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If You Thought Last Year Was “Sad” For Switch, 2023 Might Be Hard To Handle
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve been chewing over. Today, Gavin glances at some hot 2022 takes and instantly transforms into that confuddled John C. Reilly gif…
As a Nintendo-focused site, we’re naturally going to be more Nintendo-positive than, you know, other websites. We’re staffed with Nintendo enthusiasts, and as fans with a long history of covering and enjoying the company’s output, Nintendo games and hardware are going to resonate with us. That doesn’t stop us being disappointed or downright angry on occasion when it comes to some of the platform holder’s more perplexing choices — often the missteps wind us up all the more! — but just as you’d expect PlayStation and Xbox sites to be enthusiastic about Sony and Microsoft’s #content, here we like us some Switch games. Crazy, huh?
And there have been so many over the past year! We’ve managed to review well over 300 of them in 2022 and there are plenty more great-looking ones we had to pass over, unfortunately. To me, it felt like a packed year of wall-to-wall belters, so I was a little confused to see headlines such as ‘Without Pokémon, 2022 Would Have Been A Sad Year For Switch’ and ‘Fails of 2022: the Nintendo Switch really showed its age’ when the end-of-year recaps started popping up across the gaming web in December.
That’s not to say the premise of articles like those above isn’t understandable, and plenty of other commentators shared similar sentiments. Sure, Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Scarlet and Violet were the big hitters, and yes, the hardware is getting long in the tooth — we are approaching the end of its sixth full year on store shelves, after all. However, as much as it might be the most obvious thing in the world to see Nintendo Life ‘defending the honour’ of a Nintendo console, those arguments feel odd to me given the brilliant games we’ve all enjoyed in 2022.
Let’s, for a moment, remove Pokémon from the equation. That leaves a first-party slate that includes Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Splatoon 3, Nintendo Switch Sports, and Mario Strikers: Battle League. Nintendo also published Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, Bayonetta 3, and the Square Enix-developed Triangle Strategy and Live A Live. Say what you like about individual games in that lineup — and bin the latter ones which weren’t developed in-house if you like — but that is an eclectic bunch of software stuffed to the brim with quality. And that’s totally ignoring all the third-party-published games, of which there were many. At the time of writing, Scarlet and Violet didn’t even make the top 50 in our reader-ranked Best Switch Games Of 2022 list.
No, 2022 didn’t bring a brand new Mario or Zelda, but with Tears of the Kingdom needing a little more time in the oven, it was Pokémon’s turn to prop up Nintendo’s release schedule with the year’s tentpoles. To say the year was a disappointment if you don’t like Pokémon is like saying PS5 would have had a downer if not for Sony’s big exclusives. ‘Without Horizon And God Of War, 2022 Would Have Been Sad For PS5.’ Erm, yes? Is it time for another Last of Us re-release yet? And did Microsoft release anything in 2022!? ‘Without Game Pass, 2022 Would Have Been A Boo Boo For Xbox.’
Perhaps it’s just me. With young kids soaking up my free time like a couple of cute, incredibly expensive super sponges, I’m not gaming 24/7 like I used to, and Switch suits my lifestyle to a tee. 200 hours of Elden Ring, the most obvious jewel in 2022’s crown that Switch gamers were denied, simply isn’t an option at the moment.
I also absolutely understand that for anyone who had already bought and played elsewhere the excellent ports Switch received — the Persona 5s (finally!), the NieR: Automatas, the No Man’s Skys, and the like — pickings were a little slimmer. But I would still argue that the sheer variety of games that came to Switch in 2022, old and new alike, exclusive and otherwise, was sensational. There was just an absolute trove of titles to enjoy. There’s nothing wrong with only playing your preferred genre or buying a system just to play a specific series like, say, Call of Duty or FIFA (in which case Switch is definitely not the console for you!), but I struggle to understand how anyone who loves video games could call last year a disappointing one for the system. Even if we nuked the Pokémons for argument’s sake.
On the count of the Switch showing its age, that’s been an issue since 2017. From almost the very beginning we’ve seen calls for updated hardware with a bit more power to run bigger games better. Yes, it would be great to see more titles hitting frame rate and resolution targets more regularly, and new hardware is surely on the horizon over the next year or so, but as a platform matures, developers get correspondingly better at squeezing the very best from it, and that was certainly in evidence in 2022. We’re seeing calls from devs for Microsoft to stop hamstringing the more powerful consoles by making support for the lower-specced Xbox Series S mandatory, so it feels odd to single out Switch when its limitations are so well-documented and 30fps caps have begun appearing for big-name games on PS5 and Xbox (looking at you, Gotham Knights). And so many Switch games — against the odds, as ever — performed excellently!
