Switch 2 ports are getting crazy transcript

The Switch 2 launched with a bunch of ports and that proved two things. One, that the third party support was already there, and two, that it's more than capable of playing some heavy hitters. Some of these are a great showcase of the technology, but honestly, it's kind of stagnated a little bit. Some releases trickled out, but for a while, there was really nothing that made me go, "Whoa, the Switch 2 could do that." I really like the Switch 2.

I'm a big fan of Nintendo. I like their firstparty games and I like the system they've built here. I think this is the best handheld out right now. All that being said, I still like getting my games somewhere else. I like getting them on Steam. I've become used to the versatility that the Steam platform provides me. My games don't feel like they're locked on one system. Steam just feels much more open. I have the option to play games on my PC if I want more power, and I have the option to play them on a handheld if I just want it portably.

So, honestly, as impressive as it is that these games can run on a $500 handheld, I've got other places I'd rather be playing these games. And it's because of that that I don't get to experience the Switch 2 all that much. I know that it's great and I know that it's very impressive, but I feel like I'm just on another planet recently. I'm experiencing games somewhere else. For the past 2 weeks, though, that changed pretty drastically.

I've been all over this thing for some very good reasons. One of them was the Dusk Bloods beta test. I will not be showing any footage of the Dust Bloods. I am a little [ __ ] baby. I already had to go to copyright school on Twitch, so I don't want to get a DMCA here. You can just go watch Wood's video. He's not as much of a [ __ ] as I am. I liked what I played, and I'm excited to try it for real. The game didn't have squads.

It just had solos. I'm excited to give it a try with friends. I think it was very complicated. I took notes on the tutorial like I was studying for a test. And I don't think the PvP is all that good. If you're excited to play a third person PvP fighting game battle royale, then I implore you to go play Naka Blade Point. It's free and it's amazing. But that's not a port and that's not what this video is about. The other thing that got me playing the Switch 2 so much was the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 beta.

This had me very excited because it's the first time Call of Duty has been on a Nintendo platform since Call of Duty Ghosts on the Wii U in 2013, 13 years ago. I'm sure that one was just great. Lately, Call of Duty has been a PC, PS5, and Xbox Series thing. It doesn't even work on Linux because of the anti-che. So, you can't even get it on your Steam Deck. So, having this game in a portable form factor is kind of a huge deal.

Sure, there's Call of Duty Mobile, but that's a different game. Look, look at this. You can't even recognize it as Call of Duty anymore. There's also Anamusha that has a playable demo. Resident Evil 9, which has been out, but it's notable nonetheless. Elden Ring just came out this week. So did Metal Gear Solid 4, a game that's been locked away in PS3 [music] purgatory for years. And there's so much more. So many ports that I would normally experience on a big expensive PC handheld.

I have to see what the difference is now. What I've been missing. How much better is a PC handheld these days for these types of games, if better at all. In terms of platform versatility, sure, the PC wins out. But in terms of performance, it's really not as one-sided as I thought. This video is SPONSORED BY FACTOR. OH MAN, I'm going to try this one more time. Okay, listen. You said you're hungry, so I'm going to give you a suggestion, AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE THAT SUGGESTION, then you volley back with another suggestion.

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Hey, do you think this first date is going good? Do you like me? I always get a little nervous. You want to go see Spider-Man after this? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. We'll start with Call of Duty because that's the one that got me down this rabbit hole. It's a very impressive port. I've been playing Call of Duty since two. That's how old I am. I remember when the Call of Duty Modern Warfare reboot for the first time happened and that ran like absolute dog on PC handheld specifically.

Now, here I am playing the latest Call of Duty on what is essentially a tablet. I think most people would play this and be perfectly happy playing it on here. It even has mouse mode, and it's not bad. Probably the best feeling mouse mode in any shooter I've tried on the Switch 2. Usually, the mouse mode has weird mouse acceleration or something. This doesn't, but it is a very weird mouse you're using. Even has motion controls.

I usually like motion controls in shooters for precision aiming. I did not like the motion controls here. The game looks like it's trying to hit 1080p in docked mode, and I hear it's targeting 60 frames per second, although I think it hovers around 40 most of the time with some dips. It does dip down when a lot of stuff happens on screen, but honestly, it never seems to dip low enough to be a problem. There's some serious DLSS going on and some serious resolution scaling.

