How often have you had the chance to pick up a device which is completely new to you? I think the most memorable example of that was when I bought my first Android cell phone. This was in the early 20-teens and it was an early Huawei device, the Ascend G300. It was a budget phone, which meant almost no memory and minimal storage capacity.
It was also such a new user experience for me that it took
me almost a week to work out how to answer when somebody called me. And while
there were some useful applications, I didn’t think that it was going to be a
gaming device for me on the strength of that initial experience. It also didn’t
help that the device really was underpowered as only a budget Android device of
that era could be, with not enough RAM and not enough onboard storage to really
do much with it.
Roll on to the heights of 2019, where my stepdaughter was given a Switch Lite for Christmas by a well-meaning relative. Sadly, it was given without any games, and a sad time was had by her (although we picked up a couple of titles she wanted as soon as we could). It’s now 2022 and I just discovered the dust-covered device sitting in a cupboard with a flat battery. And I wondered, what is it like to use and actually play games on?
My History
I’ve been a gamer, well, almost since the beginning of home
computers. From my first experiences with a localised console called the
Fountain Force 2 around 1980, I’ve followed with great interest the progression
from 8-bit to 16-bit to now 64-bit home computers of varying levels of
complexity, and alongside them the gaming experiences that they gave life to.
Aside from my time with desktop computers of various lineages,
there were a few detours to enjoy the Sega Master System, then the Sega
Megadrive/Genesis, the Nintendo 64, and finally the original PlayStation, but
I’ve always kept coming back to “real” computers. And alongside those,
handhelds have been a very Nintendo thing for me, held back by a failure to
invest in rechargeable AA batteries. From the original Gameboy, a Gameboy
Advance, a DS, and finally a DS Lite – and an Atari Lynx in there somewhere –
these kept me company before I deciding mobile gaming also became a phone
thing.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was also a latecomer to
touchscreen cell phones with my first being a woefully underpowered and under-specced
Huawei Ascend G300. I was able to move up to an iPhone 6 Plus a little later,
fortunately, which held my interest until I grew tired of the walled garden of
accessories for Apple devices and graduated to a Samsung Galaxy S4. And yes, I
did need to rebuy all my games. I’ve been a gamer on Android ever since, and my
current daily driver is a Xiaomi 10T Pro that’s feeling its age, along with a
Samsung Tab A7 for ebooks and a handful of games.
But my gaming home has always been various flavours of PC,
dating back to a 386 in the very deep dark distant past – I’ve actually
upgraded my computer from that lowly 386, piece by piece. 386, then 486, then
into a new case with an ATX power supply as a k
Right now, my workhorse is incarnated as an aging AMD system in desperate need of an upgrade (along with a bigger hard drive or two). It’s still plenty for Skyrim which, like many people, I’m tempted to reinstall, but it’s not quite there for modern titles like Horizon Zero Dawn. I’m fortunate that my gaming budget is more Vampire Survivors than Cyberpunk 2077, so this isn’t necessarily an issue.
The Switch’s History
Now, I’m sure everybody at least knows what a Switch is, Nintendo’s follow-up from both the 3DS and the unfortunately-named Wii U. It launched to quiet interest, and proceeded to conquer the world as the handhold that both Xbox owners and PlayStation owners could play without surrendering their sense of superiority.
In my stepdaughter’s case, it was a device she wanted in
order to be able to play Minecraft with her friends without being tied to a
laptop, but with actual controls (unlike almost all tablet gaming). Of course,
time passes, and the cool place to virtually meet with your friends changes. The
Switch moved from desktop to shelf to cupboard, and I stumbled across it while
looking for something else which is honestly still lost.
First Steps
The first thing to do was, of course, to dig out the charger as
the batteries were thoroughly dead. After that was the import thing: creating a
new user on the Switch itself, and hooking that up with an account.
Of course, I also need to get used to the buttons being backward. XY/AB on my Xbox controllers becomes YX/BA on the Switch. My muscle memory isn’t impressed. It might not have caught me up so much, but they still make A the primary action button, and you use B to cancel.
But back to the set-up.
With a new user comes the ability to link it to a Nintendo
account. I’m fortunate that I have one lying around from my brief time in
Animal Crossing and a much longer time playing Dragalia Lost on my phone. Of
course, this runs into another hurdle – long passwords and touchscreens don’t
mix well, especially if you can’t see what you’ve typed because there doesn’t
appear to be an option to reveal the password you’re typing.