Apologies if this comes across as ‘ranty’, but it just honestly perplexed me to see gamers and YouTubers labelling 2022 a dud for Switch owners. Imagine ‘Only Three Marvel Movies Came Out, What A Terrible Year For Cinema’ as a headline. Same energy! Every month brought a fresh wave of must-plays for me. I’m not going to trot out comparisons with The Lean Wii U Years™ or the convenience of handheld play or the pricing of first-party titles versus the competition because none of that is really relevant. In terms of quality games that launched in 2022, pound for pound, I’d argue that Switch easily held its own against PS5 and Xbox.
With Nintendo likely having shifted internal resources and attention to its next console and prioritising a first-party software release schedule to echo the once-a-month cadence that stood Switch in such good stead in its launch year, the likelihood is that 2023 could be a similarly ‘quiet’ year, with Zelda: TOTK doing the heavy lifting for the current system. I’ll be looking forward to new hardware reveals along with every other Nintendo fan out there, but we shouldn’t let the lack of hot ‘Switch Pro’ or ‘Switch 2’ announcements or the delay of a much-anticipated game cast a shadow on what was a really excellent year.
Will we be seeing similar ‘Without Zelda…’ headlines in December, then? Probably. Here’s hoping 2023 turns out to be as wonderfully disappointing on Switch as 2022.
What do you think? Was 2022 a sad year saved only by Pokémon? Let Gavin know if he should lay off the crazy pills by voting in the poll below and leaving a comment if the fancy takes you.
And be sure to have a Happy New Year, too!
Young & Restless: Ashley and Diane Court Danger, Victor Guns for Sally
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI
It was a short week for Young & Restless with sports pre-emptions on Thursday and Friday, and a slightly shorter soapbox. Still, lots to talk about…
Priorities
I don’t know why Elena is sticking with Nate at this point; he keeps making his priorities clear. He was so grateful to get back in her good graces, only to stand her up in favor of hanging out after hours in the office with Victoria. I don’t even understand what he was thinking with the whole plot to bring Chancellor-Winters under the Newman umbrella. Make it make sense! The way they had Victoria tossing back drinks with Nate, one has to wonder if the writers are thinking of putting them together. I haven’t noticed any sexual pull between them — and you would have when they were alone in the office one would think — so, who knows?
Torn Between Two Lovers
Adam may have been speaking the truth when he gave Sally the rundown on her relationship with Nick but that doesn’t mean she’s going to listen. He clearly got her attention with the proposal and the speech in her suite after the fact, but he’s still giving off such a loose-cannon vibe that there’s no way she’s going to change course right now. Nick, for his part, is doing and saying all the right things with his knight-in-shining-armor routine and by making her feel safe. But this back and forth can’t go on endlessly. Whaddaya think is going to happen when Victor gets wind of his sons battling over the redhead? Nothing good. In fact, SOD recently teased that Victor will start digging into Sally’s past! It’s guaranteed he’ll come up with plenty of dirt. Want a reminder of what he’ll find? Relive Sally’s history in photos here.
Thanksgiving Chill
If Ashley has any more run-ins with Diane we’re gonna have to start calling her “Clashley”… but how fun have they been?!? Ashley sneering that Diane is so obvious it’s gross, and Diane imploring Ashley to wake up and realize Tucker’s using her… right as Jack comes in and slams the door to break it up. Thanksgiving at the Abbotts was then delightful what with Diane’s arrival going over like a lead balloon, the whispering and downing of drinks, and Jack having everyone — including Diane, who declared herself part of the family much to Ashley’s intense irritation — take a turn giving thanks. Happily, we got the soapy tension and the emotion as Ol’ Smilin’ teared up while giving the toast. I’m ready for this feud to go up another notch with the foreshadowing of all the danger and Ashley declaring to Tucker that “It’s time to bring that bitch down.” The look on his face made it clear he’s relishing all of this.
Thanksgiving Revelations
Sharon’s holiday week consisted of helping Chelsea, Noah breaking down on her over Audra’s miscarriage, and Mariah and Tessa revealing that their adoption had fallen through. More on that next week. In the end, Sharon’s annual event to feed the homeless at Crimson Lights went off with a full house of helpers and a long line of folks in need. And amid the aforementioned issues, there was a heartwarming bit as Johnny sat down with Chelsea.
