Gaming
Games
Is the Nintendo Switch the best handheld ever?
We know which games to expect – but what about the hardware itself? Does it hold up? We find out.
Meet the Nintendo Switch
© Nintendo
The Nintendo Switch is almost here. Yep, that jaw-dropping new Zelda game is so close we can almost taste the Lon Lon Milk. Come 3 March you’ll be able to dive into Hyrule once more on a brand new console, and try your hand at a bunch of ingenious/disturbing/both mini games in 1-2-Switch.
Nintendo had almost every game it plans to release on the new handheld hybrid console this year on show at a preview event late last week. Zelda aside, you’ll have played many before in some form, from Mario Kart 8 to Disgaea 5, so we’re not going to dig into those here. But it was also the first chance for journalists to try the new device out itself and see how it stacks up against its forebears, including the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U GamePad.
Want to know what that shiny new handheld and home console all-in-one feels like to play, and how much potential we think it has beyond this year’s crop of launch games? We’ve tried it out, so read on for our thoughts.
Serene screen
It would be tempting to draw comparisons between the Nintendo Switch and the Wii U GamePad displays, given that both devices use an equally sized 6.2-inch touchscreen. The similarities end there however. The Switch’s display is a vast improvement: the bezel is small, and the resolution sharper (1280x720), meaning it’s capable of HD gaming on the go. Certainly, it’s not as sharp as some smartphone displays of the same size – the iPhone 7 Plus’ 5.5-inch 1080p display, for example, or the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium Android phone, which offers an almost overkill 4K resolution – but for the purposes of playing Nintendo games it’s plenty. We always struggled reading the results in Mario Kart 8 races when played on the Wii U GamePad, but you won’t have any such issues here. Colours pop too - there’s no questions this is the most beautiful display we’ve ever seen used on any dedicated gaming handheld.
One unknown still: the quality of the touchscreen response. Nintendo confirmed last week that the Switch uses a capacitive touchscreen. This is the more finger-friendly type of touchscreen used by smartphones, better suited to recognising fingertip presses and taps. It’s a big change for Nintendo however, which has used resistive touchscreens for the DS, 3DS and Wii U GamePad (typically cheaper, but much more accurate to the pixel, so long as you use a stylus). On paper, it should be a welcome one, but no games on show at Nintendo’s preview made use of the touchscreen. It’ll be interesting to see how essential the touchscreen ends up being both for navigation and for games.
Joy-Concerns?
Nintendo probably spends more resource than we could ever conceive naming its controllers each generation, and this time around it’s dubbed them “Joy-Con” controllers. From our hands-on time so far, we’re very taken with them, and despite the high price of extra sets (US$79.99), we think they could prove the Nintendo Switch’s unique selling point for enabling local multiplayer anywhere. Many games – from Sonic Mania to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – are designed to be played with just one half, like a tiny NES controller, only wireless and much more comfortable. In other words, where there’s space for one, there’s space for two, so move over and let us play with you.
While the Joy-Con controllers we tested could have been non-final, they felt exceptionally well made, with rounded edges that glided smoothly into place when connecting to the screen body. Nintendo has even found space for two new buttons on the insides of both Joy-Con controllers, the SL and SR buttons, which open up some new ways to play in mini-game anthology 1-2-Switch when turned on their sides with the buttons at 90 degrees to you.
The Joy-Con controllers come in bright hues too
© Nintendo
The downsides? There’s no analogue D-pad to be found on either Joy-Con, which could make fighting games – the upcoming Ultra Street Fighter II springs to mind – tricky to play. We also didn’t get a chance to try the Joy-Con controllers with the grips connected, as many Switch players will end up doing while the device is docked and connected to the living room TV.
It’s also worth noting that some games do not appear possible to play in tablet mode – like ARMS, Nintendo’s unexpectedly charming mash-up of Power Stone and Wii Sports Boxing, which requires you to hold one Joy-Con in each hand to punch – so in order to play them on the go, you’ll still need a table to prop the screen up on.
Tablet mode engaged
Really though, you’ll probably be playing the Nintendo Switch on your own more when you’re out of the house than with others, despite a high-budget launch video that begs to differ. We’ve good news to report here: the Nintendo Switch is a fantastic portable. The Joy-Con controllers slot right in and stay there. The thumb sticks are easy to reach and use, as are the trigger buttons. Nintendo hasn’t confirmed the overall weight, but it felt comfortable to play Zelda on, using the standard twin thumbsticks set up deployed for most 3D games – we could easily see ourselves playing the whole game this way, if we didn’t want to marvel at its beauty on a bigger TV. At 9.4 inches wide, the Switch is smaller than an Apple iPad, and only slightly bigger than a Sony PS Vita – if you’ve ever played that, you’ll be just fine.
The Switch can lean back, too
© Nintendo
What’s up, dock?
Halfway into our Breath of the Wild demo, we switched to guns and slipped the Switch into its TV docking station to check out the game in fullscreen glory. The transition was seamless, and after dropping it in we were away once more, scaling mountains and utterly failing to unearth any rupees in the grass. Visually, Zelda may not actually be the best example of the Switch’s potential in the living room: it’s beautiful, yes, but it’s been in production for years for another console. It reportedly runs at 900p resolution in docked mode when other games are capable of running on full HD (1080p), and very clearly only at 30 frames per second, when 60 will be possible in other titles. Splatoon 2 is a much better example of its potential, running at a crisp and healthy 1080p/60fps – par for the course compared to other consoles, certainly, but for one you can take out and about with you? Unprecedented.
Battery lifer?
We didn’t get to play any individual Switch console for long enough to test out Nintendo’s longevity claims – we had just 20 fleeting minutes with Breath of the Wild, which we’d trade our firstborn for to experience again before 3 March – but there doesn’t seem to be any cause for alarm here. With a bigger screen comes the luxury of more space for battery; Nintendo is claiming up to six hours of battery life, or around three for a demanding, power-slurping game like Zelda, and that seems plausible. Welcome, even.
Yes, that’s around the same amount of time you’d get off one charge back in the days of the Sega Game Gear, but expectations have changed since then. For a start, you won’t be ploughing through six AA batteries every time – the Switch juices up via the soon to be standard USB-C cable. And more importantly, this is around the same amount of time you’d get from a Nintendo 3DS or Sony PS Vita anyway. Is it enough to see you through a trans-Atlantic flight? Unlikely. But is it enough to keep your thumbs occupied to and from work each day on the train? You bet.
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