on this and we haven't done this between the two of us but there are two exclusive Switch 2 game modes that you can go through. One is Gyro battle, so you essentially um make up a local match and you both grab a joy-con and you use the joy-con buttons and motions to um do the modern moveset variants of whoever you're playing as, so you have the ability to not have to press a single button and just use nothing but joy-con movements to fight each other, which is an amazing concept it sounds.
Cody:It sounds I need to. I I've not tried this out because I've not found someone willing enough to do this with me yet, but it sounds. It could either be really funny and good and it could be bad, because I played street fighter 2 on the switch the exclusive one and then I did the way of the hado minigame, which, uh, wasn't exactly what I would call it was. It was pretty funny and good, but just it wasn't exactly like amazing. So we'll see how this mode is. I'm willing to try it out. What's this other mode?
Michael:that they have. So the other mode also I haven't again touched on this, I've only kind of read up on it is the calorie burn mode that you again, you both use your Joy-Cons. You take each Joy-Con and you fight to see who can shake the controller the most to burn calories. And whoever burns the most calories is declared the winner.
Cody:Well, I mean, I mean, if it keeps me from picking up fitness boxing or whatever it is like, whatever that new boxing game is that they are doing, I'll try it out.
Michael:I could burn calories with cammy hell yeah, I'll do that or my oc, because my oc is hot yeah, because, um, I I don't remember what the name of yours is off the top of my head, but to give um everyone at home a little bit of a visual for me, I based mine off of 2b from near autom Automata.
Cody:I don't really have anything. I just made a hot blonde-headed chick Because it's all about the frames. Guys, I swear, the smaller the girl is, the more it's harder to land a hit.
Michael:I promise you can actually customize your character hitboxes based off of the length and the depth of your customization, which not a lot, not a lot of people realize yeah.
Cody:So you know there's a good reason to goon nowadays, because you know, you could. You could literally use the. It's the hitbox, bro. That's why I want to play as a girl. It ain't because I don't. I don't like playing as guy characters. It's all about the hitboxes, man. And now you actually have a reason for it.
Michael:Yeah, because these new modes for SF6 that are exclusive to Switch 2 are really cool Because when you think about it, when you get to shake a Joy-Con violently to attack and you get to tilt it from side to side to move left to right and you again, from reading my memory, you twist it for super arts and then you can press um, I believe, the shoulder, um triggers for drive parries but other than that it's all based on motion, which is really cool.
Michael:It's all about precision and like how much energy and movement you put behind things I'll freaking.
Cody:I'll give it a try later. I'll probably get like I don't know. I'll probably get georgie or somebody to like.
Michael:Come test it with me and my one of my little brothers supposed to be chaotic. Hilarious fun.
Cody:That's how it's described okay, well, I'll take their word for it and, honestly, for an exclusive mode for an amazing fighting game, I'll take it. All I need now is Tekken 8 and some ridiculous bullcrap that Hirata could put in the game, I don't know like the Wii U exclusive modes and Tag 2. Make it happen.
Michael:Hirata's on, if you're listening?
Cody:No, he's not fucking listening. He's got better things to do, and, besides, you're supposed to not ask him for shit. Alright, I mean, I've like the man's shirt, all right, just don't ask him for shit it's good, don't, we don't need it. Other than that, though, we have one other game that we've both played, yep, and that is yakuza zero's director's cut and what can I say?
Cody:if you like yakuza zero. I mean it's, there's really. They added a new english dub. For those of you who are purists, you probably won't ever use it, but I have and I I can say I am a fan and I'm not a fan. There are some voices. I'm not going to get into any controversial things. I'm not going to talk about who I did and didn't like there's. All I can say is there are some main character voices that I didn't think fit too well and there are others that are absolutely perfect and, uh, we'll leave it at that. But whenever it comes to anything else, I mean it's yakuza zero.
Cody:I've really not noticed anything new, in particular, especially whenever it comes to new features with the switch to. I know that they added more cut scenes and everything, but I'm in the middle of playing the game. I'm technically on, I think, chapter three or four. Um, for me personally, I just did, you know, uh, the first chapter with majima, and I'm back playing as kiryu and finally getting into real estate, right, so I've still got quite a way. I've got quite a few hours of game left in my yakuza zero journey. Yep and uh, what can I say?
Michael:it's yakuza zero, but you can take it with you on the go and actually looks pretty good with an english dub and greatly improved textures oh yeah, it looks really good like I don't.
Cody:I hope that this is not exclusive to the switch I hope this comes out on other platforms.
Michael:I want this on PlayStation.
Cody:Yes, I want this on Steam.
Michael:I want this on other platforms, for sure, the other highlight of the game itself, aside from the cutscenes and the textures that me and you both have had our time with so far, is the exclusive Red Light Raid mode.
Cody:Essentially imagine if you played so far is the exclusive red light raid mode? Essentially imagine if you played fighting force on the playstation 1, basically like a 3d streets of rage as yakuza characters every character in yakuza, whether it's the main character, one of the lieutenants or one of the bosses or anything like that or any of the random ass NPCs you're're gonna fight throughout the game the random.
