Nintendo Switch Full Console Review - Rerez by rerez

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· @rerez ·
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Nintendo Switch Full Console Review - Rerez
https://youtu.be/Dn72uuvnSUY

Nintendo just sent us their brand new video game system the Nintendo Switch. Now I’ve had this system for six days and folks let me tell you we've been playing it every single day. This is unlike any other system we have ever taken a look at on the show. In the past if we've taken a look at a portable system it generally was really just trying to be a portable console or if we've taken a look at a home console well they really aren't systems that you can just play on a bus. But with the Nintendo Switch all that has changed. This is the very first time we've ever seen a fully portable and fully home console that not only does both of those things but it's also a modular design meaning that you can take the controllers out and have a whole bunch of different setups with it. This really is a system trying to do a billion different things. But is it a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none? 

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When Nintendo sent us a review package what we got was the Nintendo Switch system itself and two games. Now in the box you get the Nintendo Switch console, the left and right Joy-Cons, left and right Joy-Con straps and the Joy-Con grip which is basically how you take both the left and right Joy-Con and turn it into a controller and you also have the Nintendo Switch dock. And the two games we received from Nintendo were Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and 1, 2, Switch. The first time you take the Nintendo Switch and put it into the dock you've just turned on a video game system. There's no difference here between any other video game system on the market. You got a power button that powers it on and there's no additional buttons or switches that are needed to turn it on to TV mode. Everything works straight up on the TV and with the Joy-Con grip you're basically just using a stay at home video game system. But where the difference is on this console is the ability to take it anywhere. When you're on the go with the Nintendo Switch there's a couple of things you should probably know right at the beginning. To begin with this is a portable system with a battery built into it but the battery doesn't really last that long. In our testing playing Zelda Breath of the Wild we found that the system lasted just over two and a half hours and that really isn't the longest battery life in the world. I find that my cell phone runs a heck of a lot longer and it's also capable of playing 3D games. The only difference is I'm not always playing 3D games on it. When a system like this is focusing on 3D graphics it takes a lot more power out of it and that could be something that really taxes the battery. But there are solutions to the battery that we'll talk about later. 

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One thing you won't be able to remedy is how wide this game system is. Now while it is essentially pretty thin the actual idea of having a screen in the center and two Joy-Con to the left and right means that the system kind of takes up a lot of space. I can't fit it in my pant pocket which is unfortunate because that's how I would take this around with me anywhere. And although you could take off the Joy-Con to make it fit better I have keys, I've got a wallet, I've already got a cell phone in my pocket, there just isn't enough room to have this anywhere else and that kind of sucks. Especially when you think about this as a portable system. But if you want to take this around in a backpack or some kind of carry all case maybe then it would be more of a portable option for you but if you're used to playing the 3DS and just having it in your pocket and pulling it out whenever you want to play it well that's not the experience you're going to get with this. Even though the Nintendo Switch’s battery life has been pretty short in our testing I got to say that the inclusion of a USB C port on the bottom of the Switch makes things a lot easier to deal with. Unlike with every single Nintendo portable system ever made this isn't a proprietary connection. There are tons of chargers and battery banks you can buy right now for fairly cheap prices online that you can utilize to extend the battery of the system. A company called Aukey reached out to us when they found out that we had a Switch and sent us a 30 milliamp hour battery bank. Now this is a really big battery and it can actually charge the Switch for a day and a half or more depending on your usage. Any battery bank that utilizes USB C in your collection right now should work but one thing to keep in mind is that if your battery bank isn't really powerful enough you're not going to be able to charge your Switch fully or even really give it any additional power beyond a couple of minutes at best. We drained the Switch’s battery completely and after we utilized this battery bank with USB C it took three minutes and 31 seconds in order for us to be able to turn on the system. Before that it just needed the charge and it was incapable of starting up. But one thing we discovered was that when you're using the Switch and having a charge through a battery bank it actually doesn't charge very fast. After one full hour of play we only managed to get about 8 percent of the battery charged. The system utilizes so much power just to keep things running so what we did was we turned off the system, plugged up the USB C directly and in about two hours the battery fully charged from there. So if you were to ever get a battery bank and you wanted to play this on the go you really should keep in mind that you're probably not going to be giving it enough of a charge to keep going after the battery bank has died out. 

