I was invited to the Nintendo Switch event š¤.
Intro
You read that right, I got invited to the Nintendo Switch event. But donāt worry, itās not because I write these awesome reviews, have this insane Nintendo collection or anything else. I was actually a +1 of someone actually invited š¬. None the less, I was allowed on the event, and was really honored. My quest was simple, I was going to go there, try to have fun, and make an unsalted review with personal opinions. Since thatās clearly stated in my āthe start of something newā-blog, I hope you donāt expect anything else. Today, the 23rd of February 2017, we were expected at 17:30 in Brussels at the main event.
The setting
A beautiful setting in the middle of Brussels, upon arrival we were guided by lovely chaps of Nintendo Ambassadors to a rustic lounge. While waiting for a small introduction by a high positioned employee, we decided to stuff ourselves with drinks & food. Got to keep it classy ladies. A small note I want to make here, I - love - how many high positioned females Nintendo has, this might look odd that I write about that here, but itās worth mentioning, and I have to give props for that! While we were waiting for the introduction, they opened up the shiny display, so we could actually touch & feel & play around with the device (not turned on). Some things that came to mind immediately, itās how rigid it feels. It feels like a solid device. Small throwback to the first time I held a Wii U pad, I was like āokay, heavy & plasticy, but itāll doā. Big turnaround, it feels light, solid & just fun. Another small extra on that statement, when you have the joy-con controllers on the side, I kinda have the feeling I will break them off sooner or later. I could twist them a little, even a little bit, so I know when I will be enraged by something, I tend to clench my fists. So Iāll have to keep reminding myself not to break my Switch. When we clapped for the lovely lady of Nintendo who really knew what her new console was about and listened to her hyping us up, we were allowed in the gaming booths. They had all kind of games set up in booths for us to try out, since it was quite the exclusive event I was a chaperone at, we didnāt have to queue for anything, so Iāll give my opinion on all of it! (oh boooooy!)
The console
I want to dedicate a paragraph on the console itself, after the āfailureā of the Wii U, with itās quite small library, they took a big risk on releasing exactly this. Another gimmicky Nintendo console. First off, what do you get when you buy the console? You get the console, which is a small tablet alike, you get 2 joy-con controllers (imagine really tiny Wii controllers), a docking station & a plastic controller which is used to click in/on the joy-con controllers so it feels like an actual controller. So basically, they want to give you the whole experience, 3 layers of fun. You can enjoy the console in 3 game modes. Either elegantly and smoothly drop the tablet in the docking station, which outputs 1080p to an external HDMI port. Are your kids being a nag, or you want to go to the crapper? Just grab the tablet out of the docking station, which is, SUPER smooth - I was really skeptical - within milliseconds you can keep playing on your tablet with the controllers attached to the side of the tablet, again, imagine a Wii U tablet this time. If your kids are watching a movie, and you want to smash your wife in Mariokart, with 2 easy buttons you can detach the controllers and hand her one, turn them sideways, just like you did at the Wii, and you can switch to 2 player mode on the tablet itself. It all feels so smooth, which was the major salespoint after all, but they nailed that ;) The big difference this time is that the rendering of the UI & games happens on the tablet itself, so you donāt have to worry about going too far from your āconsoleā. You can just keep gaming on the bus, crapper, plane, forest, since Nintendo thinks that is what we do in the forest, play 4 player Mariokart on our Switch at the bonfire. (I watched the commercials..) One last thing, the output on the tablet isnāt 1080p, but can offer up to 60 FPS, which is a real game changer. Iāll get back to that later.
The games that were on display
Me and my friend just ran straight to the new Zelda booth, because, letās face it, thatās what most people are getting this console for. Small note, itās also getting a Wii U release, since originally it was supposed to launch on it none the less. So, we went Usain Bolt style and bolted (see what I did there š¤) to the Zelda booth, where they had loads of tvās with special debug kits of the Zelda ready for us to touch & play around with. The people that they hired tried to give me a basic story, and tell me about āZeldaā, and started off his speech he obviously had to study. I tried to be polite as possible that I didnāt really need an introduction and I just wanted to go head first in to the game. Sliding the headphones over my ears while oogling the menu screen of the new Zelda. Hearing remarkable background music made me excited to give this a go.
I did my fair share of research before - like any other nerd - on the Switch & on the new Zelda, so Iāve seen all the trailers, and knew that theyāre trying to give a new swirl to the game. This open world RPGāish Zelda is just what the franchise needed if I have to be honest. Iāll come out clean and admit Iām not the biggest Zelda fan, but this was pulling me straight in.
After all the fancy introduction cutscenes, you could actually run around, hooray, step 1 accomplished. The sensitivity was really high, took a bit getting used to, but you felt a certain aura in the game, what the developers tried to make you feel. And they nailed that feeling, so props to them. You had to pickup a special stone tablet that will guide you through the game (and other things that the guy couldnāt tell me about since he had no clue, and the demo was actually all he knew). You start off with picking up a branch to whack enemies around with, because this game doesnāt kid around, it learns you so many things in the first minutes. They really want to push you into the open world so you can actually start enjoying the game. Since the demo is only limited to 20 minutes of gameplay, the guy kept telling me what to do - which slightly annoyed me - which I understood, since they want you to get the feeling of the entirety of the game. I did have some major issues with FPS drops, I kept telling myself that itās because the special demo version that was running on the Switch, because I didnāt want to be disappointed that hard when the game came out. (queueās my The Last Guardian blog where I talk about FPS drops) Canāt really say much more, I think this game is going to be absolutely bonkers, there will be so much to do, so much easter eggs to discover.
