Resident Evil Requiem

Introduction

So I guess you would call me a Resident Evil fan. I didn’t really think about it until playing the most recent entry, when I began noticing all the mechanics of previous games this new one was riffing on. I've played and enjoyed to varying degrees the remakes of Resident Evil 1-4, the original Resident Evil 4, 7, and 8. Plus, I’ve opened the wiki once or twice before. But like I said, I didn’t really consider myself a fan before. Maybe it was how every game seems to end with a sour taste in my mouth, but more on that later. Point being, that when Capcom announced Resident Evil Re9uiem, the 13th mainline Resident Evil game, I knew I would play it, but I wasn’t excited per se. It was more of a yeah, that seems fun and I’ll play it if I hear good things. Months later, the game released, reviewed, and sold well, and so I decided to rent it from my local library and give it a go. Quick shout-out to your local library, by the way. Anyways, I have some notes on the experience, but my overarching note is that this is a greatest hits album in video game form. 

What’s Resident Evil?

Because I said that Resident Evil Requiem is a greatest hits album in video game form one sentence ago, I feel the need to explain a bit what Resident Evil is, so my points make a little bit more sense. 

Resident Evil began in 1993 with director Shinji Mikami. On the suggestion of his mentor, Mikami began working on a horror title for the PlayStation by himself at first. The next 3 years consisted of some pretty slapdash development, but eventually Resident Evil released in 1996. Despite the slapdash nature of development and some clunkiness throughout, the game was a hit and defined horror in video games for the first time. Weird camera angles, limited inventory, item management, tank controls, walking up to a crank to open a door only for it to break so you gotta walk across the entire map to find a replacement crank, finding notes on the ground of guys going “y’know maybe it was a bad idea to create giant monsters who can rip my spine out of my body,” etc. all became pillars of survival horror in games that continue to this day. The game itself featured its main characters trapped in a spooky mansion that became overrun with zombies, with that cool setup ending in an underground lab revealing the whole thing to be a conspiracy orchestrated by the Umbrella Pharmaceutical Corporation. 

With this success came two more main entries and a couple of spin-offs, with Resident Evil 2 taking place in the fictional Raccoon City as Leon Kennedy arrives in the city for his first day of work, only to find it overrun with zombies, and he must navigate his escape. Cool setup that once again ends in an underground lab, with the whole event being a conspiracy caused by the Umbrella Corp. But as the entries went on, they got a little more up their ass about their own lore with more and more underground labs by Umbrella and every game ending in a fight against a wall of snot. More importantly, however, the games were becoming more action-focused as time went on. After all, it's hard to have a game about stopping global conspiracies, just about walking around scared in the dark, so the games began to have more of an action bent but never fully committed. It always started with that spooky start, but it couldn't keep it up. Ending action sections always feel kind of half-assed. With this, the games began to become bland, and they needed a change. 

Then, on my birthday in 2005, Capcom released Resident Evil 4. This was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment that revolutionized video games the second time in the same series. Gone were the fixed camera angles (where the camera only showed one angle per room), and now the camera was free to move with the player’s control. There was free aiming instead of auto-aim and a full commitment to action and fun. You play as Leon Kennedy, on the search for the President’s daughter in Spain, where a village has become overrun by a cult worshipping a mind-controlling parasite. Resident Evil 4 leant into an Army of Darkness kind of campy vibe that gave it that crucial edge. Sure, it still had the Resident Evil hallmarks of picking up documents, item management, the beloved Leon Kennedy, and ending in another fucking underground lab, but it may as well have been a stand-alone title unconnected from the series. Resident Evil 4 was electrifying, and I’ve reviewed its remake and sort of the original. Both games are phenomenal, and you should play them like right now. Fuck it, I’ll stop writing to play them right now.

But with this electrifying change into a more action-oriented territory, Capcom shifted the series into increasingly more over-the-top action while taking itself more and more seriously. Once again, we’re back to the global conspiracies of the previous games as the lore begins to get up its own ass yet again. Resident Evil 5 had zombies that could wield guns and mechanics that made it feel like all the other brown, washed-out cover shooters of the day. Resident Evil 6 had explosions happening constantly and a long, underbaked story. Still ended in the lab and wall of snot, though. With a few spinoffs around the same time that reviewed poorly, the games became bland, and they needed a change. 

