SwitchUp

As you are more than likely familiar by now, I love games. I love reading about games, I love playing games and I love watching other people playing games (what a strange era we live in, eh?). Rolling off of that last point, YouTube channel SwitchUp offers, as suggested in the name, info, advice and reviews centred around Nintendo’s Switch. Yes, I watch many Nintendo-centric YouTube channels but of them, it is SwitchUp that offers the most regular, varied and interesting content.

What makes the channel so strong in terms of content is that in addition to your bread-and-butter reviews, previews and sales pieces, there are more original and opinion-based series as well. Sometimes hosts Mark and Glen might cover games they have recently been playing: good or bad, or reveal which titles they are trying to clear from their backlogs. Other times smaller indie masterpieces you’ve never heard of will be highlighted, or a terrible game played and showcased as a warning not to buy. Releasing a new video daily, you might think that the quality of output would suffer as a result, yet by keeping each video to a tight, bite-sized run time spanning 8-20 minutes, this pitfall is avoided.

My favourite series on the channel though is ‘All Patched Up!?’. When you’ve been tracking a game for months and it then launches to a tirade of mediocre reviews, thorough disappointment is inevitable. Often though, upon reading these reviews, developers will continue to work on their titles in the background, fixing bugs, improving framerate, before releasing a patch that can be downloaded to your system. The issue is, most of the time any patch notes are extremely generic, or not available at all. Have the issues highlighted in the original reviews been resolved? It is nigh on impossible to find out. Cue this fabulous series.

I’ve mentioned previously that I often wait for games to go on sale before purchasing and as such, it tends to be the patched version of a title that I end up playing, meaning original reviews can be unreliable. Take Alan Wake Remastered for example. When announced for Switch I was buzzing, I’d always wanted to play this game, but with reviews noting constant frame dips and blurry visuals I was repelled.

‘All Patched Up!?’ compares the original footage to equivalent footage from the latest patch, monitoring frame rate whilst Mark and Glen analyse the visuals, audio and frequency of bugs too. As you can see here, the launch version had a wavering frame rate shifting from 24fps to 31fps, resulting in a rough, janky experience. With the patch a solid 30/31fps was achieved throughout, and whilst the visuals saw no similar upgrade, the smoother motion permits a far less jarring playthrough — enough improvement to warrant a sale, perhaps.

Of course this example looks at a title I was on the fence about. Often I’ll discover a game in the series I was already sold on like Immortals Fenyx Rising, where any further patches and enhancements are just a cherry on top.

A brilliant, niche series that I’m surprised other channels haven’t tapped into*, I’d highly recommend scanning through for any wishlisted games you may be umming and ahing about, as well as checking out the other fantastic content on offer. Oh, and did I mention you can also buy eShop credit from their website with a cheeky 5% discount using the code ‘SWITCHUP’?

*I realise Digital Foundry goes into much more depth but for the average consumer like myself, this is far more digestible.