 Alright, so first up I'm still sick, about 4 or 5 days into being sick, so I apologize for the raspiness in my voice or any other hiccups you might see, quite literally hiccups. I am showing off NBA 2K gameplay right now. It's a game I've played online, the very first game I ever played, or very first game period I've played on NBA 2K18, and I get my butt whipped and I don't know what the controls are, so I apologize for not looking that great, but I didn't have time to record any new gameplay today after I spent 10 plus hours playing the game after I recorded that. But what I want to note, and what I want to get out there, when I'm talking about Nintendo Switch here, is my last video was about NBA 2K18, and I compared it to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, my opinions were rather negative, and there's a lot of people that pointed out that I shouldn't review games, I shouldn't talk about things that I don't know enough about, I shouldn't make tech analysis that I don't know about. I clearly do not understand the Switches with its limitations and that I should just be accepting or really accepting of downgrades and accepting of this and accepting of that, and that the one thing I heard repeated several times is, this is the best portable NBA 2K game ever made, and I should just accept it as is. And here's the thing, I didn't review NBA 2K18, I literally said in the video I was not reviewing NBA 2K18, that I was going to review it, and as I was playing it, I realized that it wouldn't be fair to Nintendo Switch owners to really review the game, at least from my perspective, because I've been an NBA 2K fan for a long time, I've played several versions of the game, and I didn't think it did the Switch justice to look at that game inside a bubble, right? I didn't want to look at it as a bubble and think that it was fair to compare it, because what am I going to compare it to, right? When I'm judging the game, it's obviously going to be worse than the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 version, so comparing it to those games doesn't seem fair. Comparing it to the prior game isn't fair as well, because that game didn't release on Nintendo Switch, so I had to compare the game of itself in a bubble, and as much as people want to talk about how it's the best portable NBA 2K experience ever, let's just be honest, any game that releases on Switch is essentially the best portable blank, the best portable Zelda Breath of the Wild, the best portable Mario game is going to end up being Super Mario Odyssey, even if it's not the best Mario game to you, or the best Zelda game between the best portable versions, the best portable Mario Kart is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the best portable Splatoon is Splatoon 2, the best portable NBA 2K is going to be NBA 2K 18, the best portable FIFA is going to be FIFA 18, like it's a stupid argument. I don't think that we should just accept things because they are the best portable versions of those games to ever exist, because that just means that we're willing to accept mediocrity, and I'm not saying that any of the games that I mentioned, including FIFA 18, which I have been critical of, is a mediocre game. What I'm saying is the argument that it is the best portable version of X is just a stupid argument. It is not an argument that should be used, and we as Switch owners should not just accept things because it's the best portable version of whatever game we played, like Doom coming out, it's going to be the best portable version of Doom ever, of course it is, because the only other portable version of Doom was on the original Tegra X1 that released years back. We need to stop looking at all these games in this bubble of, oh my god this is so impressive for being on a portable, and start looking at what we care about games. My main criticism, my ultimately main criticism of NBA 2K 18 wasn't about file sizes, wasn't about installs, it was about frame rate, it was about the fact that it is a big noticeable difference dropping from 60 frames to 30, and on top of that the game itself does not lock itself at 30 FPS. There are times in gameplay, specifically when I'm going in for big dunks or alley-oops, that the game lags a couple frames, and that sucks. On top of that when you're playing in my career mode, there are cutscenes, literal cutscenes that drop down to 10 frames or less per second, and it takes several minutes for the animations to catch up to the audio, and it's really really annoying, and many people have pointed out that it's almost fundamentally broken in that sense on Switch, and honestly because of the cutscene, I don't know why that's even happening, right? Cutscenes are pre-rendered, like there's no reason for it to be that way, but that is just how it is on Switch, and it is a fault of the 2K team for that, and it is something that I'm hoping that they patch and that they fix. Anyone hoping for a 60 FPS patch, it's not going to happen, but that's fine, and if the game had just ran a stable 30 FPS all the time, I probably would have had a lot less criticism of it, because it's one thing to have the FPS, it's another to not have it be consistent, and that sucks. Now, is it so bad that the game's unplayable? Of course not. Is the game gorgeous? Of course it is. I stated in the video several times over the NBA 2K18, it's a gorgeous game, but at some point we needed to decide what matters to us. Is it pretty visuals or is it gameplay? Because as Nintendo fans, I think all of us have argued, you know, as Nintendo has released all these underpowered systems over the years, all of us have argued that it's not the visuals that matter, it's