Michael:You can take them at a side of the road random clown with a big scythe.
Cody:Uh like, yeah, uh, you can take basically up to four people and beat the holy shit out of like just tons of enemies. It's so much chaotic fun. Yep, um, it's definitely a grind. You have to grind up money and you have to level up your characters individually and you have to buy each character and stuff like that. So like they start you out with a little bit of money and then you go out and then you purchase the character that you want and it's, it's fine for what it is. It's definitely a grindy mode, but if I'm bored and I want to throw down with some mates, uh it's, it's not bad that's pretty good definitely the the best chaotic fun that you could have yeah, it's no street fighter.
Cody:Six, uh, don't get me wrong, but like and it's missing, at least for now I've not seen. You can't do any of those cool yakuza takedowns.
Michael:Like you know, there's no kicking yoneda through doors if you know, you know, if you know, you know you're not doing any of that.
Cody:It's not. There's no cinematic takedowns in this mode, which you know is a bit of a bummer, but I mean, you're still beating the holy hell out of people with and it's a lot of fun to do. Um, a good it's like a good 30 minutes to an hour's worth of a distraction can say for sure, for absolute certainty. Um, but yeah, that's yakuza zero. Unfortunately it doesn't do a whole lot of switch to functionality like that. It doesn't really take advantage of the system other than it's on a more powerful system and, uh, it shows. Um, there's definitely some texture issues and stuff that happen every once in a while at least. You know I've noticed sometimes the textures might have trouble loading sometimes, but nothing that could go quick game restart can't fix.
Cody:And they also added the ability for you to save anywhere yes the game doesn't tell you about that, but you can literally just pause the game and save your game anywhere without going to a payphone or wherever you need to go, which is cool. I, I like that. They did that. Um, so there is that and not a bad, not a bad game to play. If you never played yakuza zero, I mean, pick it up, it's worth a shot it's definitely one of the best story-driven series that you can get into.
Michael:So if you have not gotten into the Yakuza series as a whole and would like to start, start with Zero because it is technically the first in the timeline the Switch 2 Director's Cut Wonderful place to start. Can't recommend it enough.
Cody:Right, um, uh, I will just quickly give, uh, a few brief highlights because I've not played them too much, but these are games that I have technically played, that only I can speak briefly on. And that is the new fast racing game. Every damn switch or every Nintendo launch ever since the Wii you, we get a new fast game which is basically like an F zero clone. It's. It is what it is. It's fun, chaotic, racing and it's basically like F zero.
Cody:I guess had a kid with, uh, what's that one game wipe out on the PlayStation. It's like this other futuristic ship based racing game. Um, it's basically like that and it's fun, chaotic. I think. It runs at 60 fps, the tracks look phenomenally good, but it's another racing game. So if you don't like the openness of mario kart and you want something a little cheaper, uh, this game is like, I think, 15 bucks or 16 or something like that. Right, uh, it was pretty cheap at launch. So not a bad little game to keep you entertained with some buddies for a little bit. And, uh, then there is the new arcade classics, which is the original arcade version of ridge racer and it's ridge freaking racer too.
Cody:Yeah, arcade archives to ridge racer, and I mean it's ridge racer, you can play the english, you can play the different english and japanese variants of the arcade cabinet and it is wonderful. I mean, if you like the original ridge racer and you played it in the arcade, uh, it's, you can't get any better than that. I mean, it's ridge racer. Come on, everyone knows that. Like, so go for that. It's pretty cheap. If you're, uh, if you're an arcade purist, if you love your arcade games like you know how I grew up in the arcade days, then uh, you're gonna love this one. And then for me for there is, uh, two other games there is hogwarts legacy and which you know.
Cody:Hogwarts legacy, uh, came out on the original Nintendo switch and I can't believe it is running on the switch. It's so bad. It's not a good way to play hogwarts legacy on the switch I could tell you that for sure. But the switch 2 version, not bad. If you like harry potter and you grew up, you know wanting to explore hogwarts and stuff and you kind of, if you like Harry Potter and you grew up, you know wanting to explore Hogwarts and stuff and you kind of were sleeping out on this game and you're for some reason getting a switch too early or maybe you're getting one later in the year.
Cody:Uh, hogwarts legacy, a good little open world game. It ticks all the boxes, running around, doing challenges, solving puzzles, pick your house, uh, in in hogwarts and depending on the house you pick, you know depends on how certain story events happen differently. It's all the same story, but it's honestly a really neat game and the fact that the switch to version plays the way that it does and runs the way that it does, I can recommend it. You know you're probably going to see it go on sale. Uh, they've been putting hog Hogwarts Legacy on sale quite a bit. So I would definitely recommend this game Not a 10 out of 10, but definitely a game that would be worth having on the go, a definite improvement.