- Looks up which weeks he can take off of work so he can play with Link *
After talking with many people about it, we decided to skip to the next booth, there was much more to discover. We ran into 2 employees playing the eshop only game called Snipperclips. I wanted to skip it at first, but it actually looked really funny so we decided to give it a go after all. And I must say, I wasnāt disappointed. We decided to do the co-op modus, so donāt know what about the 1 player experience. If you donāt want to read through this bit, iāll just come out and say, buy it. Even though it looks super obscure, just play it with your girlfriend or wife (or boyfriend/husband, Iām not judging).
Now, what is Snipperclips about with 2 players? Itās a puzzle game which is real nifty. Iāve said it before, most of these games are mostly accidentally made by developers when they encountered a bug in testing prototypes and thought, WAIT A MINUTE, I CAN MAKE A GAME OF THAT. Thatās basically what Snipperclips is all about. You are 2 weird geometric shapes, who have to cooperate to solve a puzzle. You can ācut outā parts of each other, to make yourself smaller to go into small spaces, or make a cup out of your āheadā which can hold a ball while youāre jumping on top of your friends character to dunk it in a basketball ring. I barely know how to describe it. Look it up, play it, and let me know what you think!
We lost so much time already at these 2 booths having fun, which is Nintendoās strong point, they bring players together to have fun with games. And thatās something quite remarkable which has to be pointed out. And they obviously got me right in to that mode of childish enjoyment.
Decided to step up our game and move on to the 1,2 Switch booths. 1,2 Switch is the name for several mini games who are made especially to show off their new nifty hardware like HD Rumble, new joy-cons and the mode where you can kickback the Switch and just enjoy some mini games with 2 people on the go or at home.
We played mini games where you have to actually milk a cow versus each other, Iāll leave that to your imagination, wasnāt my cup of tea, it was justā¦ (I let the void fill in what I wanted to write). There is also a count-the-ball mini game, and I want to elaborate here. This is purely made for the new HD Rumble - which is the vibration engine inside the controllers -. You see a small wooden box on the screen, you have to fidget your controller around, really think that itās an actual box which contains marbles, and you can feel the balls rolling around according to your movements. Itās a real big mindteaser, since you actually have the feeling youāre holding a box with marbles. The mini game itself is just guessing how many marbles are in your controller. So it gets boring quite fast, so I think when you get used to this new technology itāll lose its value quite fast. None the less, a must play for the people who are new to the Switch.
Next up was a Western shooting range, where a voice on the switch yelled to warned you to prepare yourself, you have to aim your joy-con to the ground like a gun, when he yells āFIREā, you have to aim at your partner and click the trigger, just like the old school Western shootouts. Itās so much fun with such little technology, it gives you indication how straight/accurate you shot joined by how fast you reacted, which in my case will be a big addiction to get this as low as possible.
Last but not least in the 1,2 Switch gameset was a Samourai game. One of the 2 players randomly gets selected if he has to whack the other player or has to receive the hit and has to ācatchā the blade. Imagine 2 players standing in front of each other, one has his hands like he is praying with a little space between his hands, and the other person has his raised like he would smash the other player with a sword. The moment the voice on the Switch tells you, youāre able to hit your opponent, but you donāt have to do this immediately, you can fake that youāre going to hit him so he tries to ācatchā it already. It was a blast trying to fake hit my friend while he is clapping in the air trying to catch such blade. Or other way around.
The price of the 1,2 Switch minigame set is quite high, but still great fun!
3 more games I played around with, so this blog is far from over!
Arms, a boxing game, I was really skeptical about this too, but due to group pressure I played it after all and had a blast. And realized I should stop skipping gym so much. Being exhausted from waving my arms around is very confronting for a nerd. Itās a blast, but donāt think itās something for me after all. Remember the times you bought a Wii to play boxing with your friends and you were going to play it so much. Well, this is the exact same case, you will do it a couple of times, and itāll lay around after. None the less, you will have had your fun, but thatās about it.
Mariokart 8 deluxe, canāt say much about it, itās Mariokart 8 with all DLC included and 4 new characters, so basically, more DLC.
Splatoon 1,5 Deluxe. I mean Splatoon 2. Which is basically the original Splatoon with some extraās. I do have to admit, I had a blast playing, we finished the evening playing with some of the Nintendo ambassadors and played several matches. It was really exciting & got quite intense, we played 4 v 4, had zero hickups, just straight up fun with friends & people I barely met.
So I want to make a callback to my previous statement of how Nintendo keeps finding a way to get friends together and let them just have fun. My little Nintendo heart from so many years ago was way too excited after today. So find out in the verdict!
The verdict
One of the first questions I got in my chatbox after I got back was. āWill it disappoint or will it be represent in many householdsā. Note, The Nintendo Wii sold close to 110 million units. I didnāt have to think long about my answer, but I still have my doubts.
My answer was basically, that I think they have a real nice piece of hardware on their hands, and it can be a potential new market. Which Sony tried hard to do with their PS Vita coupled to their PS4. You canāt deny the market is changing, with newer generations always playing on their phones or tablets, so Check, they have that. Older generations still casually enjoy playing around on their console in their couch, so Check, also crossed off. More casual gamers play on their long commutes, so waitā¦ They can cross off all generations & target groups with this console. It has all of the potential to be a commercial succes. But will it, itās a big question mark. The Wii U hunting them, their small launchday game list, and their reputation on the line. If it matters, I ordered one, because Iām actually exited to give this a go, and play some of the co op games with my girlfriend, which isnāt into the games I am into mostly.
One last note, as a developer, Iām really excited they decided to make a devkit unit of the Switch for quite the low price. Iām already working on my first game for it, and canāt wait to receive it so I can start having my fun š¤. Hopefully they finally can get the Indie market on their side which saved Sony & Xbox in the last generations of consoles.
TTT.
