Nintendo Switch hands-on at Hammersmith Apollo

3DSBlessed were lucky to get tickets to the exclusive Nintendo Switch hands-on event in London’s famous Hammersmith/Eventim Apollo (which is multi-purpose entertainment venue). There were many games from first party titles to third party titles to choose from to try out.

The tablet screen outputs at 720p (HD Ready), whilst in dock mode on a television the Switch outputs at 1080p (Full HD) and had the Switch models on display in their respective modes.

1-2-Switch:

Nintendo’s latest mini game collection 1-2-Switch shows off the L and R Joy-Con capabilities in different ways from counting how many balls are in a box (Ball Count) to milking a cow (Milk). There were 6 games to try out at the event with 2 booths to each game, but was told that the final game would be at around 15-20 games.

One of the more notable games was Milk in that you hold the Joy-Con vertically, wrap your fingers around it, and move it up and down while applying pressure to the top and bottom in turn and repeating it to … milk the cow. As expected many people see innuendo in this action and I will leave it at that.

The HD Rumble was put to use in certain games such as Ball Count in which you had to guess the numbers of balls in the box and by titling the Joy-Con you can actually hear the balls hit the box.

I felt that this should be included with the Switch, like Wii Sports and Nintendoland were for the Wii and Wii U Deluxe mode respectively, as opposed to having a RRP of £39.99.

Arms:

Another game that shows off the Switch and the Joy-con controllers is Arms which at first looks like a Wii Sports Boxing successor. Unlike a lot of motion control games that can be won on luck, Arms requires you to plan out your moves to beat your opponent with moving the Joy-Cons like fist and punching them towards the screen. The Joy-Cons are more advanced than the Wiimote with this in that if you twist your first you can curve the punch instead of it being a straight punch. If you build up enough energy you can unleash a  special attack by pressing the

The demo had 5 playable characters and three choice of weapons to choose which each have their advantages and disadvantages. I asked how many characters would be in the final version, but was told they hadn’t been stated yet.

Arms is expecting to come out in Spring 2017 and will be using motion controls, using the Joy-con grip or Switch Pro Controller.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild:

The Switch version of the latest Zelda game will be released on the Switch’s launch day (3rd March 2017) alongside it’s Wii U counterpart. As you can imagine, the queues were the largest compared to the other games so at times they had to block it off in sessions. Unfortunately I was not able to try it because of the other games and my time was limited, but from looking at the screens the game would great on both tablet mode and television mode.

Other Games:

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2 each had their own sections. The third-party titles were in the far left wall and varied from well known franchises like Sonic Mania and Ultra Street Fighter 2 to indie titles such as Fast RMX. I also tried out Super Bomberman R in Battle Mode (which is not being made by Hudson like previous titles) and was good, although the demo was only on tablet mode as opposed to the big screen for some reason, and was told that the full game would allow up to 8 players and would have online in addition to local multi-player.

As stated before SEGA had Sonic Mania at the event, though from looking it was pretty much the same demo as at EGX 16.

Super Mario Odyssey was not playable and instead had the Switch Presentation trailer on a loop along with a Mario cutout for people to have their picture taken.

Conclusion:

The Switch showed it’s list of launch games (which is smaller than previous consoles with the exception of the N64) as well as future titles along with the Joy-Con’s feature well and will likely get many Nintendo fans buying the console if not on Day One, then at least by Christmas 2017. What Nintendo need to do is to ensure that it encourages more third party developers to put their games on the Switch to keep all potential buyers interested in the long run.

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Tags: 2017, hammersmith, london, mario kart 8 deluxe, nintendo switch, sega, splatoon 2, zelda

This post was written by Cyburn, posted on January 18, 2017 Wednesday at 12:00 pm