Cody:And then, for me, the final game on the list that I have been playing a good bit of. That I have a very positive and yet negative opinion on is Hitman World of Assassination. This game is near that. I have a very positive and yet negative opinion on is hit man world of assassination. This game is near and dear to my heart because I am a stealth boy. I love me. I love me a good stealth series. You know we don't got metal gear right now. Besides, the master collection and the switch version could be better, but this is a quintessential stealth game. If you like sneaking up behind people and choking them out, this is the game for you. Or killing them with anything you can imagine, hitman is definitely it.
Cody:I was disappointed in this game for two reasons. One, you're still required to play online if you want to rank up and unlock things with your career, so you know if you're playing this on the go or whatnot. You could still experience all of the campaign, but when you beat it, you're not completing any challenges and you're not unlocking anything, unless you're tied to io servers or ios, io interactive servers, which is a really big disappointment, and that means you're also missing out on freelancer mode, the free realm, uh, like arcade style assassination missions where you can. You know you don't have any story, there's nothing you know, linear, that you could do. It's you and your imagination and how you take out your target. That's exclusively held back to being connected online and that's a real bummer. Also, it doesn't take advantage of the HD rumble really well. It doesn't do any motion control inputs, it doesn't take advantage of any feature that the Switch 2 has to offer, and the same can be said for Hogwarts Legacy, as far as I know.
Cody:Well, actually, that's not true. Hogwarts Legacy does like if you're playing in handheld mode, as far as I've seen, you can use your touch screen to interact with the ui, which is fantastic. But as far as I've seen in hitman you, it's basically just a basic bitch port, which there's nothing wrong with it. It runs at an uncapped frame rate and it it does what it needs to do and it functions. But there's definitely more crashing that I'm comfortable with.
Cody:I've definitely dealt with a lot of hardcore crashes in that game and I hope that they fix it, especially since, apparently, james Bond the new one is coming to the Switch 2. I gotta see what IO is going to do, but that's essentially the games that I played beyond. Uh, michael, uh, and they're. They're a mixed bag. They're good and then they're decent. So, overall, before I get my final thoughts, I will say, digging around in the ui for the switch something that I probably didn't, I should have mentioned at the beginning, and I'm kind of scatterbrained and didn't really think about it there is an accessibility tab that is on the Switch 2 for those of you who do have disabilities that need a little bit more fine-tuning of your system.
Cody:Nintendo does have you in certain aspects. Uh, do you have them written down, michael?
Michael:I do have them a little bit in front of me. Yes, I will say um for me and you. This was probably the one thing that floored us after we first initially booted up our systems for the first time because me and you could collectively say we did not expect to see this at no this.
Cody:Uh, I guess the reason why I didn't bring this up beginning is because at the beginning I was so negative about the Nintendo switch and now that I've got all the negativity out of the way, I can talk about the things that I liked. And this is the one thing that really impressed me, because I went to look. I was like because the switch one added a magnifier function way back in the day, like they've had it for years, and I'm like okay, where's the magnifier function and how do I turn that on? And you know it, originally it was under system settings. You would have to go and then you could look for zoom and it wasn't there. And I was like, what the hell is it? And I scroll up and I completely skimmed over something that clearly says accessibility settings and I almost shat myself. I was like are you shitting me? Like they have so many good options in these, in this, in the accessibility tab. Uh, if you have them, michael, what are they?
Michael:yes, so, as you were referring to, to kind of begin with, the zoom functionality makes a comeback. Um, again, you just double tap the home button and it will use the same kind of layout that it did with the original for the switch to um, which is also really handy because you have a lot more screen real estate to move it around in, considering the 7.9 inch screen. Um, outside of that, just using the specific, you know, panning back and forth from the zoom, you have the text customization menu, which allows you to adjust your font sizes between their new three different sizes. You have the text customization menu which allows you to adjust your font sizes between their new three different sizes. You have standard, you have large and you have maximum, which are three very specifically different size increments for your text on your Switch 2.
Michael:Now, cody, I know you can speak a lot more on the maximum side because I know that's what you have yours set to me specifically. I have mine set to large because, honestly, I don't like the standard. To me, standard is a lot too small, even for someone that doesn't have the same visual impairment. I like large because it is a lot more easier to read, not to mention there's not a lot of text overlapping to go to different lines, if that makes sense.
Cody:Yeah, maximum. Definitely you have to do a lot more scrolling whenever you are looking at certain text elements. But, like as somebody who can't see shit whenever it comes to how I'm looking at things, the the maximum for me is perfect it? Uh, it might be it might make the ui look a little messy, but I'll take messy. Uh. If it means that I could read it, it's fine. Um, maybe they'll make it look better in the future. But what can you expect when you're literally making ginormous words appear on your screen? How do you make that look good? Yeah, I don't think you can, especially considering the seven inch screen right.
