What happens when you find a video game unplayable?
It happened to me with WWE 2K18 for the Nintendo Switch a few weeks ago. I’m a big wrestling game fan and, while I’d already been given the latest WWE title for the PS4 as a Christmas present, I loved the idea of taking a WWE game anywhere, and I was eager to check out the gameplay on the Switch. Even though the reviews had been horrible, I wanted to be optimistic. I mean, how bad could it be? Using a gift card, I purchased the title through the Nintendo E-store and hoped for the best.
I’m still hoping.
Glitchy, slow, below-average graphics – WWE 2K18 had it all, and was virtually unplayable because of it. Entrances wouldn’t work properly, in-ring maneuvers lagged and were even worse the more characters were added to the ring. Gamers out there have been verbose that 2K shouldn’t have released this title, even with updates promised, and they were right. 2K only had one chance to make a first impression with a WWE game on the Switch, and unfortunately, they screwed it up.
Kudos to Nintendo Canada Customer Service, though. I called up and talked to them about the myriad issues, and they refunded me on this. That’s customer service.
The thing is, nobody wants to hate a game. At least, I don’t think they do. I’d much rather spend time playing something I dig and writing about that, instead of getting stuck playing something I’m not enjoying and then slamming it.
That’s why I had to turn off Hollow, a new first-person horror game on the Switch.
Genre fans are slowly being served on the console, but it is taking some time. Hollow looked to be a decent offering from Polish gaming company Forever Entertainment, a mix of Dead Space and Alien: Isolation, where you’re a crewman on what appears to be an abandoned space ship. However, with extremely clunky controls, confusing and just boring environments, and irritating aggravating sound effects, there was nothing that managed to be engaging enough in Hollow for me to keep playing for an extended period of time. The sound was especially grating during my first encounter with the voluptuous humanoids that suddenly pop out of the woodwork. It’s hard to feel frightened where you’re just plain angry at a game. I wish I could recommend Hollow on the Nintendo Switch to horror fans out there, but I’d say stick with the Resident Evil: Revelations games that are available, or take a chance on Outlast, which recently arrived on the system. I’m hoping to look at that one soon.
On a completely different track, the Princess and I have really been enjoying Scribblenauts Showdown from Warner Brothers Interactive Games. The word-based franchise makes its first appearance on the Nintendo Switch. It’s the first Scribblenauts game in four years, and it also happens to be the first in the series that either of us have played. The good thing here is you don’t have to be familiar with the characters or the gameplay to enjoy Showdown. Things are fairly intuitive in terms of menus and gameplay. There are a variety of easy to pick-up mini-games, with multiple players able to participate in most of them.
However, the biggest thrill for the Princess, who at 7 years old probably falls into the target demo, was creating her own Scribblenauts character (along with one that looks quite a bit like me) and getting into the Sandbox mode, where you can create upwards of 35,000 (!!!!) items to help solve a variety of tasks in a given area. For instance, at one point while exploring a boat in the Sandbox, I suggested off-the-cuff for the Princess to spell dragon and see what would happen. Next thing I knew, we were both laughing pretty hard as her little Scribblenauts character was flying through the air on her own dragon. In her own words, “This is awesome! I love this game!”
After the horror of few lacklustre games, it was nice to find something fun to play.
I wrote this article. I like it.
That is a terrifying rendition of Kurt Angle.