So today was the big day! Yours truly braved hours of nervous waiting, awkward social situations, and some really sore feet to claim a Nintendo Switch at midnight this morning. In actuality, the company was okay, the waiting was mostly bearable, but the feet were still really sore. Anyway, what became of this excursion, and my promise to give all you wonderful readers your usual critical and mostly unbiased review? So glad you should ask! Let’s take a look shall we?
Sorry… I got a little distracted there… This is the reason we’re all here today!
Let’s run down the contents real fast just because this could be end up being a super short article otherwise. Out of the box, I got the tablet console, which really is the console, a power adapter, an HDMI cable, a dock for playing the thing on my TV, two Joy-Cons, the controllers for the console, straps for said Joy-Cons, and a mount thingy that magically transforms the Joy-Cons into something more closely resembling a traditional controller. Here’s a picture so you can get the idea:
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get into some thoughts. First off, let me echo everyone else who has been here in saying, this thing is small. Way smaller than I had anticipated for sure. Just take a look!
Let’s just all agree that the stature of this thing makes over compensating, mega-truck driving needle weiners look like Ron Jeremy by comparison. It’s cool though. Other than the needle weiners, good things usually come in small packages, and the Switch is no different. It’s just surprising at first. I wanted to do an appropriate comparison so here’s a picture of the box next to the box for the Wii because I save everything:
See what I mean about small packages? Man that’s never going to get old! Anyway, I expected to have to slog through a ton of mind numbing set up in order to get things rolling, but it really wasn’t like that at all.
 |
| The thing can be a little bossy though. |
From removing all of the components to getting everything set up, it only took about half an hour. Bear in mind that it was after midnight, and I don’t actually read instructions because if it’s good enough for Columbus, then it’s good enough for me, dangit! But seriously, setup is ridiculously easy. I put the dock together first, then tackled the tablet console, which actually had a charge out of the box thankfully. It walked me through setting up date and time, profiles,calibrating Joy-Cons,, and even linking to the eShop. It was a breeze, and in comparison to the hour or so of setup and firmware updates that I had to endure with the XBox One, it was relatively painless. I did need a small update to expand my memory with a microSD card, but it took seconds to download, and was a minor inconvenience at worst.
So there are a lot of pros that I can see right out of the gate with this ‘console’. To me, it seems like Nintendo has taken all of the best aspects of the two previous console iterations, and used those ingredients to craft a fine machine. They learned from mistakes made with those previous consoles, and improved upon the platforms to bring a much more cohesive experience to the player. The idea of having the ability to take my console games on the go is something that I personally have been pining after for a number of years, mostly so I could use my chainsaw bayonette to mangle nasties in Gears of War wherever and whenever I wanted, but whatever the motivation, it’s a desire that’s definitely been present. The graphics, and the way that they’re rendered look really good for what you’re playing them on. Bear in mind that it is a tablet, not a full blown console.
Nintendo has managed to maintain that social aspect of their hardware/software relationship. While it’s not entirely unique to the video gaming world, Nintendo’s implementation of the principles is unique to say the least. My final bit is a little on the speculatory side, but with good merit, I promise. I looks like, due to certain hardware limitations that we’ll get to in a moment, Nintendo is seriously pushing to bring back retro styled games not unlike what we saw in the 8-bit, and the 16-bit era. I browsed the eShop, and two games really stuck out to me. The first is a game called Shovel Knight. It’s an 8-bit styled game that looks a lot like Castlevania only if that game didn’t take itself as seriously. The game play looks incredibly challenging, and fun, and that game looks like it would be right at home in any NES library. The second title was even more exciting than the first! Later this month, a new Blaster Master is releasing called Blaster Master Zero. Now, there have been quite a few games in the franchise over the years, but to me, none of them really managed to capture the charm of the original. The original was a side scrolling shoot ‘em up. It was a top down shooter, and it was a FPS all in one incredibly well made game. Zero looks to be returning to those glorious roots in full force, and I, for one, couldn’t be happier! Nintendo appears to be tapping into the market of aging gamers like myself who enjoy the challenge of those crusty games, and long for ‘the good old days’. It’s a bold move, and one that I hope they stick by because it really gives the Switch a super unique niche in the video gaming market.
Now just because I’m singing its praises doesn’t mean that the Switch is without its flaws. Number one on that list really goes back to the overall direction that Nintendo decided to take the console. Since they tried for a hybrid gameplay experience on the TV, and on the go, they had to work with the hardware constraints that come from developing a portable gaming device. In most aspects, they did a fantastic job. However, there’s only 32GB onboard memory. That’s teeny tiny by the standards of the day! It’s more on par with those needle wieners we were talking about earlier. However, it is almost on par with the amount of memory that you’d expect to find on a modern smartphone, and smartphones are the number one gaming platforms worldwide so I can understand the reasoning behind it. Also, Nintendo had to produce something that was affordable, and flash memory just hasn’t come quite far enough for it to be terribly affordable yet so 32GB probably seemed like a decent compromise between efficiency, and affordability. Nintendo also did have the foresight to make the memory expandable via microSD. This isn’t extremely useful yet as the larger capacity cards are nearly as expensive as the console itself right now, but prices are always dropping on such things, and by the end of the year, we may look back on this conversation and have a good laugh. And it is good to see Nintendo looking at the world with an eye to the future. My only other negative observations have to do with the dock. It feels kind of cheaply made, and flimsy. I know it’s just to give an easy connection to my TV, but it’s a far cry from the good old days of dropping an N64 five stories and then playing GoldenEye immediately after. On that same thread, the tablet feels kind of wobbly while it’s docked. This may have been preventative so as to avoid things getting broken under the heavy handed motor skills of children, but as an adult with none of those, I feel like the USB connector is going to snap each time I dock the tablet.
All in all, I gotta say that this is a phenomenal step forward for Nintendo thus far. Huge improvements have been made already in bringing a fantastic all around experience to the player and I can only hope that Nintendo maintains their forward momentum with this. Of course, with the Switch release, there was also a new Legend of Zelda released as well. I need a few days to really bite into it, but stick around for next week as we take a look at the all new Breath of the Wild, and maybe look at some of the older entries in the franchise!
No comments:
Post a Comment