Visually, it looks okay. I've seen Call of Duty look much worse on other PC handhelds. I've also seen it look much better. I think the visuals look very good for the compromises we're making here. But it does look and feel, I think, significantly worse in handheld mode. It looks like it's targeting a lower resolution and the frame rate doesn't seem to be helped by that for some reason. You also are forced to use the Joy-Con and those short thumb sticks are not ideal for a competitive game like this.

And when you're playing the game, you'll notice that there's kind of a lot of popin when you spawn in. This is because in the latest Call of Duty games, I think since the Modern Warfare 3 reboot, textures stream from the internet. They don't live locally on your device. I don't really mind this. I think it helps lower the load on your device. You can turn this off, but probably don't do that. I really did think that the weak hardware and the lowish frame rate was going to feel absolutely horrible, but it really doesn't.

There might be like a little bit more input latency than I'm used to, but really nothing that's going to hinder your gameplay all that much. And I don't think most people are going to notice at all. Now, this beta was open first on other platforms. I've been playing this a lot on PC at 1440p, getting somewhere between 80 and 90 frames, playing with an 8,000 khertz polling rate controller. And man, the difference is night and day.

It definitely feels a lot better on PC. But that's not really a fair comparison. That's a whole ass desktop computer that's way bigger than this. It's also a grand and a half and we're comparing that to a tablet. You cannot play the latest Call of Duty games on a Steam Deck because of the anti-cheat. They do not work on Linux. So, that comparison's out the window. I wanted to try comparing it to the white Xbox ally, the one that I wanted to return to Best Buy after I made a video on it, but I forgot.

This is currently $100 more than a Nintendo Switch 2. And I think that it's maybe the best deal in gaming right now. And I think that this is a pretty worthy comparison. Even though it is weak compared to other PC handhelds, the price is right there. I could not for the life of me load Call of Duty on the Ally through Steam. It didn't work on either of my allies. I had to run it through the Xbox app for some reason. So this is the Xbox PC version.

Call of Duty looks like absolute dog on here. It's somewhere around 45 frames and it feels like absolute ass. It's so sharp and textures are so low resolution and things take so long to render in. You can feel the muddiness. I tried to match the settings as best as I could to the Switch version, but dynamic resolution scaling on here looks so much worse. The resolution is dynamically dipping too low. It's even worse when you dock it to a TV at 1080p.

I would call this unplayable docked. This really made me appreciate the Switch 2 version way more. Now, that's not to say that you can't play this game on a PC handheld. I remember Call of Duty running pretty incredible on the MSI Claw 7 AI and 8 AI Plus, but I can't find the 7 AI Plus for sale anymore. And the 8 AI Plus is currently $1,300 at Best Buy, which I guess is like a decent deal as far as PC handhelds go these days, but it's really just not a fair comparison against the $500 Switch too.

This version of the Modern Warfare 4 beta on the Switch 2 also came with a version of War Zone Resurgence, which was surprising. This ran absolutely horrible. The frame rate dipped down very frequently. It sits at just under 30 frames per second, never going above 30. This felt like playing in mud. For a competitive game, this is completely unplayable. >> Oh, look at this. >> Oh my god, I'm playing this. >> Oh, this this is way laggier. >> This [laughter] isn't running as well at all. >> Nah.

Come on, dude. Look at [laughter] the frame rate, man. You ever play War Zone Mobile? It's free. You can just download it on your phone right now. It's actually kind of awesome. It's basically just Call of Duty War Zone just on your phone. They can do that, but they can't put War Zone on the Switch 2. I know it's like a different version, but like why? Fortnite did it on the Switch one. They had the mobile version on the Switch.

So like So why why is it different? Another weird little Call of Duty quirk, the game defaults to open mic on Switch 2, which is the mic on the console and there is no push to talk. It's either open mic or no voice chat at all. What a terrible option. Oh my god, I'm talking. I'M I'M EVERYBODY STOP listening to me. You don't hear me. We're in the game and my mic's still open. >> Overall, I am very impressed with the Call of Duty port on the Switch 2.