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One of the big problems I noticed while using this power bank with the Switch was that if I played the Switch in tabletop mode the USB C port on the bottom just basically couldn't be accessed. So if you want to play your Switch undocked and have it charging you have play in handheld mode or figure out a way to make the USB C port accessible while you’re playing. This is a consumer side solution which means this is totally up to you and how you want to address the battery issue. Maybe two and a half hours while playing Zelda is good enough for you but for a lot of people that's probably not going to be enough. Since I personally feel like the Switch just really isn't the most portable system in the world already I feel like they should have made it just a little bit thicker to put in a much larger battery. If they did that well this console could possibly last for a lot longer than it does right now. Another possible problem that might crop up in the future is that we really don't know what future games are going to require out of the hardware of the Switch. Maybe it requires a lot more power and energy to get the certain graphics in portable mode and if that's a factor the battery is going to last a lot less than it does with Zelda. But maybe there's going to be an instance where a game requires a lot less energy and lasts a lot longer. This is really up to what the games are going to require out of the system and we seriously just don't know what that's going to be like. 

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Unlike virtually every other video game system I have ever looked at this one didn't come with a single controller design because it has two separate controllers that are essentially working in tandem. You've got yourself a bunch of different games like 1, 2, Switch that just have a variety of things going on and it's so hard to know what's working specifically well and what's not working that well. But what I can tell you is that one of the issues we had directly at the beginning was that the left Joy-Con has having some kind of desync issue. We talked to Nintendo about this and they told us that they were working on a fix but beyond that we really can't tell you much else. We don't know if by the time you get the system that system issue will be fixed but as far as I can tell right now it caused a number of problems specifically with every motion game we played. We didn't know if the motions were accurately being captured by the controller but because I know how these controllers work when it comes to motion I can tell you that you're looking at the exact same kind of motion technology you would have found in the Wii U or the Wii. So it's not something as complex or robust as the HTC Vive or PlayStation Move controllers because those controllers can figure out where your hands are in 3D space. These ones can't. They're really decent motion controllers but they're just that. It's the same kind of motion tech that you would have had in older systems from Nintendo which is really unfortunate because we found those to not really be good when we were playing any video game that we played on the system including Breath of the Wild which does utilize motion controls. But because of the way that these controllers work it just doesn't feel that good. 

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The other big feature of the Nintendo Switch is the use of HD rumble. Now HD Rumble feels very similar to haptic feedback that you'd be getting on iPhones or brand-new cell phones. Depending on what the game is that you're playing that HD Rumble can play a really interesting role in the way that the game interacts with you. In 1, 2, Switch there’s a game where there's these little ball bearings rolling around in the controller and that really made the controllers amazing when they utilize that kind of HD rumble. Unfortunately though that was pretty much the only time that I ever felt something that immersive. Everything else was just a little short rumble here or there or in some cases something a little bit more pronounced but beyond that one instance with rolling balls every other game just doesn't utilize it that well. And if this is a case where players are really dependent on Nintendo making use of these new HD rumble features I really hope we get something a little bit better than what we are getting right now because although Breath of the Wild is a pretty big experience it only utilizes the rumble in very basic ways. In fact if I didn't know any better I would have said that they designed this game without knowing HD rumble existed. One of the most important aspects of controller design is the button placement and the Nintendo Switch has two different controllers and a whole bunch of different ways you can hold those controllers but it is missing one very iconic Nintendo feature. The D-pad. The lack of a D-pad might be an issue but remember there's a reason why Nintendo did this. Because the left and right Joy-Con can be used as individual controllers. If they did have one with a D-pad whatever game you were playing on that left Joy-Con or that right Joy-Con wouldn't have been able to actually have four individually playable buttons. So what they did utilize is efficient but not as good as what a D-pad would be. Now here's the thing though folks the fact that they made these Joy-Con individual controllers is what caused this problem. Nintendo could have easily chose not to do this but this is the path they've chosen and we're not going to know if this is going to be a big issue until we start to see a lot more games that traditionally would have used D-pads like Virtual Console games or third-party games being produced by developers that are still utilizing D-pads on other systems like the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. 

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I'm a big fan of how good the left and right Joy-Con felt in the Joy-Con grip. This setup was my favorite way to use the controllers. You might assume since the left and right Joy-Con snap into the Joy-Con grip itself that would feel a little loose but it totally doesn't. It feels like a real physical controller. Nintendo has done an incredible job at getting the left and right Joy-Con to snap into every method that you use and making it feel solid. You'll probably be able to feel a little bit of movement once in a while but it's nothing that will totally distract you from playing a game properly. They're using a metal rail system to snap everything together and although over time that might loosen up a bit or maybe if you drop the system it might damage it I didn't experience anything personally that made me feel like that was going to be a problem any time soon. What was a problem though was using this console in portable mode or holding the individual Joy-Cons left and right in each hand. The left Joy-Con is set up very well with all of its placement of its buttons and the joystick going right underneath your thumb is very easy to access and very easy to move but that is not the same feeling you're going to get with the right Joy-Con. The thumbstick position on this controller is simply inexcusable. It is not easy to reach and I am not kidding after seven attempts of playing in portable mode after thirty minutes or even less my thumb would lock up or it would get incredibly sore to the point where I couldn't play a game anymore. This was damaging to me because the inability to play this game system portably means that I can't take this around with me anywhere simply because the only way I'd be able to take it with me somewhere is to set it up on a table and use the Joy-Con grip. I spoke to a medical professional that deals with ergonomics and muscle pain and he confirmed with me after watching me play the Switch that the way that the Switch is set up in that specific instance is going to naturally hurt my hand. He watched me use an assortment of other controllers and we couldn't replicate the same problem. It’s specifically the way that they've designed this Joy-Con. Now I can't stress this enough what happened with me while playing this controller may not happen with you but unfortunately you won't know if you have the same problem unless you try the Switch for yourself. And as far as it goes with using the individual Joy-Con sideways to play a bunch of different video games sure I guess that does work. It's not amazing because everything is in a very awkward place but it is what it is. 

