The 8Bitdo Pro+ has been great - works really well with my Steam Deck and Switch. Sounds like the Pro 2 is the superior version with hall effect sticks.

The Switch Pro controller has always been good too. And the DualSense is really neat with the haptics and adaptive triggers - expensive, but not that much more than a Pro controller surprisingly.

I finally got round to picking up a PS5 this week and have been really enjoying Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart - it’s just beautiful to look at and genuinely fun to play. Looking forward to more of that over the weekend! I’ve also been trying out Astro’s Playroom, the free tech demo that comes with the console. I was half expecting it to be a gimmicky piece of advertising - but it’s really well made! The platforming is excellent and all the little references to games are cute.

Fuck yeah - there have been some great homebrew plugins for this, but having a dedicated tool with the ability to trim clips is awesome.

Does it require the touchpads for mouse control?

Anyone know how well these work on Steam Deck?

I wasn’t sure what to make of ‘gay furry Mario-like’… But the gameplay actually looks pretty polished - clearly inspired by SMB3! I’ll give the demo a go.

Yes you’re right about having more time and better reflexes back then, but at the same time I feel like I pick up on cues and understand more what the developers intended for the player the older I’ve got. I remember playing the same levels over and over as a kid and eventually losing motivation to continue (this is somewhat balanced out by the fact that yes, I’d have more time, and also I didn’t have as many games - so I had more incentive to keep playing one to completion). Whereas nowadays I’ve got more patience and I can work out ‘oh I’m probably meant to go that way’ based on my experience of playing lots of different games over the years. I’ve built up more of an intuition for these things.

That said, I’m not sure I could beat many NES games!

If I’d played it when I was younger, I don’t think I’d have made it very far to be honest! I’ve probably got a bit more patience and experience nowadays, hence finishing it on Switch. But I’m in no rush to 100% the game unlike some other Mario games (which tend to actually be fun to complete).

That’s fair, although I’ve always considered Galaxy to have a pretty good moveset. What was it missing compared to 64?

Odyssey gives you an insane level of movement, which I love. It’s fun to just run around levels.

Lol! Do you just feel that 64 is a better game, or has better level design?

Oh that’s interesting! Explains why I always had difficulty chasing down shadow Mario on Switch

I’ll have to check if it’s possible to use analog triggers with the SN30 Pro+ on Dolphin…

Oh god the pachinko machine… I salute you for 100%ing the game! Yeah Yoshi feels pretty pointless considering Mario has a more diverse moveset without him.

Graphically I still think it’s pretty impressive - the heat shimmer and water in particular. Crazy considering when it was released.

Yes I definitely agree with that. I loved the variety of environments, and the animations felt ahead of their time for a game from 2002. Well worth completing. How long ago did you play it, out of interest?

You should take a look at the Dragon Quest builders games. Depending on your platform you might be able to try the demo out.

Updating the controller firmware fixed things for me! Give that a try

I ended up using a windows PC to do it - and the latest firmware appears to have fixed all my issues :)

Updating the controller firmware has vastly improved it! I recommend trying that out if you haven’t already.

Oh I don’t want to portray it positively. I agree it’s shit. It just seemed to me that it’s possible (personally at least) to play the game and ignore the microtransactions. But no doubt that’s not the case for everyone

Mixed feelings about that - it sounds like you can still access those features so I don’t think it really affects the base game at all. From what I remember about the first game, you had to be sparing on the waystones to start with, and it required a bit of work to get the item necessary to redo your character - so not much has really changed there. On the other hand, adding these microtransactions in the first place is a stupid idea and the publishers are shooting themselves in the foot by adding them. Should that really change the reviews of the base game though?