I'm not going to get it. I'm probably going to play it somewhere else. Now, if they port War Zone over to the Switch 2, I might dabble with that because that's just a free game and you could just jump in whenever you want and it's got cross progression across all platforms. So, if I were to say be away from my PC for an extended period of time, I could take my Switch with me instead of taking a bulky PC handheld and play my Call of Duty right where I left off.

Hopefully they could get like a War Zone to run a little better than the War Zone Resurgence that we played in this beta. Another seriously impressive port is the new Anamusha demo. That game's coming out this week. But the demo you can just download for free and play right now. I actually played through this demo on the White Ally when it came out and it was pretty impressive. It hovered around 50 frames per second most of the time and looked pretty decent.

It felt totally responsive and fine. On the Switch 2, it kind of felt exactly the same. It defaults to locking the frame rate at 30, which is a little disappointing. It's like fine, but that's not how I'd like to play. If you change this setting to unlocked frame rate, it's way way better. SO, NOW WE'RE UNLOCK. OKAY, THAT'S a significant difference. It's much closer to 60 frames and it doesn't seem to lose any responsiveness by dipping down at any point.

Maybe later on in the game when there's more enemies and more effects and stuff, this might be a problem, but this is Capcom and their RE engine is like insanely well optimized. This is a great demo and it's going to be a great port on whatever you decide to play it on. Something else I should mention about these AAA ports on the Switch 2, they make the Switch 2 display out in 120 hertz mode. Now, that doesn't mean that the game is 120 frames.

It just tells your external display to get ready for 120 Hz signal. You might notice your display flashes a black screen before playing some of these games. It kind of looks like you're changing inputs when you're not. This is going to decrease the input latency a little bit and it should help the display receive frames faster if the frame rate is fluctuating at all. The Switch 2 doesn't have a variable refresh rate in docked mode currently.

So, anything like this will help at least a little bit. Think about it like this. In 60 Hz mode, you got 60 times per second that your display is asking the Switch to for a frame. At 120 Hz mode, that's double. It's asking twice as much. I already played through all of Resident Evil 9 on various PC handhelds. Honestly, most of it was played on my living room PC. There is also a free demo on the Switch, too, and it plays just as beautifully as that Anamusha demo does.

Even Leon's hair doesn't look as bad as it does on some of the PC handhelds I've tried. This game looks good, even if some of the geometry is low poly. Look at that. I really don't think it hurts the experience all that much. It's very responsive and it does dip down sometimes. Compared to much more expensive PC handhelds, though, this really isn't that bad. This is kind of on par. You could play the whole game like this and you wouldn't really be missing anything.

On the White Ally, you're getting under 30 frames. I mean, this is the Leon Must Die mode. It's the populated city street, so I don't want to give it too much gaff for that. I'd say it's pretty much on par. It ran better on the more expensive PC handheld. Interestingly, this game did not ask my monitor to enter 120 Hz mode. It stayed at 60. This is going to sound silly, but I wanted to try The Adventures of Elliot. This game is a surprisingly beefy game for how like, you know, retro and and and lowowered this game looks.

It surprisingly takes a lot of system resources. I think those lighting effects is what takes a lot of system resources. It does run really bad on a Steam Deck. It is completely unplayable on an Einthor. If you ever had any intrusive thoughts about running it on an Iron Thor, I thought I heard that this game ran bad on the Switch, too. It doesn't. It runs totally fine. Maybe some light dips when stuff happens on screen, but it's not nearly as bad as it is on the Steam Deck.

There's even rendering settings on the Switch, too. You can change this preset to low if you really don't want the frames to dip at all. And all this really seems to change is the shadows. They look different. The Adventures of Elliot also has a demo, and that's what I'm testing right now. This is also something that surprised me about Switch 2 ports. A lot of them retain a lot of their settings from their PC versions, and that's not something that's normal on console versions of games.

There's not a lot of settings like you're not going to be able to change the render resolution internally of the game, but I'm seeing things like shadow quality options and performance modes and DLSS. It's kind of wild to see this on a Nintendo handheld. You're seeing it more on like the Pro versions of consoles. You're seeing like different performance modes. It's more like normalized these days, but like last generation, you're not getting any quality settings.

