1-2-Switch

The weirdness starts at the very beginning. Each individual game is introduced with a fairly well-produced live-action trailer-slash-tutorial that gives you an idea of the overall tone and mechanics. They’re color coordinated and neatly cut, but seem to be advertisements for the individual game modes more than helpful tutorials. Some are really bad at communicating what you’re supposed to do, and as a result a lot of your first play sessions will probably involve a whole lot of people saying ‘wait, what am I supposed to do here?’

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Even when you do have an understanding of how different games work, some, like the baseball mini-game, are confusing. You know one of you has to bat and one of you has to pitch, but it doesn’t tell you what sounds to listen for to swing and hit the virtual ball at the right time, plus you can actually get caught out, which seems like it might happen at random. When you’re the batter, a virtual player on a non-existent field can ‘catch’ the ball you hit, and I was never able to tell the physical difference between a successful swing and a losing one. It never communicated that with me.

“ Baby is one of the most off-putting mini-games I've ever played.

Other games like Gorilla, Baby, and Zen serve very little appeal beyond the novelty of how odd they are. Gorilla has you pound your chest to a simple beat - something you could do without a Joy-Con if you really wanted – but you probably don’t. Baby has you take the console out of the dock and hold it like a baby, rocking it slowly until it stops crying, and then setting it down without waking it up. And it does seem to genuinely be the audio of a baby crying, which automatically makes it one of the most off-putting mini-games I think I’ve ever played. Zen has you sit perfectly still or hold a particular pose, or just put the Joy-Con down - the Switch largely can’t tell the difference.

There’s a big issue with audio-based games in a party setting, too: they become unplayable if there’s too much background noise. One of my favorite games has you move the controller up, down, left, and right if the in-built female voice commands it, but you have to do the opposite if the male voice says it. That game is, in the right setting, competitive and fun, but it’s odd to have a party game you can’t play at an actual party where people are talking or listening to music.

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And yet, the things that do work make people laugh much more than most. Even after four hours experiencing all of 1-2-Switch’s absurdities with a small group I didn’t feel bored of the selection of games, and I easily could’ve added a few more hours of playing the simple reflex contest of Quick Draw on top of that.

“ It offers an oddly personal competitive experience.

Even if it’s laughter at the expense of someone chomping on absolutely nothing just for the Joy-Con to pick up how many virtual sandwiches they’ve eaten, 1-2-Switch offers an oddly personal competitive experience that’s tailored to your own social setting. At some point during our Switch party, we figured out that making a B sound while opening and closing your mouth seems to help you move faster, which resulted in a room full of people trying it out and trying to beat the previous person’s score, all the while making totally ridiculous “bababababa” sounds. We laughed so, so hard at Milk - the game where you milk a virtual cow - and the unnatural, frankly overtly sexual motions it forces you into, all the while encouraging increasingly awkward eye contact between the two players.

Beyond humor, there’s also a degree of wonderment in discovering exactly how the hardware works. Ball Count still seems like magic to me, in that it has you count the amount of small virtual balls that are present in the Joy-Con based on simulation through precise vibration and sound. It’s an interesting demonstration of the Switch’s “high-definition haptics” technology and it’s worth trying once or twice, but I don’t think a whole lot of people will repeatedly come back to it. It’s more gimmicky than anything, because when you think about it it’s literally just simulating marbles in a box.

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There are a few different modes, too, including a shuffle mode that plays different games at random and a virtual board game that increases the usual number of players by encouraging you to split up into teams and pass the controllers around. In that, it’s inclusive and adaptable, and I think even people who’ve never played a game before could become wholly comfortable with 1-2-Switch in a matter of hours.

That said, I think this is a game you show to people once, when you’re trying to introduce them to the Switch, and then probably never again. It’s fun, and I’ve repeatedly seen it entertain a room full of people who might not even be playing, but the novelty quickly wears off, and I ultimately think it should've been included in a bundle for free.