Here’s how I know Nintendo Switch Sports is a good party game: I hate my friends now.
It’s one thing to lose a typical local multiplayer game, one Smash or Soul Calibur or what do you have. It’s something completely different to repeatedly have the lights knocked out of you with a foam sword, just because one of your friends “trained in martial arts” is so “pretty good” at this kind of thing. Or to sit there and watch with smoldering astonishment while another friend – a beer bottle in one hand, Joy-Con in the other – continues to toast 13 strokes in a row during their first match ever. Or to try to spike a volleyball and then … stumble, fall flat and lose the point.
Yes, you can come in Nintendo Switch Sports– or at least I can.
Nintendo Switch Sportsout today for the console, which is in the name of the game, is for all intents and purposes the follow-up to Wii SportsWhich one came packaged with Nintendo’s 2006 console, by becoming a culturally dominant force in the process. Like its predecessor, you use motion controls to participate in mini-games based on IRL competitive sports. Right now, six activities are available: tennis, volleyball, badminton, football, bowling and a swordfighting competition called chambala.
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Playing these sports requires you to more or less repeat the movements you would make in the real versions of these sports, with the controller in hand. You’re Joy-Con to roll a ball down the court in bowling. You swing it to slam the ball over the net in tennis (or what-the-projectile-is-called in badminton). For most sports, it seems like your character is automatically moving toward the ball, so getting in touch is a matter of timing. The learning curve here is practically horizontal.
It’s not knocking Change sports. In fact, the low barrier to entry is exactly what makes it click: You do not have to spend time explaining the rules or giving tips to beginners. Just give them a Joy-Con, point to one button in the game (that’s the trigger on Joy-Con), and let them rip.
The only riddle here is the chambala, which throws you and another player at each other on a small platform in the middle of a pool. Your goal is to slam your opponent to the edge of the platform and push them into the water below. Best two out of three wins. But there is a twist! By holding down the trigger on your Joy-Con you can block. If an opponent swings vertically towards you and you block horizontally, they are stunned, giving you a few seconds to land hits. But if you block horizontally, they still land a hit. (The opposite logic applies to horizontal swings.) The result is a game that admittedly requires some physical movement, but which is just as much a duel of sense. The whole thing is also first person, with local matches taking place in vertical split screen. One could easily see chambala succeed in virtual reality.
But even the more well-known sports can evoke a similar excitement. Volleyball, for example, seems to be the most out of your seat, as two teams of two industries serve without the eerily messy tennis rules. My friends and I orchestrated a small tournament. At the end of the last game, both our teams had 4 points on the board. The ball bounced off my team’s side. I kept my Joy-Con ready, ready to hit it back.
And then my character planted face. I have no idea why. But it was fun AF.
Over the next few weeks, observers will no doubt make a lot of hay about whether or not Nintendo Switch Sports is a worthy successor. After all, it has some huge shoes to fill. Wii Sports was not just a game – it was a system-anchoring phenomenon that permeated the culture. (Fun stats: Wii Sports sold more copies than the population of any the individual country in Europe except Germany.) The Switch itself has recently passed the Wii in terms of total sales, and is in the middle of without a doubt the biggest year yet. Comparisons are bound to abound.
Honestly, I could not care less about any of it. I just want to have fun with my friends. So far in this regard, Nintendo Switch Sports is a hole in one. Well, until the golf mode will be released later this year and my friends invariably start scoring real holes in one. Then they can all go to get dirty.