This one's not so graphically exciting, but it's exciting to me. Godamn it. Iinging love Metal Gear. Metal Gear Solid 4 is finally out of PS3 jail. It's such a PS3 game, too. So, they had to do some work to get it to run on other consoles and to get it to make sense with all its weird PS3 references. >> But you need to swap disc one for disc 2. You see the disc labeled two? No. >> Huh? Oh, wait. We're on a high-spec platform.

It uses highcapacity media, too. No need to swap. >> Damn it, Oticon. Graphically, it might not look or sound all that impressive, but this game used to run at 30 frames per second on a PS3, and it would frequently dip down below 30. Now, it's on a handheld playing at 60. It feels amazing. It's very responsive and it looks like a decently high resolution, too. I'm very excited to play through this one. I still think I want it on Steam, though, for the same reasons that I mentioned previously.

I I that would mean I would have to buy it for a third time. But I [ __ ] love Metal Gear. Oblivion, that remaster hit PCs, I think earlier this year, and I heard that that ran really bad on PC handhelds. That hit the Switch 2 just a few weeks ago. I did not want to play it, but I know that my friend Jerry really wanted to play it, so I got him the copy so he could talk about it so I don't have to do it for this video.

[snorts] >> Was only sitting down to dinner with my wife, but go on. >> It's okay. I'll make it quick. I'm so sorry. >> No, I'm kidding. Uh, you sent me footage of Oblivion on your Switch 2 and also on your Legion Go S. That's the Z1 Extreme. >> Z1 Extreme. Yes. Running Steam OS. >> And which one ran ran better? >> The Switch 2 ran better, but the Legion Go once like you gave it a second, it looked way better. It was beautiful.

There were times where it was like a little here and there, and then when I got out of the beginning and I'm like out in the world, things were just like a little blurry. And then you had to like give it a second to just kind of kick in. And then when it kicked in, it was like, "Oh, wow. This is significantly like there's color to it." The Switch's version is like dull the way it looked when it first came out a few month was that last year. >> Do you mean colors are dull? >> The colors are dull.

But when I hooked it up to my monitor to play the Switch 2, I was like, "Oh, wow. This is on a Switch 2. This is crazy." Very impressed with how the Switch 2 was like hanging. It sounds like you prioritize the graphical quality and the resolution more than you prioritize the frame rate. >> Yeah, >> because I'm the complete opposite. I want them frames, baby. >> I want the frames, too, but I went into this knowing it's an old game. >> You're into the port.

You think it's a good port. I thought this was going to be the one that was the bad port, but it looks like No, >> no, it was I was I was very surprised, and I'm happy I got it. Uh because I wasn't going to get it until it was 20 bucks. >> Oh, you're welcome. >> Thank you. I was bitching about having to buy Elden Ring for this video. And Wood said that he wanted a digital copy. So he said if I bought it and used it, he would give me money for it.

So that's that's what we did. It's a game key card, so it is the digital version, but if I give this to someone that they they get the they get the license, then they can then download it. And this is once again a very good port. It says online that it targets between 30 and 40 frames per second. I'm looking at 30. It feels very consistent. It looks very crisp in handheld and docked mode. I think it's about 1080p in both modes.

At least it looks that way. It looks very good. I think this looks better than the Dusk Bloods did. And I think it runs smoother than the Dusk Bloods did. There were some frame dips here or there. When you first enter into the open world, it dips a little bit, but for the most part, it is very consistent and feels very good and doesn't have a lot of input lag. Now, when this game first came out, it ran like ass on the Steam Deck.

I think it has received a lot of optimizations since then, so I think it should be pretty decent on the Steam Deck. It is very nice looking and very impressive. I think this is a game that benefits from being 1080p. Is this the best place to play this game? Probably not. You're probably going to want a little more of an increased frame rate. It is uh believe it or not, I don't know if you're going to believe this, very hard.

I I I haven't played ELDER RING. I PLAYED OTHER Souls games, okay? So, I knew I know what I'm getting into, but I died like three times and then a guy entered my my realm and stabbed me in the head and one-shotted me and I died. you find this game's fun to you? When you're playing any of these highowered ports that we mentioned here today, don't expect high resolutions or high frame rates. You're definitely not making the most of the Switch 2's output capabilities. 120 Hz mode helps a lot, but don't expect 120 frames per second.