    Then, around my birthday in 2017, Capcom released Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. This game came with a first-person perspective and a brand new tight focus on survival horror. You play as newcomer Ethan Winters, who is captured and hunted by a family of hicks turned superhuman by a powerful black mold in the Louisiana bayou. Again, cool setup and in truth a great game that loses steam when it ends in an underground lab as part of a conspiracy, and you fight a big wall of snot. More games released, mostly remakes of older games, we got Resident Evil 8: Village, which had more of an action focus, and you see where I’m going with this. The Resident Evil games all kind of function in this overarching pattern, so while I enjoyed my time with Resident Evil Requiem, I am concerned for the series future. 

So What’s The Cool Set Up of Resident Evil Requiem?

Grace Ashcroft, an FBI agent who’s afraid of her shadow, is sent to investigate the hotel where her mother was murdered, after a body matching the pattern of recent deaths has been found. While there, she gets captured by a big gray man named Victor Gideon. Meanwhile, series veteran Leon Kennedy is investigating the string of deaths and arrives at the hotel to find Victor Gideon leaving the scene with Grace. Leon then trails Gideon to a health care facility he runs in an effort to find out the truth behind these deaths and why he kidnapped Grace. At the facility, we see Grace and Leon take two completely different perspectives on the game as we switch between them chapter to chapter.

When you’re playing as Grace, the game is meant to be a horror game. You have the claustrophobic first-person view of Resident Evil 7 and 8, combined with a lot of mechanics from 1 and 2. You have limited inventory management, zombies that take a while to kill but can get stunned more easily, zombies that will come back stronger if you kill them, a mansion layout with a staircase in the center of the main hall, and on harder difficulties, you have the limited save mechanics of Resident Evil 1 and 2. It’s a throwback to the early tight design of the original era of Resident Evil games. And the design here is tight. I was getting quite scared trying to avoid all the zombies, as the limited ammo and health don’t make it practical to fight them, but I still had a smile on my face throughout Grace’s section. I was having fun. The new addition to the formula, one of the few, really, is that the zombies each have quirks that you can use to sneak past them or get them in a position to kill them. For instance, one likes to be in darkness and will keep flicking the lights off if you turn them on. 

The scares also work for me in Grace’s section. At one point, a giant fat baby monster bursts through a wall and chases you and I, out loud, said “Jesus fucking Christ!” not loudly but y’know. The headliner of Grace’s section, which surprisingly isn’t in it that much, is an unkillable stalker monster. Harkening back to Jack Baker from Resident Evil 7. I did find this monster scary in its introduction. So much so that I felt like turning the game off and stopping. Even more so when it broke the cardinal rule of these games by bursting into a save room. However, I do think by the second or third section with the monster, you get how it works well enough to not be too scared by it. It doesn’t become annoying, but rather it becomes a decent challenge to overcome. Even if by the end I’m flash-banging the shit out of the thing and moving around it, no problem. 

Ultimately, what Grace’s sections work is control. When you’re caught by a zombie, you’ll start to run away from it and maybe bump into more zombies on the way. Lose enough ammo, and you’ll be unable to shoot a zombie later on. The fuck ups pile up and make you lose control of the situation. Good horror comes from the characters not having control over the situation, not knowing what’s next, and their safety being in question, and the actions of the player can make that lack of control natural. That early section of the game is so strong for this reason. But even if you do get control of the situation by carefully planning and conserving your resources, that gain of control is fun because you feel smart for having planned those steps. Either way, control makes Grace’s section excellent. 

What’s equally but differently fun is Leon’s sections. Leon gets the third-person action of Resident Evil 4-6, but mostly 4. If Grace is a horror final girl, Leon is an action star. Leon starts his section, roundhouse kicking zombies that don’t laugh at his terrible one-liners. It’s a good way to let off steam after Grace spends her section cowering in fear and sneaking around zombies, that you get to run in afterwards as Leon and shotgun blast the heads off of every zombie that stood in your way before. It’s an incredible lurch to go from 1st person horror to 3rd person action, but it works for the most part. 

