I remember growing up when the Nintendo Wii came out, and everybody on the planet was deeply and profoundly obsessed with the idea of playing Wii Sports. It didn’t matter what the function was, how old the people there were, or if they even played video games; Wii Sports brought people together. It’s hard to believe that we are just two weeks away from the Nintendo Wii’s 20th anniversary. So it feels apt that Nintendo wanted to drop a new entry in their Sports series. The concept of playing games with motion controls isn’t as new or as thrilling as it was 20 years ago, but that hasn’t stopped Nintendo from expanding on it – making the controls more interesting, much easier to pick up and play, and, dare I say, a hundred times more fun.
Nintendo Switch Sports Resort features 12 different sports minigames that range from fun and relaxing to tense and competitive. There are a few games here that are meant to be chill and very low-stakes; they are referred to as leisure sports. Skateboarding is one of the leisure sports I enjoyed the most. The sport takes advantage of your Joy-Con’s mouse mode. You turn a Joy-Con on its side and glide it across whatever surface you’re near to push the skateboard forward. You tilt it side to side to turn, and you lift it up at the front to jump. It controls exactly how you’d think it would, and it was something I found myself coming back to a lot. You can skateboard freely around Wuhu Island and do some exploring, or you can race in intense head-to-head races against friends.
The other two leisure sports are Prop Plane and Power Cruising. Prop Plane is what it sounds like: you fly a plane around Wuhu Island. You hold your controller like a paper airplane and point it in the direction you want to go. Soaring through caves, under bridges and over various landmarks is not only fun, but very satisfying to do. Power Cruising lets you take to the water on a jet-ski, where you can do races as well as roam freely. The leisure sports all follow the same mantra: play a game or just chill in a major way and explore Wuhu Island across land (skateboard), air (prop plane) and water (power cruising). Wuhu Island is fun to explore as it has many easter eggs and references that seem to be everywhere you look. My only major issue with the leisure sports is that you cannot play them online with strangers. It would be so much fun to do some sort of matchmaking with people and race across Wuhu Island fighting for dominance. You can play with friends, but there’s nothing better to me than crushing strangers online.
The real meat and potatoes of this package are the less leisurely sports, the more competitive sports. The major standouts to me were bowling, table tennis and archery. I know Nintendo has made many incredible games throughout the years, but I’d argue that the way that they have turned bowling into such a fun and addictive game needs to be studied. I am terrible at bowling in real life. I can’t walk out of a bowling alley without feeling a little bit depressed. But when I’m standing there in front of my television, holding my Joy-Con, having just hit three strikes in a row, I feel bliss. 100 Pin Bowling makes its return, and yes, I’ve hit strikes on that too. There’s also a fun mode that introduces obstacles such as holes, ramps and slopes. Bowling still feels exactly the same as it did 20 years ago, and that proves that when you strike (pun intended) gold, you don’t need to change much at all.
Archery is back, and it’s also just as good as ever. In order to shoot an arrow, you have to hold your controllers in front of you, keep one steady and pull the other back. There’s a slight rumble that gives the illusion of tension as you pull the bow back. Nintendo really makes fantastic use of the HD Rumble here. The tension building when you pull the “bow” back feels really incredible, and it absolutely enhances the experience. I feel like you could hand a pair of Joy-Cons to anyone, and they’d understand how to play the archery within seconds. There are different courses that have targets at different ranges, as well as wind that picks up and changes how your arrow will shoot. There are also some really fun multiplayer modes where you can shoot at a spinning target filled with different colours. You want to hit your colour to accumulate points, but if you land on someone else’s colour, then it adds to their points pool. It’s easy to play, competitive, and the wind and rotation add a randomness to it that’s just undeniably fun. It’s games like this that prove Nintendo is at the top of their game when it comes to pick-up-and-play game design.
Table tennis is up there with bowling for me in terms of games that I could just play for hours. While it might seem simple on the surface, table tennis actually has a fair bit of strategy to it, and once you lock in, it feels incredible. You can change the intensity at which you swing to hit the ball harder or softer, and you can also swing your paddle in whatever direction you want. The power and direction of your swing dictate where the ball will go, much like in real life, so you actually have to be on your toes. The game won’t correct your swings either. If the ball is coming to your right, and you hit it with a left swing, it’s going to go flying off of the table, and you’ll lose a point. It’s not like tennis in Wii Sports where you could just flail your Wiimote and the racket would hit the ball the way the game says it should. I played with a friend of mine online, and even though she wiped the floor with me, we wound up in many tense back-and-forths that remain some of my favourite moments of playing Switch Sports Resort.