the gameplay experience that matters, right? It's all about the gameplay experience. So now we as Nintendo fans are backtracking with third-party games saying, well, it's about the game looking pretty, it's not about the gameplay experience, or that we can accept sacrifices in gameplay experience for a pretty looking game. And I understand, I actually think NBA 2K18 made the right decision to push visuals over frame rates. I think visual sell, and this is a visual compelling game on Switch. I noted in that video, it is the best looking Switch game to date. Like, that is a high, high praise for a port, a down port of NBA 2K18. That is huge praise for the game. But at the same time, personally, I would have preferred if they would have downgraded the visuals and gave me 60 FPS. And someone actually brought up an interesting idea that maybe they should release two modes for Switch. They should release high visual fidelity, 30 FPS, and 60 FPS with low visual fidelity. Kind of like a PC where you have, you know, those ultra, high, medium and low settings. They could have basically had a low setting and a medium setting. Medium setting, 30 FPS, low setting is 60, and called it a day. And I think that's, that's kind of how I want third parties to approach things. Now, some people noted that I obviously mentioned some issues that I had installing the game. And let me clarify my points on that when I talked about my frustration in not being able to store the game locally and put the save file on an SD card. You can talk about how we've known forever that we need an SD card with NBA 2K18 for physical and digital. And I'm not here to argue that. I knew that heading in. I'm not, I'm not an idiot, right? I reported on this stuff. I talked about this stuff. But the fact that Nintendo will not let me put, like this comes from the horse's mouth, Nintendo is telling me I have to put the save data on my local storage. I cannot put save data on an SD card. Think about that. That 5.1 gigabytes of allotted save data space, I have to put on internal memory. There is no option to put in there. So let's say I filled up my internal memory with game installs. And then I install NBA 2K18 on an SD card. Say it's a 128 gigabyte SD card. Say it's a 256 gigabyte SD card. Whenever the case is, I can't also put my save file on there. I have to go on to my internal memory and delete data off of that to free up 5.1 gigabytes of internal memory. And no, the save files are not actually that big. If you look at the save file size on, like my current season on a NBA 2K18, the save file is like 220 megabytes. So it's clearly not using a 5.1. But 5.1 gigabytes of my memory is set aside just for NBA 2K18. I can't install anything into that 5.1 that it takes up. And that to me is fine on the surface, but Nintendo not letting us put save files off the system is a problem to me. It is not something that we should just accept. I mean, we're talking about a system with 32 gigabytes of internal storage and I've defended Nintendo's right to put 32 gigabytes of internal storage on the system. I said it keeps the cost down. Micro SD cards are not that expensive. Micro SD cards are a cheap way for people who want to go digital to bring it. I have issues with physical games requiring digital things. I actually like what Doom is doing or Doom is putting the entire single player experience on a game cartridge. And then you can optionally download the digital content, which is the multiplayer aspects, which I think that's a really way to do it. I think having, if you're not going to use the bigger size cards or if the 32 gigabyte cards are not big enough for your whole game, that's fine. Put all the single player stuff on the cartridge, make the multiplayer stuff downloadable. And I feel like that's a fair trade off. I'm actually almost okay with that. I'm willing to have that sacrifice. What NBA 2K18 is doing is making you install the whole game either way, whether it's physical or digital, you're installing the whole game. So there's almost no point to buy physical unless you want resale value. But my issue is just that Nintendo won't let me choose, pick and choose where my game installs and where my save files go. So I can have, you know, I can go out and spend $250 on the new 400 gigabyte SD card, micro SD card. Put that in my switch, but I can never, right now anyways, put save files on that micro SD card. So I can't just put my games on internal save files on external. That's not available with switch. And I think that's a huge issue. And as much as I land based in review tech USA, and they actually released a new video today, really attacking Nintendo over the storage again. And again, he's still gonna bring up the fact that 90% of physical games are never going to need that extra storage. It's an issue that I think review tech USA is just not considering because they're just thinking of this all digital future. And they completely forget that most physical games don't need that. I mean, Super Mario Odyssey just came out and announced like it's like 5.7 gigabytes in size or something for whatever, like that's a pretty small file size. That's a couple gigs bigger than Splatoon to and Nintendo games are typically not going to ever be that large, right? Like Nintendo does a very good job with compression on their data. But I'm just utterly confused at why Nintendo is limiting options. Like it makes so much sense to me to run games off internal memory, save, save data off of micro SD cards, because micro SD cards have a slower read speed than the internal flash memory. It's just a fact. If you load a game on your micro SD card, and you load it on your internal memory, you