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Digital Foundry || The Touryst Is Stunning: Switch Game Of The Year Contender?

ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987

The technical geniuses at Shin'en Multimedia return with their best game yet. The Touryst combines cutting-edge technology with a genuinely fascinating game design. It's a beautiful piece of work - as you'll see right here in this video!
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  • same deferred renderer as Fast RMX
  • some forward rendering parts
  • dynamic res: 1080p to less than 50% on both axes
  • outdoor: 810p to 900p
  • indoor: usually 1080p
  • handheld: 612p to 720p
  • no AA
  • maded using MagicaVoxel, converted to triangles
  • grass, rocks, flowers are procedurally placed
  • 231MB large
  • practically no loading
  • boot from dash to menu to game is crazy fast
  • HDR contrast (bright to dark, not wider color range)
  • subsurface scattering on characters
  • tilt-shift DoF
  • no texture filtering
  • arcade games' audio is made using a program that mimics arcade hardware audio
  • SURROUND SOUND!
  • 60fps, 3 dropped frames in 3 hours of footage
 
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.exe

.exe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,240
Wow, this does look gorgeous and at such a great frame rate too! Impressive.
Edit: oh my god and it's also only 204 mb? Wizards.
 

Deleted member 37917

Banned
Jan 10, 2018
7,207
Tokyo
Besides the technical marvel, the game is a strong contender for game of the year in my opinion. One of the strongest exclusive, all systems included.
 
Christo750

Christo750

Member
May 10, 2018
4,263
Played through it in ~6 hours. It was super impressive graphically. But it gets a lot of platforming fundamentals really wrong. It's at its best when it's more adventure than platformer.
 
Comrade Crunch

Comrade Crunch

Member
Jan 15, 2018
840
Shin'en has quietly been one of the most interesting indie devs out there for a while. They've never seen the same kind of mainstream success that Remedy, who comes from a similar background, has but their output has been consistently great for 20 years now.

Haven't bought the Touryst yet, but it's on my list for after I whittle down my backlog a bit.
 
Dash Kappei

Dash Kappei

Member
Nov 1, 2017
4,842
zakatana said:
Besides the technical marvel, the game is a strong contender for game of the year in my opinion. One of the strongest exclusive, all systems included.
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Damn.

I should've grabbed it on day1, but my backlog is soooo big and full of great stuff (FE3H, LuigiM3, Smash, Civ6, Splatoon2, Torna, Ghostbusters, Dragon's Dogma, Hellblade, Skyrim, Overwatch, Valkyria Chronicles, Mario Tennis etc.... either shrinkwrapped or barely touched for less than 1 hour) and so now I feel like waiting for a sale...15€ would have been easier to swallow.
 
LazyLain

LazyLain

Member
Jan 17, 2019
6,500
weblaus said:
Indeed. I find it depressing even John manages to not recognize that it's an almost-identical clone of Bomb Jack and not "basically Pac-Man meets Jet Pac".
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Ignoring that, he even missed the pun opportunity of Jet Pac Man... smh

Great video nonetheless...this game should've been nominated for best art direction instead of Link's Awakening.
 

Deleted member 37917

Banned
Jan 10, 2018
7,207
Tokyo
Dash Kappei said:
Damn.

I should've grabbed it on day1, but my backlog is soooo big and full of great stuff (FE3H, LuigiM3, Smash, Civ6, Splatoon2, Torna, Ghostbusters, Dragon's Dogma, Hellblade, Skyrim, Overwatch, Valkyria Chronicles, Mario Tennis etc.... either shrinkwrapped or barely touched for less than 1 hour) and so now I feel like waiting for a sale...15€ would have been easier to swallow.
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In your case, waiting for a sale makes sense as you probably have 400 hours of games to go through.
But for anyone looking for a nice, relaxing game for the winter holidays, the touryst is really worth the asking price in my opinion.
 

Deleted member 5159

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,704
what i like about john is that he doesnt only is a tech savant but that he understands and appreciates good game/visual design. Also df retro is amazing, great work, keep it coming :))
 
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Dark1x

Digital Foundry
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
3,530
Christo750 said:
Played through it in ~6 hours. It was super impressive graphically. But it gets a lot of platforming fundamentals really wrong. It's at its best when it's more adventure than platformer.
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I definitely get that. I found most of the platforming very fun and simple but there was that spot with the spheres floating in black space that was just...brutal and unfair. The perspective didn't really work there.
 