Cody:So there's that, and it's a godsend, right with the magnification. And then, for me, the thing that is the icing on the mvp cake for me, it has a screen reader, yes, a fully fledged, honest to god, screen reader. It's so damn good and like it. It could be better. There's a little bit of a delay between reading, but it has, like, the ability for you to read like, uh like, everything on the menu is fully readable and you can adjust the like, how fast or slow the thing reads. And it even has a male and female variant. Uh, female by default. I prefer my screen readers to be female. Just, I don't know, it's a personal preference, but there is there. I hope they add different voice types later on in the future I wonder if they'll add Nintendo character voices.
Cody:That would be kind of hilarious. That would be hilarious. I would have a Wario screen reader. I absolutely would.
Michael:I wonder what would happen if they had a Link screen reader. Just a bunch of grunting every word.
Cody:Maybe, like I don't know how that would work, but that is hilarious. Make that happen, Nintendo. There you go See. You know all the cool things that people think of. Nintendo will never do them, but if they did, people like us would be giving them all the free ideas.
Michael:Oh, yeah, for sure, because we definitely give our peace of mind to this company more times than not oh yeah, for sure they don't get away with shit.
Cody:I might, I might have shilled out for the console, but I mean I I wanted to make a review of it and I don't care, I don't know who would see this or whatnot, but it it's more for me just to say that I did it.
Michael:But we did we did do it matter of fact, because, um, for those of you don't know, if you want to see our launch night video on our youtube channel, um, same youtube channel, youtubecom, slash at tech and tactile, we did film our complete experience with going on launch night and waiting since 8 am to go pick up a switch to, at best, buy sun Sunburn included.
Cody:Join me at your favorite foul-mouthed, unprofessional professional and uh, captain Cripple here and uh, go watch us slowly turn into tomatoes At least me More than him. I got fucked by that sun Like that sun. I don't know how bad he got it. All I know is that I got it pretty good. I was peeling for a few days. Yes, you were.
Michael:Kind of steering back on track with that. Aside from the screen reader and the text customization, kind of in that same loop, they do also now have a bolding toggle switch to bold all of the text based off of your UI preference, whether it's light or dark, which is really nice. Outside of that kind of going off of the same light and dark ui mode elements, they now have a color adjustment menu which includes the ability to invert all colors to their respective inversions. You have a grayscale mode completely, and you also have what's come standard nowadays with a bunch of high contrast UI options for visual accessibility.
Cody:For those specifically, Not only that, you also have mono audio. For anyone who has any kind of hearing impairment. There is a mono option. Yeah, and I'm glad to see that. Yeah, it's part of the course, but I'm glad that they added it because it wasn't in the original switch, as far as I remember yeah so if anyone.
Michael:If anyone has any type of hearing impairment like that, that they're limited to one ear or slightly better, in one ear you can have all of your audio stem to one specific side of the speakers. Um, for, whatever your preference is on that, to make it a little bit easier, which is honestly a really, really nice addition yeah, I am very glad I'm glad that they did that um go ahead.
Michael:Outside of that, we have just you know, your um fully remappable joy-con controls for both the Pro controllers, as we kind of touched on earlier, as well as the. Joy-con 2s with their grip, because you can fully make the kind of layout and you can make your own preset how you want and with your different options, depending on what your specific either kind of grip or playstyle may be, which is really nice.
Cody:Yeah, finally Nintendo lets you customize your damn controls.
Michael:I mean, they did that in the switch one, but uh, you know, better late than never yeah, at least they have it that also kind of carries over to GameCube, and so if I remember quickly as well, uh, yeah, they, oh, I think I.
Cody:I hope they did this for all the other NS0 apps. I haven't checked, but you can individually can like, you can change controller, like button layouts, uh, in the app itself. On GameCube, I didn't check, uh, in 64 or anything and I and 64 needs it really bad, so maybe I'll go check that out later. Another thing, um yeah, later.
Michael:Another thing to kind of touch on as well, when you were talking about the screen reader and its kind of text-to-speech capabilities, there is also the new inverse of that for speech-to-text via GameShare, which allows anyone using GameChat that have the mic on with this option on for it, to have real-time communication support to type out and display what is being said to them if they are unable to hear the audio oh yeah, I completely.
Cody:I haven't even tried that out, but like that is a really cool thing to be able to just say something and have it type it for you exactly um, we'll have to test the swearing filter yeah, that's.
Michael:That's a Nintendo staple that we'll have to definitely test the limitations of. Did you hear?
Cody:they uncensored the f word as far as I remember. Really, you could just straight up yeah, I think that you could straight up just say fuck and get away with it, um, as your favorite, you know. Uh, uh, unprofessional, professional, foul mouth. Uh, I, I can say for sure that, uh, I like saying the word fuck. So, uh, I'll have to test that out, yeah, so again kind of continuing in that same vein.
Michael:We now have for some reason, when you look at it technically, in that same branch, game chat as a whole is counted as an accessibility feature menu there as well, as for people um kind of such as myself, that have um physical disablements, that have um kind of motor function issues and limitations on that front, another bit of accessibility that kind of can go back and forth either in menu or physically um is the like joycon mouse and the ability to plug in any mouse now that you want for your controller if you're unable to kind of grip a joy con.