It’s just as much fun as it was in RE4 to suplex zombies into the pavement as it is here. Leon’s weapons have a good punch to them, and the zombies seem like they notably get downed in fewer hits from Leon than with Grace so as to not disrupt the flow. Leon practically gets all the boss fights and the action set pieces, which can be a lot of fun. Most of all, I just like Leon. He’s a good character, and hats off to his voice actor, Nick Apostolides, who has played him as the young, bright-eyed Leon in Resident Evil 2 Remake to the now grizzled 50-year-old in Requiem without ever missing a step. It shows great range on his part in making this seem like a continuous character with a large arc. I was willing to buy his arc of a guy who is reliving some part of the trauma of the events he experienced in 2. Set all that aside, however, his one-liners rock. When Victor Gideon is about to torture Leon and says “if you won’t answer my questions then I guess we’ll have to go straight to your… treatment.” as he picks up a syringe, only for Leon to say “the silent treatment, I hope.” it doesn’t make a lot of sense as a response or a joke, but that’s what he’s been since RE4, so I was saying “I LOVE YOU, LEON” in my impression of Troy McClure doing the Planet of the Apes musical every time he was on screen. 

All that said, Leon’s sections might get a little too much action by the end. You get the second half of the game as mostly Leon and some Grace, as opposed to the mostly Grace and some Leon of the first half. You get a weapons shop and the attache case management of Resident Evil 4, though without the fun merchant, which condenses the growth of your arsenal in those games into half the time, and without much of the personality. I’m also not sure why you get a limited inventory attache case as Leon, considering you can’t store items, and there was never a moment when I had too much inventory for what I could carry, like you do with Grace. I mean, I know why the attache case is here; it’s because it’s a throwback to an old game. 

References to Old Stuff

As indicated by my references to the old game in the review thus far, most of Resident Evil Requiem will remind you of older stuff in the series. I didn’t find any idea, besides the zombies having their own personality in Grace’s section, that was new. There’s a bit with a car driving towards you, like in 4, the snarky remarks about “who builds this shit” from Grace, like in 7, and we return to Raccoon City, the setting from 2, and so on to infinity. Not to say that I think the game is one filled with references like Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. In that game, references and callbacks are meant to endear you to a plot without a lot of good substance. Rather, in Resident Evil Requiem, these references are meant to be pieced together to give you a good time by giving you all the good ideas of the Resident Evil series. Like I said, it’s a greatest hits album. And we like listening to our favorite bands play the hits, which is why we like them. Even if it is old stuff, it’s stuff we fell in love with that completely works in the context it's presented.

Not to say that clunky references aren’t in the game. One of the boss monsters from RE2 just shows up, and we kill him non-ceremoniously. The bit in Raccoon City as a whole takes some time in locations we spent time in during RE2, trying to convince us of Leon’s character arc. Oftentimes showing us flashbacks of his time in RE2. Which kind of worked for me, but not so much for others. Leon’s arc throughout the games is this: he started his journey as a cop. In Resident Evil 2, he arrived in Raccoon City to start his first day as a cop, only to find the city overrun with zombies. Throughout the game, he fails to save most of the people he meets, and takes a train out of the city as the place he swore to protect gets nuked by the U.S. government to control the spread. So Leon’s character arc, the game tells us, is of a guy who fails to save people, and he feels the need to protect and save Grace, just to save anyone. As this game goes to Raccoon City, we tie together Leon’s failure with his chance for redemption. I’m willing to believe that the Leon in the remakes of 2 and 4 has survivor's guilt and he’s having redemption, but you don’t need to throw an old locale and an old boss at me to convince me of that.

STOP FUCKING AROUND AND GET TO THE LAB AND WALL OF SNOT

I don’t know why, but I’m surprised the game ends in an underground lab, and you fight a wall of snot. I feel like such a schmuck every time. It’s like even though I’ve been to tons of theme parks, I’m still surprised it ends in the gift shop. So sure enough, the game takes more of a turn to over the top action at the end, as the game gets more up its ass about the lore of the Resident Evil franchise, going back to grand revelations about the founder of the Umbrella Pharmaceutical corporation, and the main villain becomes a wall of snot. As is tradition. But every time it happens, it deflates a lot about the whole experience. We spent most of the game in this great hook of an interesting villain, claustrophobic horror, and a well-designed setting. Only for the game to end in hoard rushes and lame giant monsters, where we mow down a ton of enemies and are learning about how this all ties together with the past games. It's boring because you’ve seen the game be more interesting with less.