That’s Bananas
My favorite happening this week was Daniel’s return. Lily lit up like a Christmas tree in his presence… and it was like someone turned a dimmer switch to ‘off’ when he left her in Billy’s company. Later, Daniel confessed to Phyllis, who was overjoyed to see him, that he and Heather are on the rocks. You don’t say?!? Conveniently, he also has a business idea and tells Summer in the preview that he wants to work with Chancellor-Winters. With Lily eyeballing Chelsea and Billy’s connection at Crimson Lights, the writing is on the wall in fluorescent red spray paint — Lily and Daniel are getting back together. Oh, and for those of you wondering about them dressing up as fruit while on the run together, behold:
Blindsided
Victor’s all-knowing and all-seeing, except when it comes to Abby, who managed to shock his socks off by announcing that she and Chance were on the rocks and she wouldn’t be coming to the ranch for Thanksgiving. Just wait until he confronts Chance with his, “What did you do to my daughter?” routine, only to discover that Abby was the one who did him wrong! In the meantime, all the talk is about who Chance’s next love interest will be. See what may be a clue here.
This is just my opinion. Leave your thoughts on The Young and the Restless in the comment section below and have a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday!
Don’t miss this! Dive into the Black Friday soap shopping guide in the photo gallery below.
After 10 Years I Finally Got A Wii U, Here’s What I Thought
used properly, Nintendo was really onto something with this tech
The fact that so many console exclusives now find themselves on the Switch is a credit to the quality of the games. What if Breath of the Wild had only come out on Wii U? Would it still be a fantastic game? Heck yeah! Would it have had the impact that it did? No way. Sure, there were a couple of missteps – Twilight Princess remains a boring Zelda game, HD or not (don’t @ me, please) – and most third-party studios did only the bare minimum to support the GamePad, but the overall hit rate on first-party titles really was something.
And this isn’t even to mention the Wii-ked (sorry) Virtual Console! I have had an absolute field day going through the eShop and snatching up every title that I have been wanting to play for years but never got the chance to grab a physical copy. Yes, this was made all the more pressing by the knowledge that the Wii U eShop will be closing in the next few months and my time is therefore limited, but boy what a rush!
Of course, I can’t talk about Wii U games without at least touching on Nintendo Land. This is a weird one. It’s not quite Wii Sports, nor is it quite Wii Party, but it is a fantastic display of what the GamePad could be used for and had me and my willing friends in stitches with its uber-simple minigames.
Mario Chase remains a highlight and a prime candidate for party nights going forward, and while there are some games which feel like they are repeating the process a little too closely, there is enough variation to show that, used properly, Nintendo was really onto something with this tech. I’m still not quite sure what I was supposed to be doing with those coins and subsequent prizes, but I had a good time doing it all the same.
The Experience
True, the GamePad is great when it works well, but when it doesn’t it is at best redundant, and at worst a weighty distraction. I played through a strange selection of games over the past month, some used the GamePad effectively (Rayman Legends, Twilight Princess) but others — many others — found no use for it. Quite why I was playing Assassins Creed III (a game series I generally cannot get behind) is beyond me, but seeing the GamePad subjected to being the home of a dull map with no care or detail paid to it made one thing very clear – this was a good bit of kit desperate for a purpose.
a piece of gaming history that is so brilliantly weird, I doubt we will ever see something as inventive again
That is perhaps the thing that I came back to more times than anything else in my last few weeks with the Wii U. I played up on my TV, at my desk, even in bed, but at no point did I feel like I knew what the console was trying to do. Is it a fun handheld? Yeah, kinda. Is it a fun home console? Yeah, kinda. But why be average at both when you could be really good at one?
Long before the Microsft was boasting of Xbox One that ‘this console will play your games, it will stream your TV, it will massage your feet and it will do your taxes!’ the Wii U was kind of doing just that. It was much to my surprise to find a video camera, TV remote, streaming options, and a (defunct but cool-sounding) social media platform all built into a console which I had foolishly assumed was all about the games. I’d be intrigued to spy on a parallel universe in which the global pandemic happened five years earlier and mankind turned to the Wii U’s video chat to keep the economy running. Many of these features are not functional anymore ten years down the line, and the lack of direction seems like a bit of a mess (is this for games, for TV, for social media?) but the ambition is there. This is a brilliant mess indeed.
After a month of playing the console that I rejected for so many years, I don’t think it is fair to call the Wii U a failure (unless you are talking financially, in which case it is difficult to disagree). Yes, at the time it may have been a marketing disaster with some pretty big gaps between major game releases, and my heart goes out to all of the fans who stood diligently by it. However, now we can see it for what it truly is, a piece of gaming history that is so brilliantly, confusingly weird, I doubt we will ever see something as experimental and inventive again from one of the ‘big three’ console manufacturers.
If you play as I did, then you get a chance to be selective with a console for which there are, admittedly, a fair few lows. You get to play the best first-party games without needing to wait for months for the next, the entire virtual console library is right there with GBA, DS, and Wii games to boot, and the marketing campaign is so far in the past now that I think I can safely say that this is a console in and of itself and not just a Wii accessory.
Both I and the Wii U are 10 years older now and we are both all the cooler for it.