Michael:Because not only are you able to do that, you again I haven't tested this but you have the potentiality of now connecting something like the adaptive controllers that we have spoken on before to kind of help with control schemes as well via these new options. Again, that's something we can kind of explore as we kind of get with control schemes as well via these new options. Again, that's something we can kind of explore as we kind of get into it once we do those. Haven't tested, yeah, haven't tested it, but technically, with these new game chat features and the mouse controls we can now technically, since these USB ports now accept external devices with cameras and devices and stuff like that for different pads and different controllers. We could technically test out that theory to see if we could use an accessibility controller on a switch to set we still need to get our hands on one, and we still plan on doing that at some point.
Cody:But uh, unfortunately, accessibility doesn't mean cheap.
Michael:Accessibility comes with an unfortunate price tag in today's market.
Cody:Yeah, it's a tangent that I could definitely go on and I probably already have gone on it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we did. I don't remember it's been a while, it's late, but we're getting near the tail end of the system review for the Switch 2. I mean, we've talked about a lot. There's been a lot of games that we've talked about, a lot of features, a lot of negative Won't lie it is a pretty negative thing.
Cody:But I guess, overall, what are your thoughts on the Switch 2? Like, what do you think I'll tell you mine, tell me yours as somebody who you don't have a lot of switch experience compared to me, uh yeah, somebody who's a new adopter, what do you think?
Michael:I um, for those of you who don't know, um, I did not hop on the switch bandwagon until tears of the kingdom was announced for pre-order. That's when I um pre-ordered my Tears of the Kingdom OLED and that was my first experience with the system itself, because I didn't kind of I didn't buy all the games when they came out. I just kind of waited and I watched the YouTube videos of all my favorite YouTubers play them um at the time. But now that I actually have my hands on a Switch from Switch Launch for Switch 2, that is is um, I have been slowly growing my um library as of late and kind of testing out things here. There, I will definitely admit, with all of the gripes with it's really rough compatibility with what it's, it's technical back catalog, as it's called with the old switch, which one it leaves a lot to be desired because it did not have a solid launch title that made the system worth it. Now, yes, mario Kart World was cheaper, was a really good deal for the bundle. It is a great game. Leaves a lot to be desired, not worth $80 out of the gate, but with the bundle, cool, we had it Again, just missing a lot of content there.
Michael:As far as the ones that we reviewed, street fighter 6 with its accessibility stuff, with the modern controls and with its new stuff nice to see. Still not something, to you know, that one would expect to look forward to for a new console. Um, as far as you know personal favorites and how that goes, yakuza zero um, going back to that game, at least for me and cody, after so many years of going through it originally was a nice, welcome surprise. But overall, with the switch to it's a good system and I'm glad and I was so over the moon to see that it has a lot of new accessibility stuff great. But as far as you know, this new hardware and what it's bringing to the table again at launch for now left a lot to be desired right.
Cody:I kind of uh, so I was. I had to do this because I I I miss the old tradition of camping out. Uh, since I'm an older person here, my age is definitely showing but I love those midnight releases. Uh, I loved going to them. I was there for the switch midnight release and I just kind of wanted to do the same for the switch too, even though I knew it was probably going to be just like the switch one, because when the switch one came out, um it, you really didn't see what the switch was capable of until mario odyssey came out. And I feel like the same is going to be said you probably won't see what the switch two is all about until donkey kong bonanza comes out. Uh, and at least you don't have to wait that long. You only have to wait a month Because, like, the Switch came out in March and Mario Odyssey was like a September release, as far as I remember, or like September October somewhere around that.
Cody:It was fall, basically around that time. But you had to wait a while and it was rough. There was not a lot going on in the in the early switch days for quite a while. And, uh, unfortunately, the switch 2 is the same way. Like a lot of these games, you've played them, probably on other platforms, uh, that's why I didn't want to go into all the details. Um, with all the games, like you know, I may have went a little too much on Street Fighter. If you play Street Fighter 6 or you know what Street Fighter 6 is all about, besides how the performance is and how the games run, which they've run really well, at least at launch, for now, you're not really going to get.
Cody:You can play these games probably cheaper on other platforms. Um, I can guarantee you can play them cheaper on other platforms. Like, don't get me wrong, drink fighter 6 60 dollars comes with the fighters. Pass 1 and 2 amazing dlc today. Yeah, hitman world of assassination uh, 60 dollars. Uh, it comes with hitman 1, 2 and 3. Cool, really, really good bang for your buck. Yakuza 0, same thing. Only that game was $50.
Michael:It was not full price, every penny.
Cody:It's good, but you can still play Yakuza 0 cheaper on other platforms, and whether this new content makes it worth it or not, I have no idea. I cannot.
Michael:I cannot say um, we need to see if these added, like what 25, 30 minutes of cut scenes is going to be added to the more important parts of the later story, specifically toward the ending. Again, we'll speak on that now, but that's what we're hoping for anyway is if we possibly may get an expanded ending thanks to these new cut scenes which would shed some light on yakuza lore as a whole, which we are looking forward to. So we'll see yeah.
