Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

@Rudy_Manchego

@Rudy_Manchego I agree with you there - the controls feel very floaty and it didn't click with me at all. I also didn't like the melodramatic Disnified sentiment, but I guess I'm just a miserable git!

@ShaiHulud Glad it is not just me. It's a good game but finding it hard coming from one platformer to this one. The sentiment is... well, it has kind of become a bit of an indie subgenre itself. I guess the original is one of the first to do it but I have seen quite a few similar themed and looking games.

@kyleforrester87 Well... that's me told!

@Rudy_Manchego I wholeheartedly endorse the playing of Hollow Knight so no intervention required.

If I get you to play the entire Yakuza series as well then my work here is done.

@Thrillho Ha ha - well, I have a couple of Yakuza games on the backlog - I think I have Zero and the one that was one PS Plus but they seem like pretty big time sinks (in a good way).

@Thrillho Have you actually played through all 8 (? Including Judgement) Yakuza games?
I feel like its a fairly short list of people who have accomplished that feat. @Rudy_Manchego Time sink is definitely an appropriate descriptor.

@Th3solution I think I may one day manage Zero... maybe!

@Rudy_Manchego If you ever stop playing Hollow Knight, maybe. But at this rate I envision you at the retirement home 50 years from now still trying to finish that post-game content in Hollow Knight.

@Th3solution I wish I could say that was ridiculous but... is probably quite realistic.

@Th3solution I have played Zero through to 4 so far and am in the midst of 5 now.

As well as Judgement (which I've bought but not played), there's also the new game Like a Dragon to make it nine main games. In addition, there's Fist of the North Star which is a completely different game but made by the same people with similar features so often gets thrown in with the Yakuza games but even more weirdly there is also the very non-canon Yakuza: Dead Souls too!

@Thrillho Yeah, I’m lousy at math. I remembered Like a Dragon as effectively being Yakuza 7, but forgot that the games start with number 0, not with 1. 😅
But yes, I did Fist of the North Star which seems a cousin of the franchise and I do remember seeing that Yakuza Dead Souls is an offshoot that kind of critically and commercially fell flat, from what I remember.

@Th3solution I only got into the games on this (or is that the previous?) gen with Y0 so I never really knew about Souls at the time. Like you say, it sounds like it flopped though as it went away from what makes the main series. It also sounds like they had the very bizarre idea of bringing it out around the same time as Y4 as well which probably wouldn't have helped (although the game did get delayed in the end).

Started Dead Space 3 earlier... didn’t do much, just the Prologue and Chapter 1 but loved it. Always been a bit weary of it due to the hate it received at launch but so far so Dead Space.

Decided it was time to return to TW3 to see what all this Toussaint business is about. But I don't really want to go through the trouble of setting the game back up on my PC (built a new rig with new parts, aside from my old GPU, since modern GPUs are rarer than gold these days), and I have the Switch version anyway, so I decided to start playing on that version.

Now, I've said before, and I'll maintain, that Witcher 3 is surprisingly good looking on the Switch... in the base campaign, anyway. Blood and Wine on the other hand...

We're exploring Toussaint without glasses, lmao.

@Ralizah The textures are so flat you could say the game was cel-shaded and it would be believable 😂

@nessisonett Nothing to improve the textures (it's Witcher 3 on the modern equivalent of the Game Boy, so I'm not too bothered about that), but I did find that turning off anti-aliasing and that hideous bloom lighting helped tremendously to clean up the image.

Not sure why CDPR thought putting a yellow tint over the game was a good idea, lol.

@Ralizah That does look a lot better. Really not sure why the default settings are ‘blurry yellow mess’. It’s strange, some Switch games look like they would really need some anti-aliasing and others look like your screen’s smudged. Link’s Awakening made me wish more console games came with graphics options because the blur effect didn’t add all that much.

@nessisonett It's weird, because, with the sharpening filter jacked up, the anti-aliasing is fine in the base game. I think Blood and Wine's new lighting engine doesn't play well with the visual downgrades otherwise.

RE: blur, it's really hit-and-miss. Like, I thought the selective blurring in Octopath Traveler was gorgeous looking in conjunction with that game's other visual effects, but the blur effect over parts of the image in Bravely Default 2 is hideous (thankfully, S-E had the foresight to allow the player to turn this off).

But yeah, console games in general would benefit from more customization options. Good luck getting that from Nintendo, though. You're DAMN lucky if they even allow partial remapping of the controls. I'm still kind of amazed that Fire Emblem Warriors actually had quality and performance modes when docked.

So, after a few hours spent with Blood and Wine on Switch now, a few takeaways:

• I'm digging the new region. The art direction is gorgeous, to the point where even in handheld mode, with its terrible textures constantly popping in every time the camera changes position and lowish resolution, I'm still frequently saying: "Wow, this is pretty!" to myself. I did that all the time with the base game on PC. The Witcher 3 may not be the most graphically advanced game on the market, but it is one of the most aesthetically pleasing.
• With that said, I learned the hard way to keep this off the TV. The base game wasn't TOO bad when docked, but Blood and Wine was just hideous. The smaller the screen the better, as it hides the numerous visual inperfections in the game.
• I've got a house! ...kinda. I can already tell I'm going to have a great time in this region.
• I wish there was a way to ditch quests. I'm tired of all these Gwent quests clogging up my menu. I'm never going to complete them, so there's no point in seeing them.

This is a really neat expansion so far.