 A perfect example is when you’re fighting armed guys. Towards the end of the game, in the lab, you’re confronted by men with guns, whom you have to shoot and kill in a brief cover shooting section. This is egregious for two reasons. Firstly, you haven’t really developed the skills to fight armed guards throughout the game. Fighting zombies through third-person shooting out in the open or slow creeping first-person stealth is different from shooting military men in a firefight where you’re hiding behind a chest-height wall. It’s a weird lurch because it’s asking for skills from the player not developed throughout the runtime of the game. And we only use this new skill once and never again. Because of this, the section is more difficult in an annoying way than this being a meaty challenge. Secondly, the game has spent most of its run time in survival-horror or action-horror, and just shooting armored machine-wielding guys is less interesting. The zombies in Grace's section are tough as nails challenges you have to puzzle your way around, and Leon’s section makes them fun canon fodder with both sections using the environment of the Rhodes Hill Medical Centre and the destroyed Raccoon City to their advantage because those sections were intelligently designed around them. The section with the armed guards does not feel tightly designed. The lab section as a whole feels like there's a lack of thought in its design. Even if the visuals of the lab are pretty good. 

How Up it’s ass does the game get about the Lore of the Franchise?

Another issue with the lab is that the game begins to get up its ass a little about its lore. In fairness, the game tells you this is about Umbrella and Raccoon City’s destruction within the first hour, but the lab section takes the great hook from the opening and blows it out.

The main villains of the game are hunting an underground lab underneath Racoon City. No, not the underground lab in 2. No, not the underground lab underneath the one in 2 in 3. An underground lab inexplicably underneath all the previous ones. In this underground lab, the founder of Umbrella, Oswall Spencer, developed a brand new bioweapon right before his death. Also, right before his death, he gave away a child, our main character, Grace Ashcroft. So, because we know that he developed a brand new bioweapon and Umbrella experimented on children, the villains make the Hail Mary assumption that Grace is somehow the bioweapon or can unlock the bioweapon.  None of this is true. Grace is just some child, and the bioweapon is actually a cure to all variants of the bioweapons Umbrella ever developed. The key to accessing the cure is a password screen that, if you type in the wrong password, blows up. 

I find this reveal kind of funny, but it is pretty dumb. It’s such a big jump for the villains to assume that Grace is a bioweapon or could unlock it. Their only evidence is a video recording of a girl who looks like Grace wandering around an Umbrella-controlled orphanage. But we know this isn’t Grace. She was given to her adoptive mother as a baby and stayed with her until her mother was murdered when she was in college. So who is this? What’s this reveal? Some bullshit that shows why the villains make their big plan? More than likely, it will be explored in the DLC that was announced the week the game came out. But as the game stands by the credits, the villains and Grace are interesting until we get to the end, where it’s just dumb and confusing. 

The most egregious example of the story kind of falling apart at the end also relies on the game being a greatest hits album. The Resident Evil fans among you may remember Albert Wesker. He’s the closest thing to a series antagonist the franchise has and was present in some form or another for most of the games (even if in passing or easter eggs). That said, he was killed in 5. So you can imagine my surprise when Albert Wesker kind of shows up in Requiem. I say kind of because the mid-game reveal is that this guy, Zeno, is the main antagonist of the game. Despite the fact he looks just like him, has the same superpowers, roughly the same motivation with a thing for Umbrella’s founder, dresses the same, and has the same voice actor and face capture actor as Wesker, he is not Albert Wesker. This twist that we clearly see Albert Wesker, but is just a different guy and is killed by the end of the game, shocked me. It’s once again playing the hits by playing the Albert Wesker song, but it's too much. Bringing back a dead villain, calling him something different, having him be kind of uninteresting, then die, is bewildering. 

What does this mean for the next game?

Resident Evil games tend to follow a pattern, but so does the franchise. The first game is electric, then the games get too action-focused and up its own ass, so the series practically reboots itself with an almost stand-alone title that has different gameplay styles and a change of scope with a good hook. This happened with RE4 and RE7. It's a cycle. And sure enough, that’s true here. But unlike the games that right before the soft reset, we have some hanging threads here. The previous games have been setting up a criminal organization called The Connections, which the main villains here work for. At the end, Leon Kennedy says he has a call from the main character of RE 1, 5, 6, and 8 (yes, I know he’s not the main character of 8, but he’s on the fucking box art, so let’s be real here). We are told this call is for “something important.” 

