The Switch
I went and bought myself a Nintendo Switch. I’m not a Nintendo fan, I got the Wii and was not impressed. I don’t have a relationship with the Nintendo brands like Mario, Zelda or Donkey Kong.
Yet, I bought a Nintendo Switch. Why? Because it is where gaming is happening right now.
Following E3 2018 it was apparent that Switch is the new indie platform. If we ignore the Nintendo titles for a while, Switch is where all the indie titles aim to be. The portable format is perfect for on the go experiences that many indie games offer. The sort of games where you play 5 minutes here and there. I play those games alot because life does not allow me long stretches of game play anymore. In order for me to finish anything it must be digestable in small portions.
I’m not a foreign to portable gaming. I’ve been playing on PlayStation Vita for many years, but now Sony has outright abandonded it and new games are no longer coming out on it. It’s sad because that console is awesome.
So getting a Switch has a lot to do about paving the way for PlayStation 5 in 2020, making sure I have lots of interesting and diverse experiences up until then.
If I compare the Switch to PSVita, the Switch is slightly more powerful and it has a bigger screen. One of the huge benefits with the Switch that I enjoy is the ability to dock the console and continue play the game on the TV. But I think of the Switch as primarily a portable console.
I’m a bit disappointed that the screen doesn’t extend all the way to the edges of the console. There is a black frame that is substansial. The screen is still bigger than PSVita’s but considering the size of the Switch, I would’ve preferred the screen to be a bit bigger. Also the screen doesn’t work very well in sunlight. Sunlight makes it hard to ser what is happening on the screen or when it’s dark I keep seeing my own ugly face. This seems like a problem that cell phone manufacturers have solved.
The controls are bad. I really don’t like the small thumb sticks. They are very similiar to the ones on the PSVita and I find it really hard to do any kind of precision with them. When a game is a port from regular consoles to this, it can become much harder because of the lack of precision in the thumb sticks. It makes me irritated.
The Switch has LZ/RZ which correspomds to L2/R2 on PlayStation 4. This is great, as PSVita was missing those and it seemed like every game struggled to find a replacement for them in their control scheme. However their placement is a bit awkward and it hurts my hands to play a gamw that requires me to use them regularly. The L/R buttons are also quite discomfortable to use, and I really can’t get a grip on why they didn’t include a Dpad. Instead they have 4 buttons that act as a dpad but doesn’t work like it.
The console is too large in my meaning to carry around, which kind of beats the purpose of being a portable. If they could reduce the size to the screen size that would be perfect. It is way too heavy for playing while laying on your back, I usually want to rest the console against my leg or the arm of the chair. It has fans, which the PSVita doesn’t have, and the Switch had become warm when playing for an extended period of time, which adds to the discomfort. Sharp edges and weird button placement makes this console much less pleasant to play than the PSVita.
With that said, I do enjoy the Switch and I prefer playing games on the go, or just in the sofa while the TV is busy, and I will keep buying new games for the Switch rather than PS4. The option to be portable or play on the TV greatly outweighs the downsides.
Replay 