will notice faster load times on the internal memory, because it has a faster read speed. And that's why I, I literally cleared out all my games off of the internal memory, installed them onto the micro SD card, and then took out the micro SD card installed MBA 2k 18 on my internal storage, because there is enough room to install the game with extra space for updates. By the way, it's not like it just filled up my switch entirely. There was still four gigs of playroom for updates, and then put the micro SD card back in, and it would not let me put a save file on the micro SD card. I had to uninstall the game off of my internal hard drive, reinstall it on the micro SD card, and then use the switches internal memory for the save file. It is it's not something we should just accept. And this idea that we should just accept downgraded games because it's portable is just another idea I want to spin this conversation back to. I don't think that it's okay just to accept inferior games, because it's portable. I think there are certain things we can accept, right? The games probably aren't going to run at 1080p. That's fine. I mean, the switches native resolution is 720p on that on the screen. So I think if games could target 720p, that's fine. Or if they have a dynamic resolution scaler like Splatoon two has, that's fine. There are certain sacrifices I feel are acceptable when it comes to games coming to switch. Like as an example, they're not going to be as high resolution. They're not going to be as visually pretty. There might not be anti aliasing. And the shadow quality might not be as good. And there might be some texture like it's going to be a lower quality visual experience. But I don't think what's acceptable is the sacrifice game play. And for all the people saying, Oh, well, you must you're going to you were wrong about NBA 2 k 18. So you'll be wrong about your opinions on FIFA 18. No, because FIFA 18 excuse is stupid. They're saying for the game to look this good, we couldn't use frostbite is basically what they're saying. And that's wrong. The game can look as good as it does still use frostbite and still be 60 FPS. It's a stupid excuse. The game does not look good as good as the PlayStation for an Xbox one version. The game the FIFA 18 on switch doesn't look as good as NBA 2k 18 on switch NBA 2k 18. The reason it doesn't run at 60 FPS is because they went for visual parity. FIFA 18 is not only not going for visual parity. It's using it's using its visuals as an excuse to not use frostbite. It's dumb. It's a it's a dumb excuse. The reality is that frostbites not being used because they didn't want to put the money and the investment to get it ported over to the switch because it doesn't run just out of the box. Same reason that Final Fantasy 15 with its luminous engine did not run on switch out of the box. They're going to make optimizations to it. They're going to make changes and it will eventually run on switch from that. Does it mean Final Fantasy 15 is going to come out the full version of the game on switch or you know, is it going to be the pocket edition? We don't know. But this idea that just because it's the best portable X, we should just accept all the pitfalls is dumb. I think FIFA 2018 or FIFA 18 should be on frostbite. It can look just as good as it does now and it can still be 60 FPS. Changing over to frostbite doesn't make none of that possible. And if they did that, we would have we would have the same animations, the same gameplay, which is key, the same gameplay. That's a big thing to me. If the gameplay has to be sacrificed, then it's not the same game and thus we're getting bad treatment. So same game, same gameplay, same modes, feature complete. And yeah, it doesn't look as pretty as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but it still looks damn good for a Switch game. NBA 2K18 looks hell of impressive. I mean, if you put the Xbox One and the Switch version right next to each other, you'd be hard pressed to tell which one's which because the Switch version looks almost as good as the Xbox One version. It is visually pleasing, but I wish they would have again given that option to dial back those visuals up the frame rate so we can have an on par gameplay experience. So to FIFA's credit 60 FPS still could have been done with frostbite to NBA 2K's credit like on par visuals. But the frame rate and the fact that's not consistent is an issue to me. Now, for people wanting to know my overall impressions of NBA 2K18, I think it's fantastic. I have no regrets buying it on Switch. I'm going to play the hell out of it. When I continue to play the hell out of it, the issues with frame rate might get ironed out over time. I don't know. I'm just a little disappointed that that there wasn't more options. And no, I'm not just going to accept certain gameplay quirks being inferior on Switch when they don't need to be. It's a development choice. And we need to let these developers know that we'd rather have on par gameplay than visuals that match. And this is an issue that even Xbox One PlayStation 4 fans deal with as well, where they get these all these super pretty looking games within the frame rates aren't consistent. And there's input lag and all those stuff that we should be accepting of that. Right? We should want superior gameplay. We as Nintendo fans should know this superior gameplay over visual fidelity. That's all I'm asking. Anyways, folks, I'm Nathaniel Ruffalchance from Nintendo Prime. If you liked this video, you know what to do. And if you disliked the video, hit that dislike button. I got to go take some more cold medicine. You guys have a great one. I will see you tomorrow. Peace out.