Switch 2 LA!

1. The Experience
2. Mario Kart World
3. Free Play
4. Donkey Kong Bananza
5. Mario Party Jamboree
6. Split Fiction
7. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
8. Hades II
9. The End

WARNING: Spoiling EVERYTHING! My thoughts on my hardware and all the games. You can navigate with the anchors to avoid specific spoilers. I know it’s a long one too, so feel free to skip around!

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I was so fortunate and privileged to attend the Switch 2 Experience! You could only sign up for this via a lottery system, and out of all the friends I know, I only know 3 others who were also able to snag a spot. I definitely lucked out!

IIRC the Nintendo website stated they allotted about 120 slots per hour, with 4-5 hour sessions per day, for 3 days. So in each city, they only accepted ~2000 people? I can’t believe even more so that I was one of them ;-;

The Experience

I absolutely enjoyed how well organized and streamlined this event was run!

They allowed registered attendees to show up 15 minutes before the scheduled hour (the one hour indicating when you can check in, not how long your experience is). When you get there, they let people in in groups of ~30 at a time. I ended up being third in this group of 30 (they had just let in another 30 right when I got there), and from there I waited about 15-20 minutes. So my guess nobody the entire weekend would have to wait any longer than that?

When you get in, they first give you a look at the hardware, including holding the Switch 2 itself!

Everything’s got a much more sleek and modern design. The inner parts of certain parts, e.g. the dock, have a glossy finish. Edges are rounder. It’s all so sick.

The console itself is nice! It’s not fully magnetic, as there’s a hold lock button at the back of the Joy-Cons to detach them (releasing the magnets). Those locks allow you to hold onto the console with your hand just on one Joy-Con. The size upgrade is definitely noticeable as well (for someone like me who plays on handheld often while traveling), yet the console still feels just as lightweight. Buttons feel sturdier. Control stick just feels a bit bigger, but otherwise not much different. A USB port at the top is going to be so convenient for charging, unlike the original where you need a portable dock to charge it while playing.

Mario Kart World

After about 15-20 minutes, they take you in to the first demo: Mario Kart World.

They divide this up into 2 sections. The first part has you pair up with a friend, or to meet someone new who also came solo / in an odd-numbered group. You get your hands on the attached Joy-Cons, racing each other on a 1v1 on a split screen.

The game has a lot more tricks, including the way you drift, barrel roll onto the walls, and more. It’s relatively complicated especially with how little time you have, but I’m sure it’d become second nature within an hour. Lots to play around with for sure!

The character selection is pretty insane, as you all may have seen online already. But where’s Diddy Kong 😦

Maps are huge! I think majority of the courses are one long path, rather than during multiple laps, but I’m not too certain. There’s a lot of paths you can take along the course as well, notably using walls to access them.

Overall I’m just a super casual in Mario Kart and can’t say too much, but what I can say for certain is that they’ve gone above and beyond in this version for sure. Worth the $80? That’s another story… but it’s definitely worth more than previous versions, with how much content and care they’ve put into this game.

After the 1v1, you get to try out 1-player mode vs CPUs on handheld mode (they have separate consoles right next to the big screen). This lets you get a feel for the handheld screen. The screen I think looks even better on handheld? I’m not too sure but it felt even more crisp than when docked.

Afterward, there was a bit more time than expected so they let us do one more 1v1 on the big screen.

Next, everyone groups up to try out the Knockout Tour. This has you race through what feels like 6 courses combined into one super big course, with 24 racers all against each other. In this case, 24 consoles all connected via LAN. It gets SO crazy and chaotic, it was an absolute blast!

In this mode, the main goal is simply… don’t be last. The last 4 to be specific. After each leg, the last 4 get eliminated, repeating until the final 4 remain and they race to the finish.

While everyone is loading in, you can explore the open world, test out the new features, etc. etc. For a racing game, there’s quite a bit!

The fact that it’s 24 real human beings is actually insane. Everyone’s tossing items at each other, and they’re all so close to each other constantly. I kept switching back and forth between first and last place (1st to 24th…) depending on the items. It was SO stressful but so fun. My favorite part was whenever someone uses a lightning, and the entire room groans in unison LOL. I ended up in top 8, not bad!

If you get eliminated early, you can leave ASAP to the second half of the event… free play for all the other games! Or you can stay and watch how the knockout mode ends.

Free Play

From here, they move you to the next and final room, where they have tons of setups for all the games above. Pretty solid variety here!

I ended up with DK Bananza (of course), Super Mario Party Jamboree, Hades II, Split Fiction, and Metroid Prime: Beyond.

While trying a new game, you’ll be filling out what’s called a Gameplay Passport. Your goal is to play 6 games, and every time you try a game the staff will mark your passport. If you fill up the passport, you get goodies at the end! Mario Kart and DK Bonanza however don’t count – it’s their featured games and everyone’s gonna be playing them regardless.