My point is that we’re probably not getting the rebooting/reinventing RE10. The global conspiracy shit of the Resident Evil games necessitates that we get to more action-oriented gunplay and shooting waves of monsters, which is so boring when it happens. How can you fight a global criminal organization by being a cowering guy sneaking in the dark with a gun that has 1 bullet in it? Especially when this series is known for going to the action-focused nonsense as we get to the global conspiracies. I have a sinking feeling that the next game will be huge action that somehow out bores the giant monster fights of Requiem. 

So, Do You Recommend Requiem?

I know I spent the past paragraphs kind of lambasting the game, but I would recommend Resident Evil Requiem. Grace’s and Leon’s sections are so much fun until the final 2 hours of this 12-hour experience. I was scared, but I was having fun. The design of the Medical Center is so tight you can’t help but marvel at it. Plus, Leon Kennedy is here saying shit like “erm, I think I want a second opinion” when a zombie doctor picks up a chainsaw. It’s good stuff, I just think it kind of falls apart in the final hours. You have to wade through some bullshit as the game begins to wrap up, and you’re desperately hoping it will wrap itself up a little quicker. Sure, there aren’t a lot of new ideas here, but it’s a greatest hits album. You love the stuff of the older Resident Evil games, and here it is, repackaged in a new context for your pleasure. If you’re a fan of the series, you might even enjoy these mechanics and the big dumb reveal even more. 

    I’ll also add, as an addendum, that I played this game on the Switch 2 (switch to what?). It’s a surprising day-and-date release on other consoles, and I would like to say that the game runs perfectly on Switch 2 (switch to what?). I never had a dip in frame rate or thought it looked ugly when playing on TV or handheld. Sometimes during handheld, there would be that lower quality fuzz around a character’s hair, and the battery drains like a mother fucker when you’re playing on the go, but ultimately it’s a perfectly good way to play the game. I love having games on the Switch 2. Beating the final boss of Resident Evil Requiem on the way home on the LIRR will be a pleasant memory of my time with the game.  

Nintendo Switch Retrospective: A Week Before Launch of the Switch 2

Introduction

Well, the Nintendo Switch is less than a week away from being put on my shelf to collect dust forever. I mostly kid, but the Nintendo Switch 2 is less than a week away, and is more or less exactly what I wanted from a Switch follow up, i.e. a more powerful Switch 1. A straight upgraded replacement. Part of my desire for just a more powerful Switch is that I love the original Switch. I got it on launch day and have spent the past 8 years since 2017 and using the thing for hundreds of hours. It may just be my favorite console ever. So I thought I would briefly use this space to reflect on my time with the Nintendo Switch, what I liked about it, what I didn’t like, and what my hopes are for the Switch 2’s lifespan. 

My Experiences with the Original Switch

When Nintendo revealed the thing in its first trailer back in 2016, showing people in their mid 20s having rooftop parties gawking at Super Mario Odyssey, I immediately called bullshit on the thing having the smooth versatility that was advertised. I just didn’t believe that the thing would seamlessly go from playing on a TV to playing games in the palm of your hands, as they said it would. Lo and behold, when March 2017 rolled around, I indeed was gawking at how seamless it was. In my mid-teens and not from a rooftop party like Nintendo suggested, but you get the idea. When the Switch released and my mom was able to grab a last unit from a Target on launch day, I remember racing home to play it after school. 

What the Switch excels at, and what its imitators struggle at, is versatility. There are tons of people out there who probably never take the thing off the TV, and there are probably even more people who only play it portably. Hell, they made a whole console version where you can only play it portably with the Switch Lite. Some games are just TV games, and some are handheld. Some games benefit from the pickup and play style that portability offers, and some games deserve that big-screen experience. Nintendo found a gimmick that worked. It’s nice to have a console I can play anywhere, is light and easy to use, uses the same cable to charge as my phone, and I can slot it into my friends’ Switches to play our different game libraries.  