Nuclear Muffin

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
4,721
Super impressive game on all fronts. It's also, easily, their best designed game from a gameplay standpoint as well. Packed with loads of things to do, all (mostly) very well executed.

Hats need to go off to them.

BTW, thank you for pointing out the excellent surround sound mix here Dark1x It's really great here, and far too many Switch games are quietly getting away with not bothering with 5.1 surround. Nintendo made a huge mistake with not making it mandatory like it was on Wii & Wii U and it's a real shame; especially considering that Nintendo's own internally developed games (Monolith Soft excluded) all tend to have fantastic surround sound mixes. Luigi's Mansion 3 is also an absolute standout, with one of the best 5.1 sound mixes I've ever heard; but then you get so many other Switch games which just opt for stereo only!!
 
Irminsul

Irminsul

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,039
weblaus said:
Indeed. I find it depressing even John manages to not recognize that it's an almost-identical clone of Bomb Jack and not "basically Pac-Man meets Jet Pac".
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To be fair, the C64 was much less of a thing in the US compared to Europe, so I guess John just doesn't know about the game.
 

Deleted member 10737

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
49,774
shin'en are wizards. sadly tho this game seems to have come out with little to no fanfare, and it's being overlooked.
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,110
Nuclear Muffin said:
BTW, thank you for pointing out the excellent surround sound mix here Dark1x It's really great here, and far too many Switch games are quietly getting away with not bothering with 5.1 surround. Nintendo made a huge mistake with not making it mandatory like it was on Wii & Wii U and it's a real shame; especially considering that Nintendo's own internally developed games (Monolith Soft excluded) all tend to have fantastic surround sound mixes. Luigi's Mansion 3 is also an absolute standout, with one of the best 5.1 sound mixes I've ever heard; but then you get so many other Switch games which just opt for stereo only!!
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It never was mandatory on those systems either. Nintendo released a ton of stereo only games on both systems.
 
el_galvon

el_galvon

Member
Jun 13, 2019
713
Wow, this game looks incredible. And I didn't even knew it exited before this video...

Why isn't everyone talking about this? Looked at Metacritic and found out it was released more than two weeks ago and barely has any reviews.
 
KDR_11k

KDR_11k

Banned
Nov 10, 2017
5,235
Irminsul said:
To be fair, the C64 was much less of a thing in the US compared to Europe, so I guess John just doesn't know about the game.
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It was originally an arcade game, though apparently not a very remembered one. Mighty Bomb Jack (minimally improved game) got an NES port tho.

Resetti said:
what kind of magic is this
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Demoscene magic. I remember some Demosceners building a short FPS (circa Doom 3 era) in 64 kilobytes. Absurdly small file sizes are one of the Demoscene goals.
 
Mr.Fletcher

Mr.Fletcher

Member
Nov 18, 2017
9,543
UK
Loved the game, got to 97% completion, but have been unable to truly finish it because it keeps crashing over and over.

It's a great game. However, the aforementioned issue has left a bad taste in my mouth. :(
 

BloodshotX

Member
Jan 25, 2018
1,596
I really like that @digitalfoundry Dark1x also includes audio quality and if the game has surround sound or not in switch game analysis videos. Hope thats their standard going forward. This should hopefully prevent going back to dark souls quality audio and lack of surround sound(where the other versions do have it ofc) in the future. Sadly the eshop page cant really be trusted anymore. I mean LA noire still states it has surround sound while is obviously not there.
 

Deleted member 5159

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,704
Dark Cloud said:
I'm glad you didn't understand what you said didn't make sense in your previous post. Nothing more to add.
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if nintendo was to acquire a small team from germany it would be to join nerd, probably. therefore, they wont cause they'd rather have shin'en make games for their platforms?

Also Shin'en doesnt want to be bought, last time i checked, so, this is a non issue
 
Fawz

Fawz

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,660
Montreal
Hadn't heard of it before but does indeed look very impressive on a technical level for a Switch game, and overal the game's charm seems interesting.
 
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