This turns into an extended endeavour where I need to find
the right login for the desktop Nintendo site to find the login there,
discovering that it won’t work with my email address but will work if I
create a username to login with, and re-type my very secure password many, many
times.
Once I was logged in, I opened the home screen and clicked
on the eShop button. And was told I needed to update the system. Click on
System Settings, then System, and then install the update.
<hold music plays briefly>
Back to the eShop. “Enter the password for your Nintendo
Account.” Two failed attempts later, I’m in!
And now begins the quest to find games to try.
Nintendo has never been known for great online
functionality, and after a quick look through their online store, I’d say
they’re not a great deal at better with storefronts. The section of their site
is a single page that loads in new pages of products as you scroll slowly down,
and there’s no ability to sort the page – that would honestly be useful while
looking for something cheap to try. The Current Offers page says there are 1110
items to choose from, but I don’t like my chances of finding something
genuinely good very quickly.
It turns out the Search option is what I need: while there
are only three narrow ranges of available prices by which you can search if
that’s what you’re looking for, and you can change the sort order to sort by
price (low to high), which came to my rescue. Add in filtering by Genre, and it’s
relatively golden.
Free Games
By the way, these are just random quick thoughts, not
reviews. I don’t currently have a debit or credit card so I can’t buy anything
through the eShop (and yes, when they say “PayPal” they really mean “a credit
card connected to your PayPal account”), and for an experiment like this, I don’t
have the disposable income to throw away on games that I may not enjoy. This isn’t
Steam, where you can throw back the dead fish and get a refund; I’m a blogger
on a tight budget, not a professional writer with an expense account. So yes, I
recognise that I’m not going to be experiencing a Super Mario or Breath of the
Wild experience, but honestly, that’s not what I’m curious about.
In the end, I decided to take the easy way out and download
a couple of free Pokémon titles, Pokémon Quest and Pokémon Café Remix. I’ve
played them both on my phone – I’ve completed Quest there – so they’re
relatively known quantities.
I’m also going to add cubic MMO Trove, which I’ve played to excess on PC. And last of the freebies will be Elder Scrolls: Blades, which I’ve also put a few hours into on my phone. But for now, intermission time while things download, I make a hot drink and plug the Switch back in to charge.
It turns out both of the Pokémon games are really just
touch-screen! They’re free so I shouldn’t feel cheated, but … it’s just like playing
on a much heavier and more cumbersome phone than the one I played them both on
originally. Maybe these weren’t the best ones to showcase what the Switch can
do.
Quick thoughts on both Pokémon games: really, they’re the
same as they are on my phone. Both are touch-controlled, and I’m not sure
there’s much more to be gained from playing them here. (It’s a pity that Genshin
Impact is still “in development,” as it would be interesting to it on a
portable device with physical controls – when it was installed on my phone, it
was just for daily logins because I hate virtual D-pads, and my actual
play sessions took place on the PC)
Now, Trove is an interesting experience with
controls. There’s only one drawback with it, and that’s something I’m going to
refer back to later in more overarching terms. But it’s not designed for play
on a small screen, and that hurts the game as there’s a lot of useful text
which is quite difficult to read, and as such, there’s a lot that you may miss
in terms of tips about what controls do. It’s also kind of challenging to line
up the mining laser unless blocks are right up close. But I think a lot of this
is just me. But it’s time to play some games with bigger budgets.
Last up is Elder Scrolls: Blades. Again, this was one that I
played first on my phone. But in this instance, I grew tired of the slow
drip-feed of chest rewards (and therefore slowing collection of building and
tradeskill items, and in turn progression) while they were fine-tuning their
monetisation, and the slow everything else. But it turns out that this one is unexpectedly
kinda fun, even with the combat going from “touch the left and right sides of
the screen to fight” to “press the left and right triggers to fight”.
The forced countdown timers for opening chests appear to have
gone – it used to take varying numbers of hours for chests to open, with more
valuable chests taking much, much longer. The downside to it is that
progression is still slow, inventory management is a slog, and the UI is built
around the notion of needing to physically move to the different vendors and
crafters in your town. To sum up my experience: outside of the main gameplay
loop, playing the game is like wading through molasses – just not as much fun.
I had a very, very short go on Asphalt 9: Legends, another free title, but it was very clear very quickly that I no longer have the reflexes for this.