Obviously, I don't even have HDR on my Switch. I think it barely makes a visual difference and I think it looks a little worse on most displays and it's just one more thing to clog up your bandwidth. I also keep the system at 1440p. You're not going to notice much of a difference between 4K and 1440p. And I don't even record at 4K anyway. I stream and record gameplay at 1440p. None of these games are going to render at 1080p anyway.

If they have a performance mode, I would much rather prefer that. So performance mode is always going to target frames and quality modes are always going to prioritize resolution. So what do you want more? You want more resolution or more frames? I usually want more frames. So I will sacrifice some resolution for some frame rate. Another thing that's kind of annoying about these Switch 2 ports is that most of them are just the PC versions of games.

So that means that the file sizes are absolutely massive. Some of these games are compressed really well, like Cyberpunk. They did a good job compressing that so it fits on a cartridge. But most of these are going to be game key cards and they're all going to be over 50 gigabytes. Hell, the Call of Duty beta was 40 gigabytes and that's just a beta. With the price of micro SD Express cards right now, things are getting pretty ridiculous.

On the Switch One, I liked having all of my digital purchases with me at all times. I didn't like deleting anything. So, I had a nice big one terabyte card in there. The Switch 2 is making that very difficult because the price of storage is insane right now. And also, the file sizes of these games are way bigger. Because of this video, because of downloading all of these AAA ports, I forced myself to get this one TBTE PNY Micro SD Express card.

It was $30 damn dollars, but it's the cheapest one from a decent company that I could find. Obviously, I didn't talk about all of the ports. I wanted to talk about the recent ones, and I wanted to talk about the ones that I wanted to talk about. Cyberpunk and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I've talked about them before. There's other pretty obvious, big, notable ones. And you know what? There's some great comparisons of all of those that are online already you could just go look for.

One of the great things about the Switch 2 is that most of these games have playable demos that are just free on the eShop right now. So, if you just got a Switch 2, you can go to the eShop and sort by Switch 2 and demo available. I'll leave a link to this search in the description below. Now, you can test the graphical limits of your Switch 2 without even spending any money. This is great because you can see if you like some of the compromises that some of these games have.

Maybe you're worried you won't like the lower resolution of Resident Evil 9 on here versus how it would be on your PC. Now you [snorts] can give it a try and just see how it works. Personally, the stuff I'm seeing here, I think, is incredibly impressive. I'm still going to be playing a lot of my games on Steam. A lot of the reason for that is just the nature of my job here. There's just so many devices that have come out and are still coming out that allow me to play all of my Steam games.

So having it on Steam is just way more versatile. I can put it between all these different things. But I know that most people would want to get something that's reasonably priced and they just get it and the games that they play on it just work and they don't really have to do anything and it's small and sleek and and nice. And the Switch 2 definitely does that. It plays everything good enough. No tweaking your settings to get it in low power mode.

No playing with your resolution scaling or frame gen or any of that. It's all set up for you on the Switch, too. And in some cases, it's even optimized better than it might be on your more expensive PC handheld. Now, of course, you can tweak the ever loving [ __ ] out of your PC handheld. Use lossless scaling or whatever. I'd say the lower powered PC handhelds are more or less the same as the Switch 2 in terms of performance.

The low powered PC handhelds are technically a more powerful, but the game optimizations on the [music] Switch 2 really help boost the performance. The expensive PC handhelds are going to get you some crazy performance. And the Steam Deck is more or less completely outclassed these days. It's still a great device, but we're done doing Switch 2 comparisons to the Steam Deck. The Switch 2 optimizations are almost always better.

So, does the Switch 2 go toe-to-toe with PC handhelds? Absolutely. It's not going to win in every single direct comparison, but it's going to come pretty damn close. And it's 500 mothering goddamn dollars and it's a kids toy. I think that's pretty impressive. So, what do you guys think about the Switch 2 and the performance of all of these different ports? I was very impressed by what I got to play. I mean, I compared a lot of stuff to uh PC handhelds in the past.

Uh but there was there's a lot that's come out since that [music] since since launch. So, um things are getting a lot better. I was expecting things to get worse. I even said that after a year of the Switch 2 coming out, PC handhelds would definitely surpass it, but PC handhelds have gotten way more expensive cuz everything sucks right now. So, [music] it's looking pretty good for the Switch, too. Leave it in the comments below.

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Thank you very much. Have a good week.