Nintendo Switch Sports (Nintendo Switch)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): April 29, 2022
- Release Date (EU): April 29, 2022
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Developer: Nintendo
- Genres: Party, Sports
Game Features:
Wii Sports was an instant classic that needed no real explanation. It was an intuitive showcase of what the Wii’s new hardware was capable of and was packed to the brim with the spirit of Nintendo gaming. Fun and frantic couch co-op with a sprinkling of weirdness. When Nintendo launched their Motion Plus accessory we saw another sporting title in Wii Sports Resort, again here as a surprisingly content-packed tech demo to show the value of their newest toys. Since then, it’s been a bit quiet. Sure we saw the Wii U release of Wii Sports Club, but who really remembers that? You were back to the five classic Wii Sports games with additional online multiplayer, albeit originally releasing with an incredibly awkward payment model. While it tried to use the Wii U’s gamepad in interesting ways as Nintendo had previously done with the original Wiimote and Wii Motion Plus, there were already better titles out there that had already filled this role, and with both Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort still perfectly playable on a Wii U, the game had a lot to live up to, and somewhat fell flat.
Roll on the Switch’s launch in 2017. After Wii Sports for the Wiimote, Wii Sports Resort for the Wii Motion Plus, and Nintendoland showing what the Wii U’s gamepad could do in an incredibly fun assortment of games, Nintendo surely had something similar lined up for their brand new Joy Cons. Right? 1-2-Switch just wasn’t it. It was fun for five minutes and left in a drawer, and after seeing just how much variety and replayability Nintendo can stuff into a game like this with Wii Sports Resort, it felt like a kick in the teeth for those who went out and bought this for the full £39.99 retail price. What we wanted and what we needed was a Switch Sports, and even if we had to wait five years for it, it is here. And it’s still not as good as Wii Sports Resort.
So after the wait, just how much are you getting in this modern sporting package? Six sports: two returning in tennis and bowling, and four new in chambara, volleyball, badminton, and football (soccer for the non-UK folk among us). This is one more than the original Wii Sports, which is nice, but falls so vastly short of Wii Sports Resort’s 12. Each of these individual games do feel great to play and keep the spirit of the series alive. They also all come with online play, including a ranked league and a few interesting modes. Bowling has a really cool knockout mode where the bottom few players get eliminated every few rounds for a genuinely cool finale that feels like it has higher stakes than it really should. What keeps you coming back to the game is a loop of playing online, ranking up, and getting new stuff to customise your character with. While you’re doing these things it is genuinely quite engaging, but there is a key word in the previous sentence: online. Any and all progression is locked to playing online, and that really isn’t a great thing.
To clarify, you can play everything the game has to offer offline. You can play alone against computer opponents, or you can play with friends on the same console. It’s just as fun in isolation, but once you’ve done your one or two games, there’s nothing to keep you coming back. In Wii Sports Resort you had challenges associated with every game, and a number of interesting game modes to experience. Even in some of the returning games you’re missing content and challenges you previously had. There’s no 100 pin bowling, and there’s nothing that compares to Sword Showdown for chambara despite it being a brilliantly natural evolution of its predecessor’s sword-fighting game. Even the original Wii Sports had a number of medals you could win by perfecting certain practice games, and some were ridiculously difficult to keep you coming back and improve your scores. If you don’t have Switch Online, or even don’t have the most stable internet connection, I cannot in good faith recommend Switch Sports to you. Without an online connection, you’re looking at a Nintendo sports title with the same replayability as 1-2 Switch.
But let’s look past that for now; let’s assume you’re going into this with a NSO subscription and want to collect some accessories for your nice character and engage in the gameplay loop. Are the individual games good? For me some are great, and others fall flat. The game I was most looking forward to was bowling, as silly as that sounds. It’s simple and it’s been a staple of Nintendo sports titles. It’s always felt fun and surprisingly challenging to master. This iteration let me down in ways I struggle to express. It feels devoid of fun, and after five minutes of playing I found myself hitting strike after strike by just lining up a simple shot and throwing it at full speed. There’s no intricacy and the charm of its predecessors is nowhere to be seen here. You can't even throw the ball backwards. What's up with that? The knockout “battle royale” mode I mentioned earlier is a genuinely cool idea, but it needs more to it if it wants to be fulfilling.
Most of the other sports suffer from the opposite issue. Chambara feels great to play, as do volleyball, tennis, and badminton. But none of these modes have anything to do outside of their basic game. Tennis, badminton, and volleyball could all have challenge modes for holding rallies, aiming, or even weirder things like playing with a larger ball or having the net move. It feels like the smallest amount of effort could have been put in to add a significant amount of replayability and variety to games that really do feel great to play. In large, this is a game that suffers from the same major issue Mario Tennis games have faced for more than 15 years now; there’s so much in the way of refinement, but nothing to do with the polished blade of a game they’ve crafted.
Football deserves a special mention for using the leg strap in a neat way, and allowing you to actually kick the ball for one of its modes. For its more standard gameplay, I found myself really enjoying it for how wacky and out of control it felt. It’s like Rocket League if all the cars broke down. Again it would’ve really shined if there were some kind of challenge mode to go with it. An obstacle course or target practice would’ve been a great fit here.
There is still fun to be had. If you just want a game you can pick up with friends once every so often you’ll get your money’s worth eventually, even if you are sticking to what’s available offline. Switch Sports’ biggest issue is the shadow it finds itself living in and the expectations that have been setup that have just not been met. We’ve had confirmation that an additional sport, golf, will be coming in a free update later in the year. This is great, but the game really would benefit more from making the most of what’s already there. I can only hope we get this in an update too.
Verdict
- Sports themselves feel great to play
- More content coming via free updates down the line
- Bowling feels joyless
- Very limited content
- No progression of any kind if not playing online