As I mentioned in other threads of mine, I wasn't really a firm believer in the concept of the Switch. Felt overpriced and underpowered when it was announced, but when amazing games like Super Mario Odyssey and Breath Of The Wild started dropping, I felt the need to buy one in launch year. I had a great time with it, no doubt. Some of the strongest installments in nearly all Nintendo franchises, including the definitive version of Mario Kart, a superimpressive 3D Mario, an open-world Zelda and Maker 2 with its great creative options. Spent insane amounts of time on Picross games, even bought various third parties where portability was comfortable like Saints Row 3, Civilization 6, Diablo 3 and Rocket League. It's a system with tons of great games, and while I have issues with the controllers and some of the OS features (or lack, thereof), it certainly got mileage on it, even more so now that my fiancé is using it all the time for the new Animal Crossing.
But aside from the aforementioned issues, there's one design element that sticks out like a sore thumb this generation: multiplayer, both local and online. Nintendo having somewhat limited online is not particularly surprising, though we were certainly led to believe improvements were being done due to the fact it now became a paid service like Xbox Live and PlayStation Plus. This does not seem to be the case. And surprisingly enough, local multiplayer took quite the beating in multiple games as well, something Nintendo has typically been excellent with.
Let's start with the newest Switch game I bought, 51 Worldwide Games. There's tons of fun games to have, from classic board games like Ludo, Chess or Mandala, to card games like Texas Hold 'Em and Black Jack, with even Wii Sports-style minigames like bowling thrown in the mix. It's an excellent package for its price, and we expect to get plenty of mileage out of it especially on trips. We had a couple friends over on Saturday, we were excited to try out Bowling for old times' sake, Darts because it's pretty dope and other things... except, this can't be done. The game gladly advertises that 4 players can play a variety of games. Out of the 51 games, only 2 can be played with 4 players locally, these are Ludo and Black Jack. One other game can be played locally with 3 players, going up to a total of 3 games that support more than 2 players on the same console. Wii Sports in 2006 or Kinect Sports in 2010 had no issue offering bowling for 4 players locally, Nintendo's new game in 2020 can not offer the same. Oh, and you can't log in with other profiles for the other players, they have to be guests.
Going back cronologically, can't gloss over Animal Crossing: New Horizons' problems. Where to begin? For couples with a single system like us... good luck getting much enjoyment out of the game. Playing locally, the second player is extremely limited. Of course, whoever logs in first is also the one creating an island, further players are unable to do as much. And the online? You can't put limits on what people who join can do unlike something like Minecraft. Everytime somebody joins, you gotta wait that lengthy animation that blocks all players that shows the player arriving to your island. Imagine if in 1999, Unreal Tournament's online matches forced all players to sit around and wait while somebody else is joining. The shootout we were having? Paused, someone else is joining. Animal Crossing has this in 2020.
Last year finally saw the release of Mario Maker 2, a game I spent a lot of hours on as I managed to create multiple well-liked courses. There are, however, heavy limitations as far as local multiplayer goes, and the online 4-players competitive mode has been practically broken, unplayable since day one due to a terrible netcode that has the side effect of blocking everybody's game if a single player appears to be lagging. I don't think I need to link the hundreds of videos floating around the web of the slideshow that mode is. It's really disappointing.
Going a bit farther back, there's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Local play works rather well, tons of options and all. But then the netcode is so bad that the game was not even included for this year's EVO that is obviously being held online-only due to the COVID-19 situation requiring social distancing and travel restrictions.
Yoshi's Crafted World, despite being stupid easy, is certainly one of the most charming local co-op games. Or at least it would be, because the game is designed in such a way that you are continously bouncing involuntarily from each other's head, stealing each other's eggs, gobbling up the other player and so on. I swear you're more likely to annoy the other player than actively help each other. The Girlfriend Reviews video channel expressed the issue a lot better than me.
Speaking of easy games, the Pokémon: Let's Go! games offer a local co-op that is functional enough, except the developers didn't bother chaning any of the game balancing or scaling for two players. This means that a game that was already pretty damn easy to begin with (and this is coming from someone who never plays Pokémon), became a walk in the park where you needed to try really hard to fail. Having twice as many monsters and moves and no setbacks - this certainly wasn't thought out particularly well.
Looking back at some of the launch year games, there's Super Mario Odyssey which didn't really need a co-op mode, they threw one in anyway. It's... not very good, as the second player only gets to screw around moving Mario's cap around with heavy limitations, playing like 2% of what player 1 does.
What about Splatoon 2? Its decision to have its multiplayer content rotate based on the hours of the day was pretty crazy, as it meant that people with fixed work hours, school and so on would literally miss out on certain parts of the game, only due to the fact they would log in at a certain time of the day compared to another time. Imagine not being able to play a game mode or map because you logged in at 8pm insteam of 10am. Other than that, the experience wasn't too bad, but it's another game that showed how not including an Ethernet port in the console without buying a separate adapter was a baffling decision.
Not everything is a disaster, mind. I've had a solid time with New Super Mario Bros. U's port, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe delivers excellent local play alongside barebones but fun online. Stuff like Snipperclips is also pretty fun to play locally, Picross' local co-op is a novelty that you need to wrap your head around but it works, and I have no doubt that some other games feature excellent multiplayer modes. But these are the ones I bought and played in multiplayer, local or online, and the disappointments are getting bigger and bigger. After yet another game (51 Worldwide Games) that features mindboggling multiplayer limitations, this only a few months after the mindboggling design choices for the multiplayer in the new Animal Crossing, I feel like I'm not really getting my money worth with Nintendo's online service, and for a system that ships with two controllers and wants to be a social experience more than any other Nintendo console before it... it sure fails to deliver on that exact concept, even compared to past Nintendo consoles and games. When many Wii installments of franchises offer a better multiplayer than what's seen on the Switch versions, you clearly have a problem, and Nintendo has had a couple too many for my tastes personally.
