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Switch! Blog
4th March 2017

Developments


No coding, yesterday.
No music.
No nuffin'!!

I just played Switch..
Mmm.. Switch.

-=-=-

System


The Switch arrived at approximately 9:40am.
Unboxed it, hooked up the dock, got it all up and running, and played with the menus for a bit.
The menus aren't as exciting as regular Nintendo menus, and the Switch "pre-games" is extremely barren.
Compare that to a freshly unboxed Wii, which not only came with WiiSports, but also have that lovely big weather map that you could spin about for no reason, as well as the "at the forefront" Mii based stuff, the messages thing, and more.
The Wii was a lively menu, with many things to do, even before you add a game.

The Switch is empty.
It's lonely.
It's silent.

eShop


I hopped into the eShop and had a quick glance at what demos there were. I didn't spot any.
I was later informed that Snipperclips has a demo, but that wasn't apparently from the interface. The only way to find it is to click through every single item on the eShop, and pretty much stumble upon the fact that that particular game has a demo.
Eventually, deciding that the Switch is insanely empty, I bought Fast RMX. My first game for the system.
Given it was launch day, I expected the Nintendo servers to be crapping themselves, in the usual "Nintendo don't do good servers" manner that we've all come to expect.
But, no. The game downloaded extremely quickly, and I was playing it within about 10 minutes. Not bad for a 1Gb game.. From a Nintendo server!! .. On a busy Launch Day!!!

Fast RMX


I booted the game and played a quick round.
The game is wonderfully well presented, and runs silkily smooth, albeit so smegging fast that my head couldn't quite cope!
With all my motion-sickness issues, I had to give up fairly soon after starting.
A shame.

Later in the day, me and Mum tried out the "one little Joy-Con each" two player mode, and I'm happy to report the game continued to be silky smooth even with 2 player splitscreen going on.
Additionally, the Joy-Con in "sideways controller" mode seemed to fit nicely in the hand. But maybe I have tiny hands!?
It's roughly about half the size of the NES Controller (or at least, the version that came with the recent NES Mini) so I was expecting it to be a teensy bit too small, but. Nope. Worked a treat.

Deliveries


I pre-ordered 4 items.
1. Switch from Amazon.
2. Switch from Game. Amazon only allowed one pre-order per household, so I had to find an alternative place to order a second Switch for my Niece, whose birthday it is, this coming Wednesday.
3. Zelda from Amazon.
4. 1-2-Switch from Amazon.
But as with most things from Amazon, they all came in a chaotic "whenever things will turn up" order.

For those interested, the Amazon stuff was 11:30-onwards, with the Switch itself not getting here until about 3pm, whilst the Game Switch got here at 9:40. So, in future.. Pre-orders will probably be coming from Game.
Interesting to note that Amazon do that "Get your orders within an hour!" thing, but are crap at doing the same thing with Pre-orders..

Zelda


And then... Zelda arrived!
Zelda got popped into the system, and played for around about an hour. It might've been more. I'm not sure.

(Note : The system doesn't have that nice "hours played" thing that Wii, WiiU and 3DS have all had. Apparently that's part of the Parental Controls app, but.. Can I be bothered to download it, just for that purpose!?)

Zelda is lovely.
Zelda is Zelda.
Zelda!

You know Zelda.. I don't need to bang on about Zelda..

1-2-Switch


1-2-Switch turned up with the Amazon Switch at about 3pm.
It's very much a two player affair, so I dragged Mum into trying the thing out with me.
Gripe
Each game has a video introduction. Now, I get WHY they added that, but the thing is, Mum was constantly waving her arms about during the introduction, thinking she was playing the thing!!
It'd have been better if each "How to play" thing was literally just a "how to play" thing, and not then a 2 minute video of two random people playing the thing, making it all baffling and confusing to new players.
It's quite literally undo-ing the thing that it's been created to do!
It makes it MORE confusing, rather than less.

Once we finally got to play each game, it wasn't as much fun as I was hoping for. The table tennis is abysmally hard to understand. The sword fighting is utter fucking random crap. The "you need to count the balls" thing was difficult for Mum to understand.. And more..
The only half decent games that me and mum really enjoyed were the gunslinger and phone answering games.
They worked reasonably well, and were easy enough to understand.

1-2-Switch will probably not be spending much time in the system.

Snipperclips Demo Test


Having been told on Twitter that Snipperclips has a demo, I grabbed that.
I started the game, and got to the point where you move the two players towards each other to cut shapes, and then went "Oh, ok. Is that it? That's like Flash Games from the late 90's!"
Then I quit the game.

Another day, I might bother to play it a little more, but it's not really anything major for a release-day play.
Instead, I went back to Zelda and played that a little more.
I still haven't gotten very far in Zelda, as I've mostly been wandering around and doing things that have ultimately not helped my progress! But it's been a fun aimless wander, and I've enjoyed it so far.
"Chopping down trees, just for fun!"

Overall Verdict


It's a mighty powerful little handheld console.
I know it's not XBoneS/PS4Pro power, but Nintendo have never needed that to make their amazing games.
I'm quite happy to play 3DS games in their low specs, and having much more power in a handheld is a great thing, especially with such a high resolution, too.
As a new Nintendo Handheld, it's above and beyond what you've ever expect from them.
As a new console.. I guess it's great, but time will tell if it truly succeeds.
I expect that, personally, I'll be using it more in it's Handheld form. And for that it's absolutely fantastic!

But if you are planning on getting one, do yourself a favour and get a game with it!!

Daily Doodle : Little Birdy



Platdude finds a happy little birdy, on his adventures.
I wonder if it wants something to eat?

Misc..


Switchmas has been,
And Switchmas has gone.
My Hyrule adventure
Has only begun.


-=-=-

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