Cody:So back to my my whole thing about this. I guess I went on a little tangent, but it just feels like this system is very lacking and, honestly, uh, I would have preferred them wait and launch this system at the end of the year, when all their other games were gold and ready to go, because, like I said, um, at launch, right now it's not, there's not a whole lot for you to look forward to and there's not a whole lot for you to do. I mean it definitely. I've been playing this system for about two weeks now, just learning ins and outs and learning how games play and everything like that, and I got to say sometimes it was a struggle to stay on it, other times it wasn't. It just depends on how engrossed in Tears of the Kingdom I get, or how much I love going back through Hitman again and then playing through Yakuza. It's basically tickling onling on. Oh, wow, I haven't played that game in a while and now I have an excuse to play it, and now I can play it in the shitter.
Michael:Wow, love it yeah, because the switch 2 had a lot of games and I I think, I think that Nintendo were were more along the lines of assuming that they would rely more on their back catalog to be improved, when, in reality, having access to your back catalog being improved ended up turning into having your back catalog run two times worse.
Cody:Yeah, don't get me wrong, Faster load times and more stable frame rates if the frame rate is uncapped is one thing, but, like I said, this system is not. If you are not a die-hard Nintendo fan or you have a son or daughter, uh, that you know is looking forward to something like this, I would wait until this black friday, yeah, you, probably. You know you might be able to get a deal or you know you might be able to see and get something for the christmas holidays or something like that. I would definitely hold off on buying the Nintendo switch 2 as of right now. If you're not super hardcore, even if you are hardcore into Nintendo, um, at least wait until bonanza comes out, or at least I don't know. Like, uh, it definitely is not worth the headache.
Cody:For the love of god, for the love of absolute god, do not support a scalper. Do not give a scalper your money to get this system. It is not that hotly anticipated right now. There is not a lot worth here for you to pay over MSRP to absolutely secure your unit. You don't I cannot stress this enough. Save your money, save your money. Do not give it to scalpers. It's not worth it, not right now.
Michael:Yeah, Nintendo really kind of fumbled the bag with this one yet again, just due to the way kind of things worked out with this, the whole compatibility nightmare that they've kind of found themselves in.
Cody:Yeah, it definitely needs help. It needs some work. They released an update, a system update, a few days ago and it did some good improvements.
Michael:It made Smash a lot more playable and they released a a couple day into release patch for, I believe, echoes of Wisdom, the Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom. Now, that is one welcome change for me and him both, because that game, if you didn't know, would switch at random times between 30 and 60 on old hardware. Yeah, as well as having bad, really kind of texture, choppiness.
Cody:Yeah, yeah.
Michael:And that was a welcome patch. But again, with Nintendo coming in with these patches few and far between and not having consistency, at least at launch, there's no real way that we would be able to say oh yeah, there's a lot to look forward to. Yes, there are a few things to look forward to, but it's not to the point where we would say go drop your money immediately.
Cody:Right? Yeah, not at all For sure. Coming from diehard Nintendo fans, somebody who grew up as early as the NES and has been here through the beginning, you know, through all of their ups and downs I can say for certain this system has the potential to be really good. I mean, look at the switch one. Switch one is freaking awesome, that little potato and all kinds of good games running on it. I mean you can play bioshock on that thing. I don't know if you played bioshock, michael, but the bioshock's a good game yep, I've played a couple years ago I mean like you've got like all kinds of stuff.
Cody:hopefully we'll see, uh, like non-cloud versions of like Resident Evil on there, like Village and shit. Like I'll take that because they got Street Fighter VI, the RE engine's on here. It runs great.
Michael:I'm wondering, and kind of waiting to see, the potentiality of the FF7 remakes and all of that kind of potentially making it a stable way over. That would be a welcome little thing to see if they're able to pull it off properly.
Cody:Yeah, ff7 would be great to see on here. I don't know how it's going to run, especially if they get Part 2 running on here, because if you're going to put Part 1 on here and not Part 2 eventually, I don't know, that would be kind of stupid. Maybe FF16?
Michael:I don't know how that will work. Maybe FF16? I don't know how that'll work. If they put FF16 on this little device, I will be surprised if it runs well, yeah me too. Considering it makes a PlayStation 5 take off like a rocket. I will be very, very surprised if they port 16 to Switch.
Cody:Stranger things have happened happened. All I can say is I've seen some pretty impressive ports on the switch one.
Michael:I mean uh, can't get into it now, but like there have been some, like I've played plenty of them now kind of speaking on ports and kind of speaking back off of this launch day stuff that we've been kind of going back and forth with our closures is the one thing that I have enjoyed seeing Nintendo do especially when you brought up Hitman and a lot of these other larger titles is, by some wizardry, by some form of magic, they are able to make a 120 gigabyte game be so compressed that it's only like 50 or so gigs. Like the way Nintendo takes their games and they can compress them down to almost either half or nearly nothing, depending on the specific game's case, has been very surprising. Um, specifically in this case, if you don't know, um, what I'm referring to hitman, um, that cody was talking about earlier normally uncompressed is 126-ish gigs. On Switch it's a lot smaller.