Getting Fancy
These two are the games that my stepdaughter owns on cartridge, so there
are slim pickings to choose from. (Technically three games as there was also a Harvest Moon
title, but I know from experience that that kind of
build-a-farm-and-relationships title is not my cup of fun)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game I’ve seen pretty
much everywhere ever since it launched – even now I’ll see people
showing off downright majestic towns that they’ve built. I’m not one of those
people. In Fallout 4 the things I built were really big hovels, but I was at
least curious.
And yet, I bounced hard off this one. I’m usually
playing late, late, late at night, and there didn’t seem to be any NPCs
in the game who were awake and out in the world to interact with? I want to
start playing and everyone in the game is asleep, and on top of that, I just can’t
see where the fun – for me – is in collecting things to build things I don’t
want for NPCs I don’t know well enough to like with the hook being I need to
pay off a debt to a critter I don’t know.
I’d rather go back to Fallout 4, where the rest of the gameplay loops are interesting enough for me to find a gameplay reason to accidentally sink hours into building ugly settlements.
Last of the bunch is Ni No Kune: Wrath of the White Witch. I
haven’t played a lot of JRPGs in the last few years; mostly because I just
haven’t had the time thanks to some big lifestyle changes (and having a
3-year-old changes your priorities). But back in the day? A JRPG was a fun
time.
Aaand … not a fun time. That was an adorable story that pushed all my wrong buttons with its design. Let me count the ways.
- Unskippable cutscenes
- Long unskippable cutscenes
- Unlikeable main character
- Unironic use of “Golly!”
I’m not saying it’s a bad game – the overworld map is quite
impressive, for one thing. It’s just the epitome of “not for me,” which is kind
of a pity.
But putting all those experiences together brought to the
fore what has been my biggest issue with the device.
Don’t Get Old – It’s Something Something Blurry
As you get older, many people – especially myself – find their
vision gets worse. Especially once you hit 40 as our eyes join in the fun while
the rest of your body is cheerfully continuing to deteriorate. Specifically in my
case, something called Presbyopia, or gradual
loss of your eyes' ability to focus on nearby objects.
To sum up, when not wearing my glasses I have trouble focusing on things beyond around 8-10 inches from my eyes - 20-25cm for readers in civilised countries. Now, the problem for me is I’m wearing glasses that are no longer the right prescription for me, so things that are between 10-24 inches (25-60cm) or on the far side of arm’s length are blurry with glasses on.
It turns out the optimal distance for me to hold the Switch
is at head height and around 8” from my face, and that’s not a comfortable
position for any kind of extended play – maybe if I was sitting in the floor,
in front of a short table that I could rest my elbows on?
And no, I didn’t hook the Switch up to a tv. For one thing,
I couldn’t find a cable for that. But aside from the purely prosaic, if I
wanted a big-screen experience I already have a PC for that – although I’m not
sitting in an especially comfy chair.
Final Thoughts
So, that’s how it all went down. Having no interesting games
in my budget may have skewed things a little, but really the inaccessibility
of gaming on a small screen when your eyes are munted – yes, that’s a real Kiwi
word – is pretty much a fun-killer for me.
Admittedly if you could give me a 10-inch or 12-inch switch,
I think it might be a much different story – maybe hooking up one of those
portable 13” monitors that get advertised for hooking up to a laptop? I don’t
think it’s an especially price-effective solution, but it’s a fun idea.
Really though I can’t see the Switch (pun intended) ever
replacing my tablet for AFK gaming, although the actual library of games on my
Samsung is completely different to what I play on the PC due to the difference
between keyboard and mouse vs a touch-screen. There’s also the issue that comes
up with almost every Nintendo console at least where you’re leaving your
existing game library behind, unless you want to be running two (or more) systems.
I understand that backwards compatibility has made that less of an issue with Xbox and PlayStation, although it’s not entirely a non-issue as yet, but Nintendo’s efforts are much less impressive (and still requires you to re-buy emulated and ported titles from their older platforms if they’re available).
The Steam Deck is an interesting looking alternative – I’d love
to see a third-party 12-inch version of that hit the market in the
future, which I understand is a possibility due to the far more open nature of
the hardware and software, but I think for now my bad eyes and the rest of my
creaky self will be perched in front of my PC when I want something fun (and
complex) to play.
For now, pew-pew.
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