Five of the six remaining games just so happen to be the ones I found the weakest. I’ll start with what I think is the strongest of the five; that would be golf. Golfing in Switch Sports Resort is basically exactly what you would expect. Across all sports, I think it’s fair to say that golf has been the one people have tried to gamify the most. Whether it’s those golf arcade games you see at a Buffalo Wild Wings or a virtual golf simulator, it’s clear that people yearn for golf away from the green. Switch Sports Resort does a really good job, even though it plays it relatively safe. Not only is the way you swing important, but so is the angle at which you hold your controller. Striking the ball as hard as you can is always fun, but the game really comes alive when you’re trying to put on the green.
Boxing makes a return, and the big change this time is that you have a stamina meter that will stop you from spamming punches. Once your meter is out, you have to wait for it to refill, thus opening yourself up to get absolutely demolished by your opponent. Boxing has never really felt right in any of the Wii/Switch Sports games to me, and this one is no different. I never felt like the hits I was trying to go for actually registered. Since the stamina meter is present and adds downtime to the game, I’d argue that this is my least favourite rendition of boxing in these games. Tennis is present, even though table tennis is also in the game. What’s funny is that I prefer table tennis in virtually every single way. Table tennis is much tighter and moves at a much more exciting speed than regular tennis does. It’s not that regular tennis sucks or anything; it’s just that there is a much better alternative present in the game. It does make tennis’ inclusion feel a little unnecessary. Personally, I would have loved to see it be replaced by Frisbee Golf or Baseball – two sports whose absences are felt immensely.
Unfortunately, basketball and volleyball are the two least interesting games here by a large margin. Both games feel like an overly choreographed coin flip rather than actual games. Basketball has two players on each team. One player starts with the ball and has the option to run ahead and try to go for the shot or pass it to the next player. You have to wait to press A at the right time when the opponent isn’t blocking, or if they’re on the move and you get a brief window. If you miss, the opponent gets the ball, and your turn is over. If you succeed, you get a chance to run up and go for the shot. Another coin-flip moment appears – can you throw the ball before your opponent jumps to stuff your shot? If yes, you did it; if not, you didn’t. It’s not really fun, as much as it is just hoping you get the timing right. Volleyball works similarly, and it’s only made slightly more enjoyable than basketball because you have more agency with how you control your character. Both sports have some multiplayer modes that are significantly more fun, such as basketball’s free throw modes and volleyball’s strange rhythm game.
The last sport is thumb wrestling, which is equal parts absurd and brilliant. You and your opponent both have giant hands (like the Everlong music video), and the goal is to hold your thumb down for three seconds. The brilliance is that every time you put your thumb down, you gain power in your thumb, and it dramatically increases in size. It boils down to finding out who is better at the game of bait and switch. It’s weird that this is the only new sport (outside of the leisure sports) added to this game. I would have loved maybe something with a little more depth, but thumb wrestling is very silly fun.
This game is infinitely better when experienced with friends in person, or online. Island Crown – the single-player mode – has you climbing the ranks in 9 of the 12 sports. Each round gets progressively more difficult and culminates with you going up against the champions of each respective sport. When you beat a champion, you’ll unlock more challenges attached to that sport, and you’ll also unlock some customization options. The mode itself isn’t bad, but it’s just not super interesting, and I eventually found myself wishing I was just having fun with others instead.
While Nintendo Switch Sports Resort doesn’t work as well as a solo experience, it’s a game meant to be enjoyed with others. Whether that’s getting a room filled with people gathered around the TV, or FaceTiming a friend and enjoying wine while bowling, that’s where the true magic is. While it is missing fan favourite sports like baseball and frisbee golf, additions like bowling, archery and the new thumb wrestling make the game worth playing. Sitting down with a leisurely sport after a long day is also really nice and blurs the line between cathartic and lethargic… I mean that in the best way possible. Nintendo continues to prove why they are the masters of the party game, and Nintendo Switch Sports Resort is a game that you should absolutely get if you own a Switch 2.
