Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour

After reviewing games for over two decades, it's nice to still be able to be surprised and feel like there are challenges left. Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a perfect example of this. I don't really know how to approach it and look at it, and I also have a hard time finding a direct target audience for it, even though find it quite enjoyable.

I assume that more people than me raised their eyebrows when Nintendo announced it as a kind of introductory title to Switch 2. Many have drawn parallels to Wii Sports in that the game is meant to serve as a kind of review of the new hardware and present the possibilities it offers. But where Wii Sports was a game for everyone, Switch 2 Welcome Tour doesn't really feel like a game for anyone, except possibly a small super-initiated clique of hardcore fans who like experimental titles and a slow pace.

At first, my spontaneous thought was that of course it should have been included with the console in the same way as Wii Sports was - which greatly contributed to making the Wii Nintendo's then biggest console success. However, Switch 2 Welcome Tour obviously doesn't have the same sexy, stripped-down and intuitive appeal as Wii Sports, and is found, as I said, rather at the other end of the scale. It's all about super-small characters, lots of text and a surprisingly complex layout.

Switch 2 Welcome Tour really lives up to its name, with the entire game (or at least the part I got to try) taking place on a giant Switch complete with all the trimmings. I play as an incredibly small character, and on top of the console are a number of tents that act as a sort of demo stations, quiz desks with staff behind them, and other stations and people walking around. Everything on the console such as buttons, sockets, speakers, magnets and more are clickable and if you press them you get a little explanation of what they do.

By looking at everything to tick off what there is to see in each area, successfully playing demos and doing quizzes you then unlock new areas of the console as well as the accessories to visit. I took my little character (who can of course be personified to some extent) and started exploring, from a huge left Joy-Con 2, then the screen and then the right Joy-Con 2. Moving on isn't always easy and requires a certain amount of medals and finding things, which turn out to be quite well hidden.

For my own part, I was a little surprised at how detailed Nintendo are in their descriptions of everything. The Welcome Tour really goes into more depth than you might think, and when I clicked on the lens that makes up the technology behind the mouse pointer, I learnt how Nintendo worked with different lens choices because there is a little more distance between the lens and the surface than on a normal PC mouse. Similarly, I learnt how the vibrations in the Joy-Cons 2 can also be used to create sound, and how the technology achieves this - illustrated by the unmistakable sound of picking up a penny in Super Mario Bros. There's often a bit of history thrown in too, like Nintendo reminding us that they actually released an official mouse back in 1992 with Mario Paint and also had the Nintendo 64 Mouse in Japan in 1999. The fact that the Joy-Con 2 works as a mouse is therefore not that new for Nintendo.

After reading up on a particular topic, you can go to a Quiz desk to take a quick quiz on a particular subject. The questions aren't particularly difficult if you've actually read the signs around the desk (you're given answer choices, one or two of which are often more on the humorous side), but if you haven't, some of them are almost blind luck. It's an unusual set-up that means I'm effectively plugging Nintendo advertising, which both reinforces my view that it probably should have been included with the console anyway, while also making me realise that it's certainly not for everyone and understand why Nintendo didn't want to bundle it.

This is a game that kids can't even play because of all the text, and the casual audience that buys Switch 2 probably isn't interested in reading about the magnetic technology used to attach the Joy-Con 2 to the screen. I doubt even gamers are super keen on walking around reading message boards and making sure to remember what's on them for future reference. It's simply not a very appropriate game to ship with the console, but I don't know if I think it's that appropriate to charge either.

Well, the various demo tents found here and there are all dedicated to different features of your Switch 2, and they are quite fascinatingly designed. Take, for example, the way in which Nintendo chooses to illustrate 4K graphics. They do this with the ultra-classic track 1-1 in Super Mario Bros, and show how stamp-sized it becomes on a 4K screen. The whole track becomes just a small strip on a normal sized TV, in which you not only have to play through it but also, among other things, pass it equipped with fire flower, go down a green pipe and grab a 1-Up mushroom. For me, being of an age, it all stuck (although I did manage the n00b feat of dying instantly on the very first Goomba, taken aback by how incredibly small everything was), but watching a person half my age (so still just over 20) playing the same one, he struggled for a good 15 minutes to find the invisible block that gives a 1-Up mushroom before I revealed where it was. Again, it's not for kids.

Other exercises I tried included timing a ball through a maze using the Joy-Con 2 as a mouse, identifying the frame rate at which objects flew across the screen (to illustrate the superiority of 120 frames per second), and a maracas mini-game that showed off the new shake feature. The latter impressed greatly, with the Joy-Con 2 clearly recognising when a maraca was filled with larger or smaller objects.

All of these mini-games have higher challenges as well, but they're really just basic tech demos and inherently not very entertaining really. A regular branch in any Mario Party has more depth than these, and so the higher difficulty levels don't really add anything.

My favourite of the demo tents was a Twister-like (that popular pre-party game, you know) story where you had to put your fingers on coloured squares and try to complete all ten. Some demos had to be played on the TV, others on the device's screen - this branch belonged to the latter, and fingers were quickly intertwined, but I still thought it was a fun trifle that offered something new. All in all, these demo packs are basically nothing special, but entertaining nonetheless, and fulfil the purpose of really demonstrating the hardware, as well as encouraging you to try again to set records so you can get more medals and unlock new stuff.

In short, Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a pain in the arse to review. It's never particularly fun, but I'm not particularly bored either because I work with games and am still genuinely interested in Nintendo. And it's debatable whether I play at all, since clicking on all the functions of a Switch 2, reading non-fiction about the console's battery and shaking Joy-Cons or drawing lines with a mouse can hardly be called gameplay.

The biggest flaw with the game, however, is that you can't actually complete it unless you buy certain accessories. If you don't have a Pro Controller you can't do its exercises, same with the camera and so on. I understand why, because of course you need a Pro Controller to be able to play with it, but it's really not a set-up that feels very clear and it should be made clearer that you don't get the full experience without accessories.

Aside from Nintendo obviously wanting to make an extra buck on Welcome Tour instead of bundling it, my time with the game has made me realise why they sell it separately. It's plot heavy, has a lot of text, and feels designed for an extremely niche group of players. I think it's a game that a lot of kids and beginners will dislike, and even I, the target audience, don't really enjoy it, it feels like I'm ticking off a list of things to do.

Sure, it's a very cheap game - that can barely even be called a game - but that doesn't make it any more fun. If you know you don't like slow pace, lots of text, little interactivity and studying, you're better off choosing something else instead. But if you're one of those hard-core Nintendo fans who buys the console and all its accessories and is happy to pay to flex your skills, then this will be right up your street.