Now for those of you who know me or have read my blog posts previously, you know that I have a bit of a soft spot for Nintendo. I grew up with them and so I have a tendency to be more lenient on some of their more questionable choices in game releases. However, the Switch was doing great and was coming out with some quality titles during its first introduction. It has since continued to release interesting titles throughout the years. That is why it sort of pains me to say that I feel like last year was some of the least I used my Switch. Why? The main reason is simple. There wasn’t a very strong game lineup this year. I am not saying that this was specific to only Nintendo, but they are the company I am most familiar with for better or worse so it only feels right that I don’t delve too deep into other companies game development cycles. So I just want to talk a little about my personal experience with this year. Some people may have gotten better use out of it, but I feel like I should say something to put in perspective how barren last year felt. There were maybe five games I played on the Switch during the entirety of last year. Of those five, I only spent a good amount of time with one of them. That one as you can guess, was Metroid Dread. The others were mainly just little distractions or games that I might play with friends. Truth be told, there wasn’t a lot that felt new this year. I know this is the same Nintendo which likes to reuse the same properties over and over, but nothing really got me excited like the previously Metroid Dread and New Pokémon Snap. The latter of those two was mainly because of the fact that is was a continuation of an idea that hadn’t been touched on in decades, although the same is somewhat true of the former. Now why I am bringing this up?
Basically I am a little bit concerned about things with Nintendo. Don’t get me wrong, I will still continue to support them so long as the games are fun. I am just noticing that they didn’t cover a lot of new ground in the previous year. The two titles I mentioned were probably two of the three most noteworthy things that happened for Nintendo last year. The third was without question the appearance of the final DLC fighter in the latest Super Smash Bros. game which had just about everyone losing their minds. There seemed to be a lot more coming this year at least with the announcement of the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a new Kirby game called Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Splatoon 3 and multiple other games. the thing is that now that a lot of people are not forced to stay at home anymore, I wonder if the Switch may have missed its time. There was barely anything to really keep people on the Switch last year in terms of games that people were really waiting on. Sure there were some fun surprises, but I honestly feel like as a whole there was not a lot of ground covered last year for Switch gamers. That isn’t to say there weren’t good games you could find on it, it is just that there weren’t many that were exclusive to the system itself. For a company, exclusives are what allow it to stand out from the crowd and make a name for themselves. So it is slightly concerning that we are getting most of them now is all. I just wonder if maybe by the time these games come out, people might not be using their Switch as much.
Look, I am not saying the Switch is in any danger. This isn’t the Wii U here after all. The thing that concerned me is that a lot of the games I played on Switch last year were mostly forgettable and that kind of shocked me. I remember I had fun when I played them, but I barely remembered much about the games at all. There was only one game I did have clear memories of other than Metroid Dread and that is because I decided to play Luigi’s Mansion 3 again for the heck of it. That is worrying to me, and I just wonder will that trend continue into this year as well. I have games I am excited for from them this year, and I will probably enjoy them too. I just don’t want them to feel forgettable. Just because a game is fun doesn’t mean it can’t easily be forgotten. I consider games that fall under fun but forgettable to be snacking games that merely serve as distraction. There is no substance to them, but they are a simple time killer. There is nothing wrong with those types of game, but they are not my types of games. I want games to feel like a challenge while also allowing me to have some fun. =Nintendo didn’t really do much of that last year in my opinion. I just hope that this year will be different. I guess the whole point of all of this was to pour out my anxieties to make myself feel a bit better. I do want Nintendo to keep making fun games. I just hope that I will have a favorable impression of them after I play them. In fact I would even take a bad impression, since that honestly beats no impression at all. Here’s hoping Pokémon Legends: Arceus delivers on that front.
That Casual Gamer Guy 