But aside from the aforementioned issues, there's one design element that sticks out like a sore thumb this generation: multiplayer, both local and online. Nintendo having somewhat limited online is not particularly surprising, though we were certainly led to believe improvements were being done due to the fact it now became a paid service like Xbox Live and PlayStation Plus. This does not seem to be the case. And surprisingly enough, local multiplayer took quite the beating in multiple games as well, something Nintendo has typically been excellent with.
Let's start with the newest Switch game I bought, 51 Worldwide Games. There's tons of fun games to have, from classic board games like Ludo, Chess or Mandala, to card games like Texas Hold 'Em and Black Jack, with even Wii Sports-style minigames like bowling thrown in the mix. It's an excellent package for its price, and we expect to get plenty of mileage out of it especially on trips. We had a couple friends over on Saturday, we were excited to try out Bowling for old times' sake, Darts because it's pretty dope and other things... except, this can't be done. The game gladly advertises that 4 players can play a variety of games. Out of the 51 games, only 2 can be played with 4 players locally, these are Ludo and Black Jack. One other game can be played locally with 3 players, going up to a total of 3 games that support more than 2 players on the same console. Wii Sports in 2006 or Kinect Sports in 2010 had no issue offering bowling for 4 players locally, Nintendo's new game in 2020 can not offer the same. Oh, and you can't log in with other profiles for the other players, they have to be guests.
Going back cronologically, can't gloss over Animal Crossing: New Horizons' problems. Where to begin? For couples with a single system like us... good luck getting much enjoyment out of the game. Playing locally, the second player is extremely limited. Of course, whoever logs in first is also the one creating an island, further players are unable to do as much. And the online? You can't put limits on what people who join can do unlike something like Minecraft. Everytime somebody joins, you gotta wait that lengthy animation that blocks all players that shows the player arriving to your island. Imagine if in 1999, Unreal Tournament's online matches forced all players to sit around and wait while somebody else is joining. The shootout we were having? Paused, someone else is joining. Animal Crossing has this in 2020.
Last year finally saw the release of Mario Maker 2, a game I spent a lot of hours on as I managed to create multiple well-liked courses. There are, however, heavy limitations as far as local multiplayer goes, and the online 4-players competitive mode has been practically broken, unplayable since day one due to a terrible netcode that has the side effect of blocking everybody's game if a single player appears to be lagging. I don't think I need to link the hundreds of videos floating around the web of the slideshow that mode is. It's really disappointing.
Going a bit farther back, there's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Local play works rather well, tons of options and all. But then the netcode is so bad that the game was not even included for this year's EVO that is obviously being held online-only due to the COVID-19 situation requiring social distancing and travel restrictions.
Yoshi's Crafted World, despite being stupid easy, is certainly one of the most charming local co-op games. Or at least it would be, because the game is designed in such a way that you are continously bouncing involuntarily from each other's head, stealing each other's eggs, gobbling up the other player and so on. I swear you're more likely to annoy the other player than actively help each other. The Girlfriend Reviews video channel expressed the issue a lot better than me.
Speaking of easy games, the Pokémon: Let's Go! games offer a local co-op that is functional enough, except the developers didn't bother chaning any of the game balancing or scaling for two players. This means that a game that was already pretty damn easy to begin with (and this is coming from someone who never plays Pokémon), became a walk in the park where you needed to try really hard to fail. Having twice as many monsters and moves and no setbacks - this certainly wasn't thought out particularly well.
Looking back at some of the launch year games, there's Super Mario Odyssey which didn't really need a co-op mode, they threw one in anyway. It's... not very good, as the second player only gets to screw around moving Mario's cap around with heavy limitations, playing like 2% of what player 1 does.
What about Splatoon 2? Its decision to have its multiplayer content rotate based on the hours of the day was pretty crazy, as it meant that people with fixed work hours, school and so on would literally miss out on certain parts of the game, only due to the fact they would log in at a certain time of the day compared to another time. Imagine not being able to play a game mode or map because you logged in at 8pm insteam of 10am. Other than that, the experience wasn't too bad, but it's another game that showed how not including an Ethernet port in the console without buying a separate adapter was a baffling decision.
Not everything is a disaster, mind. I've had a solid time with New Super Mario Bros. U's port, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe delivers excellent local play alongside barebones but fun online. Stuff like Snipperclips is also pretty fun to play locally, Picross' local co-op is a novelty that you need to wrap your head around but it works, and I have no doubt that some other games feature excellent multiplayer modes. But these are the ones I bought and played in multiplayer, local or online, and the disappointments are getting bigger and bigger. After yet another game (51 Worldwide Games) that features mindboggling multiplayer limitations, this only a few months after the mindboggling design choices for the multiplayer in the new Animal Crossing, I feel like I'm not really getting my money worth with Nintendo's online service, and for a system that ships with two controllers and wants to be a social experience more than any other Nintendo console before it... it sure fails to deliver on that exact concept, even compared to past Nintendo consoles and games. When many Wii installments of franchises offer a better multiplayer than what's seen on the Switch versions, you clearly have a problem, and Nintendo has had a couple too many for my tastes personally.