I loved playing longer RPGs like Persona 5 Strikers, Disco Elysium, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, or games that felt more natural to play in segments like platformers in handheld mode. I was happy to travel across the country or to Europe with the ability to still play these incredible games just as I would at home in the downtime before bed. The versatility of the Switch, with its controllers disconnecting from the system and being able to create two controllers, did wonders for long sessions playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Clubhouse games, Duck Game, Ultimate Chicken Horse, and so many other games that I could play with my friends on a TV. The Switch was a console you could play anywhere, whenever, and with whoever. Even with imitators like the Steam Deck, that versatility is just not there. To me, it feels like an ultimate gaming machine.

First Party Games 

The Switch launched with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game I put over 100 hours into and really loved. But it's certainly not the only game I put over one hundred hours into or played multiple times. Breath of the Wild was the best indication of the quality for this generation of first-party games on the Switch. Super Mario Odyssey, F-Zero 99, Metroid Dread, Pikmin 4, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, etc. are all games that are some of, if not the, best games in their respective franchises. In an era where PlayStation and Xbox are struggling to put out games on their consoles that aren’t remakes, and games period, there being as good of an output on the Nintendo Switch as there has been is pretty incredible. And there was never too much of a massive drought between games either, there was something to play every few months at least. Part of that is that the high sales of the Switch and its games have meant Nintendo can relax on crunch and budget constraints. It was reported that Super Mario Bros. Wonder had no deadline for a solid chunk of its development time because the development team was encouraged to take as much time as it needed to experiment with any ideas it deemed fun enough to work on, which in turn gave us one of the best 2D Mario games ever. 

I also appreciate Nintendo has been throwing a bone to franchises nobody actually gives a shit about. Another Code, Endless Ocean, Advance Wars, etc., have all gotten remakes or flat-out brand-new games during the Switch era. Not to say those games are everyone’s cup of tea, but it is nice to see some variety among the Switch’s library, and I am sure somebody lost their minds during a Nintendo Direct when they announced remakes for Famicom Detective Club. The surprisingly high sales of the Switch mean Nintendo can take more risks in games that maybe people wouldn’t have considered giving a shot. This also means we get games solely featuring Princess Peach, a Bayonetta origin game, or whatever the fuck Nintendo was on about selling cardboard sheets to everyone. 

The two glaring exceptions to the overall great quality of first-party Switch games are somehow Pokémon and sports games. It’s rare for a mainline Pokémon game to receive less than an 80 on Metacritic, but Pokémon seems to have managed it with the two mainline gens (not counting Legends: Arceus) out on the console. Part of the problem comes from time and experience. Pokémon has been an almost entirely smaller-scale handheld experience that is now on a home console with a fan base that rightfully demands it evolves past where it has been since its inception. Additionally, the games’ developers have pumped out an obscene number of Pokémon games. Legends Arceus and Scarlet & Violet are two massive games that both released in the same year. Not to say that those games are even terrible because they are still Pokémon games with new ideas fans have wanted for a while, it’s just some of the most obvious lack in quality for first-party games on the Switch and I hope that changes in the future. 

As for sports games, perhaps the most obvious lack of quality comes from Nintendo’s casual offerings. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that Mario Tennis, Mario Party, or Wii Sports was ever the best Nintendo has ever had to offer, but what happened here? What will usually happen with this generation is Nintendo will release a casual game with minimal content and then add free downloadable content months later. Switch Sports, a semi-sequel to Wii Sports, launched with six sports to play. Three of them were Volleyball, Tennis, and Badminton, so not too much variety there. A lot of people, rightfully, felt the content was lacking in quantity, and what was there was just too similar to each other. To address this, Nintendo added Golf to the collection eight months after the game was released, despite it being included with the original Wii Sports, and Basketball was added over two years after the game launched. The idea is that the online modes will give people theoretically infinite content because you can play with whoever and whenever, and then by the time you’re getting bored, new content will be added. What actually happens, however, is you just get bored pretty easily because there isn’t a lot there at launch, so you put the games down and never pick them back up again. Look not to say that these games aren’t fun enough, but at full price and with the internet full of people screaming on Twitter and Youtube, “YES BRING BACK MARIO STRIKERS” when it releases with less content than any of the previous games, it’s an absurd standout in an otherwise strong library.  