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One of my favorite features of the Switch is it's screen because it's not really big but it's not really small. At 720p resolution and at its size it is just a really sharp looking image. And in fact when I was playing this thing on an actual 4k TV I have to say that even though it was only outputting 1080p it never looked as good as how it looked in portable mode. And the touchscreen itself is also quite responsive and although none of the games I played utilized it the operating system did so I was able to just kind of flick through menus really quick and it seemed to be pretty decent. This isn't something I was expecting to be as good as it was but really there were instances when I wanted to play games in portable mode and preferred it that way than having it on the TV. And my obvious favorite of all the portable modes was tabletop mode utilizing a Joy-Con grip. Tabletop mode generally works well with very few issues but the kickstand is really flimsy. Now don't get me wrong it does get the job done but it's a little embarrassing just how poorly implemented it is. For instance if you hit the power button or the volume rocker on the top left, the opposite side of where the kickstand is, the Switch will naturally fall over unless you're holding it with another hand. That's just poor design and I don't care how you cut it this was something that could have easily been remedied by putting the kickstand on the other side. But hiding underneath that kickstand is a welcome feature, the microSD card slot, because unfortunately the Nintendo Switch has very little usable space. Every Nintendo Switch being sold right now has 32 gb built in but because the operating system takes up a little bit of extra space you only have access to 25.9 gb. For people that don't care about how much space they have because they plan on buying all the games directly from the store and just getting them on game cards you've probably got nothing to worry about but if you're looking at getting some games that are limited to eShop releases well this might become an issue as time goes on. We already know and have confirmed that there is one game that's going to be so big you won't be able to download it onto the internal memory which is unfortunate. But for many consumers out there that really do want to download stuff you'll be able to get microSD cards for a pretty cheap price. This may in fact be more of an issue for game developers than it will be for consumers. Game developers can only bank on the fact that a consumer is going to have at least 25 gb free on their system and because we already know that there's a launch game coming out in Japan and that is already way too big well clearly they didn't put enough memory in this console. But this may not be an issue for you if you're willing to buy microSD cards. Just keep that in mind. 

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I have heard time and time again from hundreds of people that the Nintendo Switch is going to be a system that draws people's attention. And you know what I wanted to test that theory and because I'm in possession of a system that actually isn't out yet I decided to go to my local mall at the food court during a really busy lunchtime and guess what no one looked at me. No one took a second glance. No one walked up to me and asked what I was playing despite the fact that I was playing Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild in the middle of a food court. Nobody cared and you know why nobody cared? Because it looks like I was playing a tablet or my cell phone. When I looked around me everyone was on their phones no one takes a second glance when you're on something like this nowadays because they just assume it's something it's Android based or iOS based and that's the position that Nintendo is in right now. You're looking at a system that looks so much like a tablet that maybe people aren't even going to notice what it is unless you’re playing a game like 1, 2, Switch that requires that really active physical movement. Otherwise it just looks like any other tablet that plays video games and if consumers just look at it like that they're not going to be that impressed. The big question on every gamer’s mind right now is this. Will the Nintendo Switch be a success. If it's successful a lot of people will sponsor it, support it and buying that system won't be that big of a drag when you can buy so many games for it. But if it's not a success there will be very few games and very little support meaning you spent a lot of money to buy a console that basically you can't do anything with. And well I just don't think it's going to be that successful. Yeah it's going to sell more than the Wii U but it probably won't sell as much as the 3DS. What I'm seeing here is a system that isn't as good as a 3DS when it comes to the portability factor and on the other side it's not as powerful or has as much memory as a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One meaning that you just can't get a lot of games to be installed on it and developers are going to be hesitant to make games on it. This is a system that has a lot of things going for it but a lot of things going against it. At the end of the day I just don't believe it's a master of anything it's attempting to be.

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