Cody:It's like just under 60.
Michael:Yeah.
Cody:At least for me. It's basically like 61 gigs max, like 58. I think it's like 58 point something. It's insane. It's very, very small, very, compared to how it is, and you know, the textures are definitely not as good. There's no ray tracing or anything like that like in the other versions, which is fine. I don't need all that gimmicky shit, but hey, it's damn impressive. Hogwarts Legacy is one of them. Hogwarts Legacy is pretty small. I mean Mario Kart, as good as it looks, it's only like 25 gigs or something like that.
Michael:It's like nothing. It's wild.
Cody:Nothing.
Michael:I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong Code. I believe Nier Automata. The end of your edition is like what? 13 gigs at the end of the day, I think so. Yeah, which is crazy when you think about that file to begin with, because it originally was like almost 70, I think I don't think so.
Cody:I think it's like I wish I had file sizes right here. Can't do this shit. I don't think it's like 70. Because, you gotta remember, this came out in the 2017 era of the, of the, of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. We were still in 720p land back in those days, especially on the Xbox One, but yeah, we got that going on. It's really damn impressive, like really really damn impressive.
Michael:Yeah, the way that they make these compressions, at least, how they fit everything on these cartridges, that's actually you know what. That's another thing that I wanted to kind of touch on Specifically. I know that you were talking about going through these games and the virtual cards and stuff. Another thing that I would like to touch on is these game key cards, now Code. You know how we both stand with this, both stand with us. For some reason, Nintendo. Nintendo is making these games like more expensive than the digital versions by like roughly what 10 bucks and, yeah, they run about 15 slower than in terms of load times yeah, like roughly about 15 slower.
Michael:Not to mention that there are key cards. So all they do is give you the digital download key, yet you still are required to run off of the um, the chip for like, the key to like access the game for, like you know, um to make sure it's tied to you, which again a lot of, a lot of uh, community controversy when it comes to this. But in actuality, to put it in simplistic terms between me and you, for everyone, is you're paying extra to have a physical version of a digital game.
Cody:Yeah, it's absolutely stupid. I wouldn't even do it. I get it. I know. If you're old school like me, you want to own your games physically. You want to, just, you know, have them up on your shelf. But they say an ant chief this is just saying it.
Cody:No, not at all no, if the game is on the cartridge, go for it, but if it's a game key, kurt, just just stay away. Don't give it. Don't give them. Let this fail. Vote with your wallet. Let Nintendo know that this is stupid and they need to go back to square one.
Michael:Yeah, another really good example of Switch to launch optimizations when it comes to cartridges. That is not a game keycard. Surprisingly was Cyberpunk 2077 launch optimizations when it comes to cartridges. That is not a game keycard. Surprisingly was Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition. That includes the Phantom Liberty expansion. All of that On the damn cart. Yeah, all of it, dlc included, is on the cartridge.
Cody:That is insane. That is, I didn't even pick that game up and I really, really, really wish I did. Um, because cyberpunk is an amazing game. I hear that the game runs pretty good, except when you get into the phantom liberty dlc. I hear the phantom liberty dlc really puts the switch to its paces. It really puts it through the ring dinger of the gauntlet, which is fine. Cyberpunk is already a meaty game and the fact that it runs at all on, like you know, if you've, you can probably go and look at their, their uh posts about how they got it to run on the switch too. They had to do some wizard wizardry to get that son of a bitch to run. The fact that it runs at all is impressive beyond belief. And yes, it's all on the cartridge. That is something I would support. I would buy that physically out of principle, because it's just so good just to see that wizardry in action yeah, absolutely, I mean yeah, cyberpunk great game we've had quite the tangent with.
Michael:before. For Sega, the Shadow Generations port for Switch 2 became a keycard prior to Switch 2, because before it was all on the cartridge. But for Sonic X, shadow Generations it is now a downloaded keycard for Switch 2.
Cody:Wait, is there an actual Switch 2 edition? Yes, yes, there is Really yes.
Michael:How does it run? I haven't picked it up myself but it did launch the same day that the console launched for its Switch 2 edition. As far as the differences per cartridge, like I was saying, the Switch 1 had everything on the cartridge. Switch 2, it is a downloadable key card. That is the only like difference between the two. Um, give me a moment and I can kind of see kind of what to expect with the Switch 2 edition of Sonic X Shadow Generations. But I would assume it's basically the same sort of stuff with everything else Faster load times, hdr and just improved textures for the handheld device versus the Switch 1 port.
Cody:Oh, wow, that, uh, that's crazy. I didn't realize that it was. I probably would have picked that up for launch title.
Michael:Yeah, but oh well.
Cody:Well, I mean, you live and learn yeah, live and learn indeed uh, but honestly, I'm grasping straws here. I've ranted, I've raved, I have, uh, shown my age more times than I'd like to really admit on this episode and, honestly, all I can say is final thoughts good system for the future, bad execution at launch for certainty.