At this point, you have a bit under 2 hours to try everything you’d like. (It’s a total of 2 hours 20 minutes starting from when you start with Mario Kart.)

Donkey Kong Bananza

Of course, the first game I had to try was DK! At long last, over ten years later!! With their second featured game, they had dozens of setups available and it was not an issue at all hopping on one.

First of all, the Switch 2 graphics look amazing in this game! Everything is so contrasting with strong saturation (just the right amount), and the frame rate felt really good too, though admittedly I’m not the best at comparing these things in general. But the console truly gives this game justice, and I’m sure plenty of developers are looking forward to make the most of it in the future as well.

Everyone says it’s an Odyssey re-skin, and when experiencing the game live, you truly feel it. The exploration, the Nintendo whimsy, the various ways DK can interact with the environment, it’s all there!

DK is also as expressive as we saw online, and the graphics help in showcasing him in all his glory. This made me realize, his visual update I think is just objectively better? It really does allow him to be more expressive, and in his angry mode he looks just as edgy in the past, but better!

HOWEVER, I feel like majority of old-time fans’ actual issue is how much he’s losing his edge. He loses a lot of what made him special as a Nintendo character, and now he blends in a lot more with a lot of Nintendo’s IPs and their childlike personalities (which I think Nintendo’s intentionally doing). Thinking like Mario, Kirby, Pikachu, Villager, etc. I’m coming to terms with this update more and more, having played the demo now, but I miss the old one already D;

Regarding the exploration, I really love everything they did here! The biggest eye catcher IMO is how they created the map overview, remembering everything you’ve done to it. The technology needed to do this must have been incredible, transforming the level itself into this map view. Yet at the same time this will definitely be necessary, as there’s soooo many places to explore, and so many walls to dig through.

I do have a few qualms with the game however, with a few things you wouldn’t notice without playing the game yourself. I feel like the way you interact with a lot of things in this game are a bit unintuitive. A lot of legacy ideas got lost in translation into this new modern game, I feel. An example here, fighting against this flying insect, which I imagine is the new modern Zinger, see below. You can’t jump on it; you have to toss a barrel at it — or in this case, a rock. However, part of what gets “lost in translation” is the lack of conveyance that you can’t even punch it from below (even after the enemy tossed its rock). I don’t think anything hints this in the character design. It’s clear you can’t jump on it, with the spinning top, but nothing more. You kind of have to assume, oh you can’t fight Zingers head on in the past, so you can’t fight them head on with anything in this game either.

Something else I felt weird is how you can hand slap against the ground to collect nearby items (which is SO useful btw!), however it’s exclusively for item collection. It seems really strange to me in how it has zero effect on enemies. This is the opposite of “lost in translation” from prior games, where the original DKC games would defeat enemies, and in more modern versions (Tropical Freeze and Returns) it would stun opponents. Nothing hints this, and I just ended up dying for it lol. No big deal since you just respawn at a nearby checkpoint, but it’s all about the idea of conveyance which feels a little bit too consistent in my gaming experience.

One final example is with this key here, shown below. After defeating an enemy that holds this key, the key plops itself into the keyhole. The exclamation point then points to the face, so my initial thought is to break the capsule, the key now allowing you to do that. After punching all around it to no avail for about half a minute, staff just pops in and kindly advises, oh just punch the key. Something minor, but again it’s the consistency in the lack of conveyance, and I’m a little apprehensive in the quality of the user experience in the game as a whole. And it kind of sucks that you can’t notice these things in videos, since the players already know what to do and you’ll only see the right solutions lol.

Despite all this however! This is still going to be an insta-buy whenever I get a Switch 2 / on DKB launch day, as I think there’s still way more good than not. I’m still not sure if I’ll buy the Switch 2 on launch, solely depending on the price. We’ll see!

Mario Party Jamboree

This was a fantastic demonstration of the Switch 2’s mic and camera! They gave 3 mini games exclusive to the Switch 2 version. Staff said the mic can pick up audio from ~12ft. away, which actually seems really impressive. But there was only one way to find out!

The first mini game (randomized per usual) was this stacking Goomba game, using the camera and your head movement to catch falling Goombas. Gravity affects the stack itself, and Goombas can fall off even after you catch it, so it can be a bit tricky!

Second game was “Talking Flower says”, which was basically a simple version of Simon Says, again using the camera. “Blue team, stand! Red team, squat!” Unfortunately, someone wasn’t squatting low enough for the game to catch that, so the standing team won that round lol.

Last one was Bowser forcing us to put on a show. We simply have to move about and scream as much as possible, with the more energetic team winning. Definitely a fun mini game for home parties, haha.

All in all, twas fun! I’d get it if I hosted parties often, haha.