Ports/Remakes/Remasters

My earlier comments on Nintendo’s new games was not to say Nintendo never indulged in filling up their release schedule with ports or remakes just to turn around a quick profit. About 25% of their output was remakes/ports (23 out of 92 first-party games). Generally, I think these remakes have been good, but they do speak to both one of the biggest strengths and weaknesses of the Switch. 

On the one hand, I appreciate having so many old games on this system. This was the first way I played Katamari Damacy, and the first way I finished games like Metroid Prime. Putting games I already own on a portable device is enough of a draw to make me double-dip and purchase again. Playing the Metal Gear Solid games, Batman: Arkham City, or Super Mario Galaxy on a portable device was wonderful. I was so used to playing Super Mario Galaxy on my little CRT in my room as a kid or at friend’s houses and now it’s in HD in the palm of my hands. That’s still really cool, and another great example of the versatility of the Switch that I mentioned previously. I loved playing Super Mario 3D World on a big TV with my friends and I enjoyed playing Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze on my couch on the small screen while unwinding after school. Coupled with the game libraries included with the subscription service, allowing me to play games for the NES, Super Nintendo, N64, Gameboy/Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, and Sega Genesis, (with the ability to play them with friends online I might add) and the third party collections then so much of the Switch library is classic games. I think this is great because so many new people could play games they might have been able to due to the rising price of classic games or just flat out unavailability. Many of these games were the best versions to play, and I still kind of want every game ever on the Switch.

On the other hand, early on, there was a lot of hoopla about the remakes and ports the Switch was getting, and while I think the discourse around it was partially overblown, I will say that the Nintendo Switch has less of an identity outside of old games. Furthermore, the pricing on these old games is bizarre. The aforementioned Donkey Kong game got a re-release on WiiU for 20 dollars a piece and was resold on Switch for 60. Price increases like that simply because Nintendo can and everyone will eat it up anyways sucks. Additionally, New third-party games like Resident Evil 8, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, etc., never came to the Switch because of how underpowered the console was so the only third-party games that could come to Switch were from older generations and shit a lot of people already owned/played. 

Hardware

Look at the end of the day, the Nintendo Switch launched in 2017 with the power of a 2015 tablet, or roughly in between that of an Xbox 360 and PS4, and lasted for 8 years.  It’s no secret that the Switch is underpowered. It is nice that tons of third-party games come over to the Switch, even if it’s kind of a downgraded version, but it is less than an ideal compromise. Look at Batman: Arkham Knight on the Switch, and you see a hilarious comparison between PS4 and Switch at how low-res the textures are on Switch. Not to say games cannot look good on Switch, but those are primarily Nintendo games and, as such, have more stylized graphics. The hyper-realistic graphics of Next-Gen games do not gel well with the Switch, and many of them just straight up never came out on Switch. Games like Metroid Prime and Luigi's Mansion 3 do look quite good, so it is not like the Switch cannot make good-looking games or high-performance games with some graphical compromises. It can.

However, whether or not someone wants to compromise is a matter of preference. The Witcher 3 runs well but at a low definition resolution on Switch, and if that’s okay with you because the Switch is all you have or you want The Witcher 3 on the go, then the Switch version is a welcome addition to your collection. But if you want to play in HD and without worry of performance dips, then you can if you have a PS4 or PC. Again, the Switch gives you options, but the high-end games are just not on the console, and the middling ones, you gotta roll the dice if the Switch version is gonna run well or look good. Nier Automata and Doom are PS4 games that look and run well. Stray does not. Even some ports of PS2 games (games that are 20 years old, mind you) are at a disadvantage on Switch, which at some point just feels embarrassing. It wasn’t that uncommon to see frame rate dips or crusty textures in Switch games, even from Nintendo themselves or from small indie games that just weren’t optimized for the thing. Again, not to say that no games ran or looked good, many did, and this isn’t to say that games with issues like Disco Elysium were unenjoyable on the platform, that game is one of my favorites after my first playthrough on Switch, but this is all notable and something I'd like to see less of with the Switch 2.

