My Nintendo Switch Experience

It was almost six years ago to the day that Nintendo invited me to check the original Nintendo 3DS at a neat event in London’s Brick Lane.

What was a marketing-fuelled event with live-action Ryu and Ken, glamour girls aplenty, a recommendation from Stephen Fry and a console each to try out; I wasn’t able to purchase a 3DS at launch because I was, quite simply, a poor student.

Turns out that few did and like many, I got mine a little later in the console’s lifecycle. Fast-forward to 2017 and the 3DS is one of the best selling handhelds of all time and still holds huge relevance in the gaming market - but, is that all likely to change with the launch of the Nintendo Switch - Nintendo’s next audacious attempt to reinvent the way we all play videogames?

The venue for another preview event was one less formal, and whilst less organised in its presentation and aesthetics it was the console that took centre stage, with little to cloud any perceptions of the device itself. A relatively small, dimly-lit room, not too dissimilar as to something you’d stumble across at a convention, housed around 35 consoles.

Nintendo were clever in their showcase. They wanted players to be able to try out the console in all its iterations in the two-hour slot allocated. Everything from a single JoyCon controller to hands-on with the whole unit in your hands. The latter was my first experience of the Switch and here’s a run-down of my first impressions with all the games I tried out.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Taking the console by the horns in full handheld mode, I took a seat alongside seven other eager Nintendo Switch trialists for some local multiplayer action. The game was as expected, Mario Kart 8 a different shell. It played as you would hope, flawlessly, and racing around Yoshi’s Circuit was an almost identical experience to that on the Wii U. The screen on the Switch presented the game well - the colours were vibrant and there were no performance drops, ghosting or issues with the multiplayer functionality that I witnessed - we just sat down and raced.

Little else to report here, it did as it said on the tin. My hard-earned victory against a bunch of strangers had only some bearing on my overall enjoyment of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (okay, maybe more than some).

1-2 Switch

Three games were on show for 1-2 Switch: Ball Counting, Milk, and Quick Draw. All the games featured the use of a single JoyCon and the first, had me and my counterpart counting how many balls were rolling around inside one - showing off the Switch’s HD Rumble. Now, I’ve felt plenty of balls in my time but nothing quite like this.

It’s hard to comprehend how Nintendo have managed to simulate the movement of fictional balls inside a controller using rumble alone. Whilst the game was very basic, it conjured up thoughts of how devs could use the impressive technology in a more practical sense.

I couldn’t get to grips, literally, with the game that has you simulating the milking of a cow - Milk. Whilst the lewd technique will seem familiar to some, the donning of a straw hat didn’t bring out any dairy farmer extraordinaire lurking inside me. I don’t think I read the instructions correctly and suffered from it by being overwhelmingly out-milked by my opponent.

The final showcase was Quick Draw. As the name suggests, quickest to shoot on-target in a Wild West draw, wins. Locking your opponent’s gaze made things interesting, and is likely to unearth previously undiscovered romantic desires between friends and colleagues, before the shot is taken and the victor is announced.

The Switch felt more like an accessory to a different game than the main focus here, which is clearly what Nintendo wants with 1-2 Switch entirely - more sociability in the room, than everyone staring gormlessly at the screen.

Splatoon 2

Donning the JoyCon Grip, there were no noticeable changes in Splatoon 2 than that of first. I only played a single round and wouldn’t consider myself a veteran player of the original, yet it all felt very familiar.

The controls were easy to pick up using the comfortable grip. The camera’s motion-controlled nature worked as expected and was if anything a little sensitive to movement, despite the inevitable ability to change this in menus, as there was in the Wii U iteration.

Playing on a TV, the graphical movement was again smooth and quite obviously 60fps with no noticeable dips. Beside the eight screens for the players of the game, a ninth was showing an automated live spectator mode. Whether this would be a feature in the main game and can be player controlled, would signal clear intent to bring Splatoon into an eSports eye as previously shown in the Switch announcement trailer.

ARMS

Arms is a game that I’ve been skeptical about in the past and I still retain that after a brief play.

Wielding two JoyCons was an experience that brought me back to the days of Wii Boxing. The arm movement actions for blocking, grabbing and punching worked fine and the game is more tactical than the trailers make it out to be, but it still felt the replayability was missing, or at best miscommunicated.

I didn’t have enough time to make the most of the demo that was available, not helped by some technical issues with the second set of JoyCons, leaving me to battle it out against the CPU - so I was left with just as many questions as answers.

The friendly attendant on-hand, of which there was one at every console in the room, admitted that he didn’t know of any definitive single-player mode but did confirm that there may be the ability to play using just a single JoyCon. Without this, local multiplayer would mean another pair of JoyCons to buy. For now, I’ll be keeping this one at arms-length.

Zelda: Breath of The Wild

The clear attraction of the event, with 12 screens dedicated to giving visitors at least ten minutes of gameplay each by the way of allocated time-slots, was enough to witness how astounding the game was in such a small and portable form-factor.

Starting out with a Pro controller I ran towards a couple Bokoblins in my eye-sight with Link’s sword drawn. The combat will be familiar to Zelda players and after I managed to loot a bow and a few arrows that ragdolled away from my fallen enemies, I moved on.

Before targeting those in a stronghold, I opted for a stealthy move in whistling to draw attention to those guarding a chest, sneaking around a corner and dispatching each one-by-one, using the controller’s built-in motion controls to aim and the trigger to fire.

During the console’s docked mode, it was clear to see that the visually appealing game wasn’t able to hit the heights of performance frame-rates in Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Despite this, there were no noticeable frame-rate drops, even when transitioning to handheld mode. I’m sure more extensive testing and feedback about performance will be noted in the reviews to come.

In the short time I had with the game, I discovered that weapons can wear and break, stamina, body warmth and hunger will play a factor, and that enemies are wise enough to flank you if possible. I can’t wait to try out more.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed myself in the two hours I spent surrounded by the Nintendo Switch and the games on show. I didn’t get the time to play the only other game on-hand, co-op puzzle game Snipperclips, but missing out didn’t detract my overall experience.

It doesn’t feel like six years since got my hands on the Nintendo 3DS but the Nintendo Switch feels like a positive step in the right direction for Nintendo’s relationship with its gamers. I fear that if the reception of the Switch is as neutral as the Wii U, it will be tough for Nintendo to recover in the now Sony and Microsoft dominated home console market. After getting to grips with the Switch, and discovering what it has to offer in the hopeful months and years to come, there seems to be enough innovation to inspire, whilst keeping things simplistic enough that developers aren’t put off. I left London with a bunch of extra StreetPass notifications and optimism-fed anticipation for my Nintendo Switch to arrive.