Split Fiction

For some reason I haven’t been paying attention to this game, but it has everything I like in a video game. Sci-Fi meets fantasy (aka Xenoblade… and one of the protagonists is named Mio…), action-adventure, and it’s all about two authors and their stories coming to life (the writer in me appreciates this haha). But I noticed the game looks beautiful in person (way better than the online trailers, thanks to Switch 2 graphics!), and I happened to find a setup open so I decided to try this out! A young father with his ~8 year old son came by soon after, and I ended up playing co-op with the son. Apparently he loves this game and has played it multiple times, and they both just wanted to see it on the Switch 2. The son didn’t talk at all while playing, but the dad kept advising both of us on what to do haha.

I hadn’t played It Takes Two, the first iteration of this tag team type of game, but I’ve always loved the concept of it. Trying it in person made it even better, as both players work together to figure out how to traverse a given path. The demo starts a bit past the beginning (I looked it up later, the demo approximately 45 minutes into the start of the game), which makes sense since the beginning is more exposition than gameplay, but forgoing tutorial elements making it a bit awkward for me to play. I was slowly figuring things out though, and the father was really kind as the three of us worked together.

I actually really want to play this game now, especially with all the amazing reviews on it on top of all the beautiful graphics. If any mutuals want to play, let me know! It’s cross-platform compatible, and only one person needs to own the game. The second person can play it on any platform after being given what’s called a Friend’s Pass. It seems to be a game to play together, and I’m sure the story itself is only going to get more exciting from here!

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

This demo here was identical to the Treehouse version, seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W9xes7BZto

This was a fantastic demonstration of using the Joy-Con as a mouse! Being able to swap between mouse and controller by simply rotating your wrist felt so seamless. The extra precision you get from playing with the mouse feels so good, perfect for this first-person shooter game. As you use the right-sided Joy-Con as a mouse, you can also use the buttons at the same time, using the face buttons now on the left of the mouse. This took a lot of time to get used to (maybe I didn’t actually get used to it yet lol). Alternatively they mapped some actions to both left and right Joy-Cons (like jumping) so you don’t have to use the mouse face buttons.

Something that I kept doing by habit, was trying to use the right control stick while in mouse mode… like I couldn’t help but think it’s still a controller, not a mouse. But when it’s in mouse mode, the control stick doesn’t do anything. Not a complaint or anything, just a funny experience with how my brain tried to process something new.

The level was fun and fairly difficult to go through, at least for me who hasn’t ever played a Metroid Prime game before. Despite that, I really appreciated the growing difficulty throughout the level, slowly getting harder and harder as you learn and get used to the controls.

The boss fight was HARD! The demo showed them taking 5 minutes, but it felt like 10 to me… but of course they’ve played it multiple times, and me zero haha. (After watching the Treehouse now… I didn’t know you could absorb the health orbs…) Experience aside, the boss was tanky! You had to shoot at it a LOT. The whole thing was just so fun, I really enjoyed all of it.

My only qualm here is that the mouse didn’t feel ergonomic at all. I’m not sure if I was somehow holding it incorrectly? Like if my wrist was off or something. But I kept having to reset my arm every few minutes, or going back into controller mode, to avoid cramps. The innovation to use the controller as a mouse is so sick, but it doesn’t compare to actually using a real mouse.

It also makes me wonder how many people have a setup to actually use the Joy-Con as a mouse. Like if it’s on the large screen in a living room, how comfortable would it be using the coffee table for the mouse, when I presume most would just be relaxing on their couch haha. Playing it at the demo felt nice since it was basically a standing desk. And those who play the Switch on their PC setup won’t have a problem either. But just something to think about!

Hades II

I actually hadn’t played any prior demos of Hades II before, and seeing it available at this event got me so excited to try it out! In hindsight I shouldn’t have since it’s available on Steam already, but I couldn’t resist… I think I would’ve gotten more value going for the Switch 2 Welcome Tour, or even Drag x Drive, the actual Switch 2 exclusives. Unfortunately I only had enough time for one more demo, and it ended up going to Hades II.

Nevertheless, Hades II was as fun as ever! It’s been a while since I’ve played the original, but the most obvious improvement in my eyes was allowing to sprint (i.e. continue running) after a dash. Constantly dashing everywhere in Hades I felt a little bit mind-numbing, but being able to sprint, along with boons designed for it, makes it a lot more interesting. Unfortunately you can’t attack while sprinting, compared to multiple dashes in the original and attacking anytime. You’d have to stop your sprint, attack, dash, then continue into your sprint once again. Don’t think it’s a bad thing, keeping things more balanced. But it’s different for sure.

Not much else to say here. Game’s good as ever! Initially I wasn’t planning on buying this game, seeing how similar it is to Hades I (regardless of how good II is), but man is this tempting now lol.

The End

Alas, my allotted time is up. If you were counting the games, you’d notice I actually wasn’t able to fill up my passport! D; Fortunately the staff didn’t even check the passport (not sure if intended, since there were a decent number of people leaving at once) and they still gave me a reward after all. A free backpack! The quality feels amazing too, actually crazy how it’s free.

And that’s the end of my time here! An absolute privilege to spend my day here… and I’m glad I got to share it with y’all too. The Switch 2 can’t come soon enough. Thanks for reading!