Hardware specs of Nintendo consoles measured in Gamecubes

Hopes for the Switch 2

So when the rumours of a Switch 2 were swirling, I really just wanted a better Switch. I wanted to play newer games on the Switch 2, and I wanted them and older games to look and run alright. Because I do love the Switch. All its ideas of a hybrid system made for both single-player experiences and multiplayer ones, with controls that could mimic most games, are still good ideas. Thus, I don’t really want to transition to a new infrastructure all over again, but it is time for an upgrade. That does seem to be what we’re getting. The Nintendo Switch 2 seems to be as powerful as the current generation Xbox Series S, if not maybe more so, but not as powerful as the PS5. What does that actually look like? Well CyberPunk 2077 looks as good as it does on the PS5, but at 40fps instead of 60. Again, compromise, but not a compromise I feel would really weigh me down, and I may not even notice. And Street Fighter 6 looks roughly as good as it does on other consoles as well. This does mean that most games should come over and be in a perfectly playable state. Will that happen? No idea. It’s clear with less RAM than the current Xbox Series S (one GB less, but still), and the fact that it’s still portable means that some compromises will have to be made here and there. But I hope these compromises are minor enough that I won’t really notice or care, actual performance issues are rare, and games just don’t straight up skip the Switch 2. Nintendo hasn’t been a hardware company since 2000 and the fact that they partnered with Nvidia so closely to make exclusive chips does bode well, but this some work will be needed to bring games over and I hope the Switch 2 does well enough to keep getting these games and the work required to bring them over. Overall, though, I’m excited to get more of the experiences I loved so much on Switch.

Speaking of hardware, the Switch 1’s controllers do the job pretty well. The Pro Controller is one of the best-feeling controllers I’ve ever held. The same can’t be said for the Joy-Cons, as they may be a bit small, though the larger Switch 2 will likely fix this. But what I’m really worried about is drift. This isn’t an issue unique to the Switch, but it was extreme on the Switch 1. Stick drift is when the controller registers you putting in a direction when you’re not. Something to do with the internal sensors getting worn down or gross, but it means that trying to run in a game will cause random hard jolts to the right/left, making some games straight up unplayable. I’ve had one set of Joy-Cons and a Pro Controller become unusable after drift set in. While not all of my friends who used their Switch frequently have experienced stick drift, most of them have and some for multiple controllers. The controllers can be fixed, though not easily, and they can be replaced but replacing them is fucking expensive. So much crap is jammed into these controllers and while I appreciate that adds to the versatility of them, motion controls for Wii games and so on, that also makes them expensive as shit and having to replace controllers multiple times is annoying and costly. This may be even more so on the Switch 2 with mouse mode, which will certainly make FPS, DS, and strategy games more enjoyable, but more tech will increase the price, and with tariffs, these controllers are more expensive than ever before. There has been no confirmation yet whether the Switch 2 will have drift issues or if they've worked out a fix for them, but it's something greatly concerning. 

Speaking of tariffs, the Switch 2 is expensive, games especially. A console costing 450 dollars, I can kind of excuse as typical enough for the industry, but the games costing 70-80 dollars now are extreme. It sucked a lot of the excitement for me. Especially considering that this is still something that should be enjoyed by children, and no child can afford 80 dollars for Mario Kart.

Concluding Thoughts

    I loved the original Nintendo Switch, warts and all. I know I dogged on some bad games, but the solution was to just not play them. And it’s not like the output wasn’t massive either so I had nothing to play. I didn’t even mention Nintendo supporting indie games through partnerships and showcases to get some of the best games of the generation, like Binding of Isaac, SpiritFarer, Disco Elysium, Duck Game, CupHead, etc., made by some guy in a basement filling the Switch library. Though maybe Nintendo was too open now that the eshop chugs like shit when opening and is filled with AI generated slop, but I digress. The Switch has become one of my favorite consoles, and all of the problems I mentioned could be fixed. The Switch 2 could have developers put care into ports and Sports/Pokemon games, the controllers could have less of a chance at drift, and tariffs could lift, or the Switch 2 could struggle for a bit, so prices may go down. To find out if any of these things happen, I plan on tracking the Switch 2’s lifecycle every year to see how the generation is coming along and how I feel about the thing. So tune back in in a year for a summary of how I experienced its launch, where I can discuss whether the Switch 2 is as promising as it is in my hands as it is in well-rehearsed trailers.  

Switch 2 Joke Concept from u/Calm_Cattle3212 on Reddit