Michael:yeah, Nintendo really didn't kind of think future Bad execution at launch. For certainty. Yeah, Nintendo really didn't kind of think this one through. They kind of rushed it and duct taped it together.
Cody:Yeah, it definitely feels like basically like the MacGyver of launches. It just doesn't feel very thought out, I guess. Yeah, um, not one bit. It just kind of plopped out into the world with no real regard. That's how it feels anyway. Uh, hopefully, hopefully, you know, I would say the real worth of the console will probably be had a year after its launch. Like you know, you'll be able to look back and go this is the Switch 2 a year later. Is it any good?
Michael:And will it start to show its age? We have yet to reach the Switch 2's Mount Rushmore game, so to speak.
Cody:Yeah, we'll see how. It's kind of funny. Mario Odyssey was like the defining one for the Switch. Maybe DK will be the Switch 2's. We'll see. Only time will tell.
Michael:Yeah, kind of to wrap up what we were talking about with Sega and the Sonic X Shadow Generations differences the Switch 1 edition was 720 on the handheld mode, the handheld mode lcd. With the new switch to upgrades it is 10 handheld with 4k dock support, fully with hdr and um vr I believe holy crap, yeah okay, and you also get 120 on handheld and 60 on the old Switch one, so you get full 120 support with the Sonic X Shadow version on Switch 2.
Cody:Oh crap. Well, that's I mean. I wouldn't be surprised if it came from 2012.
Michael:But still that's still good 2012, but still, that's still good. So, like I, yeah, really, it's the dock mode upgrade, with it being in 4k at 120 is going to be quite nice.
Cody:Yeah, I'll take that. I mean that's cool, very nice, uh. But I think we've ranted and raved and really talked about the switch to for really long enough.
Michael:It's been meaty it was a long time the episode for, since we've been gone for a little while yeah, we've had a lot to say.
Cody:I've definitely had enough time and playing this system and there'll be even more time because I'm probably not done. I'm planning on finishing hitman. I started my journey, I'm gonna go through it and yakuza zero and I'm gonna go through world tour on street fighter 6 and uh, then start ranking up in the matches, yep, uh. So we'll see how you know things are gonna go. I'm gonna give mario kart more. Maybe it'll warm up to me later on, like maybe it will, but for now it's not there yet. But I don't know. Only time will tell. And honestly, final like to reiterate the final thoughts wait for it.
Cody:Don't do not pay scalpers for the system. Yeah, definitely. Don't save your money. It ain't worth it. Save. Do not pay scalpers for this system. Yeah, definitely Don't Save your money. It ain't worth it. Save your money for anything else. You got house payments to pay. We're all adults here. You don't need to go out and spend a thousand plus dollars on a scalper or any shit or whatever the hell they're putting their stuff, don't? It ain't worth it. Maybe when DK comes out we'll have this discussion again.
Michael:Yeah, but for now we'll definitely give an update at some point once we kind of get some more stuff in the catalog to kind of roll through yeah, absolutely.
Cody:But as two disabled people uh going through this, uh the system um, it's, it's okay, it's meh yeah, and it's not bad yeah, and, as always, um, please let us know what you think down below, please.
Michael:Um, we always love to hear from you guys, so if you would like, please leave us a comment down below, just letting you know what your experiences with the system are and any hopes and or dreams that you may have for the future of Nintendo or this console. Again, we would love to hear them. As always, you can leave them down below and don dreams that you may have for the future of Nintendo or this console. Again, we would love to hear them. As always, you can leave them down below. And don't forget, you can always go to our website at techintactilecom to leave us any insights that you would like for us there.
Cody:Yeah, see, he's a professional one. I'm your favorite unprofessional professional.
Cody:That's how we get this duo thing going. Eventually, you know, somehow, professional. That's how we get this duo thing going, uh, eventually, you know, somehow. Whatever it's, it is what it is indeed.
Cody:Uh, I got a personal challenge for anyone here come up with a good, friendly roast for me. I'd like that. Do that. That would kind of make my day. I would really like that. So, honest to god, let us know what you think about all of this. If you picked up a Switch 2, what are you playing on it and what do you like about it? And if you don't, what do you not like about it? And if you want a Switch 2, you know, let us know what you're looking forward to playing. Or you know what would maybe inspire you to pick one up if you haven't made the leap yet? Uh, yeah, definitely keep us in the loop. We want to hear about everything that's going on and all things video game wise. It's not really been that accessible lately here, cause I've not really had a lot of uh accessibility on the brain whenever it comes to these new games.
Michael:Unfortunately, not really a whole lot to talk about but we'd love to get back into the accessibility field and, uh, maybe we'll touch on that sometime definitely, without a doubt, we will, but I've ranted and raved enough.
Cody:I need to get a bottle of water. So, with that being said, everybody, have a good day, don't pay your scalpers and, as always, stay accessible. Indeed, stay accessible everyone.