Soapbox: The Hidden Delights Of The Great Ace Attorney
Did you know that Viggo Mortensen, the actor who played Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings movies, broke his toes on-set by kicking a helmet? The take ended up in the final cut, and Aragorn’s cry of frustration, grief, and despair is made all the more real knowing that poor Viggo’s toesies were probably burning in pain like the fiery pits of Mordor.
But you wouldn’t know this fact unless you had watched the LOTR DVD special features, which is quite the undertaking. The movies themselves are very long, so to sit through hours and hours of extra stuff is a big ask — but it’s worth it, because you can be That Guy who says “oh, this bit is where Viggo breaks his toes” when you watch it with friends.
Generally, video games don’t really have the same kind of special features, since making games isn’t quite as interesting to watch as making movies, and the developers aren’t usually as good on-camera as professional actors. But The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles does, and it’s actually one of the best parts of the game, especially this late in the Ace Attorney series.
When I first played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, I would have been quite young, and not quite as interested in video game music, development, and concept art — in fact, I barely knew that any of those things really existed. All I really cared about was playing the game. But as the years went by, I became fascinated with the changes in the series: the detailed animations, the upgrade to 3D models, the way the soundtrack grew and deepened with each game. I wanted to know more about how the characters were designed, how the translations worked, and how on earth anyone managed to come up with the incredible theme for prosecutor Godot.
The Great Ace Attorney has a little section called “Special Contents”, which at first glance looks like not much: “Accolades”, which is the in-game achievements; “Gallery”, which is largely concept art; “Auditorium”, which is music and voice lines; “Tailor”, which allows you to change the characters’ outfits in the second game; “Escapades”, a bunch of “short extra episodes”; and “Credits”.
But dive further into the Gallery, Auditorium, and Escapades, and you’ll find a treasure trove of content. Do be warned, though — the special features can potentially spoil some things, like a particular character appearing, or a voice line that they haven’t said yet.
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The Gallery contains scanned notes and concepts with commentary from the team, unused character designs, and a “Special Exhibit” that unlocks when you complete the game. It’s also where you’ll find “Moving Pictures”, a bunch of promotional animated content which is well worth watching, especially as much of it was untranslated and unpublished until now. “Special Trial 2017” has Phoenix and Maya meeting Ryunosuke and Susato, and it’s fantastic; “Ryunosuke Naruhodo’s Seven Days of Sin” is all about Herlock Sholmes getting annoyed at Ryunosuke, and it’s as weird as it is wonderful.
“From the original Japanese release of ‘Adventures’, we present two special videos that were shown exclusively at events and thirteen ‘Indictment’ and ‘Adjudication’ videos, where players voted on Ryunosuke’s guilt or innocence each evening online and the results were posted the next day.”
— Capcom’s description of the Moving Pictures
The Auditorium, likewise, contains not just the music and voices in the game, but the unused compositions, too, along with very brief explainers from the composers which are charmingly goofy (they use “lol” a fair bit). You’ll get to see how the Ace Attorney soundtrack and audio come together, working through drafts of songs and slowly refining them to get the finished product. My personal favourite is all the scrapped versions of the iconic “dialogue typing” sounds. Who knew there were so many types of type?
Finally, there are the Escapades: eight mini-episodes which you definitely shouldn’t play until you’ve finished the first game. They make for a nice little appetiser between the main courses of Adventures and Resolve, fleshing out a few of the main characters in each case with short, low-stakes vignettes — a nice change of pace from all the life-and-death stuff in the main story.
A small shout-out, I suppose, has to go to the “Tailor” section, too, because even though the alternative outfits are only for use in Resolve, it’s rather endearing to see Sholmes solving crimes in a cute pink “Japanese jumble” ensemble. And the “Accolades” bit might be a bit odd — in-game achievements? On a Nintendo console?! Goodness me — but they are fun, especially for long-time fans who’ll appreciate the award for talking about ladders.
Some of those achievements will be hard to get, of course, like the one for doing certain things in a certain order, or the one that requires you to examine every single shovel in the game, but The Great Ace Attorney at least lets you skip to certain checkpoints in each case, making it a little easier to be an achievement hunter.
Finally, one last small shout-out goes to the fact that the main menu background changes to represent the case you’re currently on. It’s so cool!!
I would have said that The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is worth the admission price alone for these two 30+ hour games, but the added value of all these special features is incredible. As a fan of video games, development, or just fun facts, they’re unmissable, and I really hope that Special Features become more of a thing in games in general. After all, how will we ever know about the state of Mario’s toes otherwise?
Soapbox: Super Metroid Showed Me I Had The Right To Exist
© Nintendo
My first experience with the Metroid series was relatively unremarkable: I just bought Super Metroid for my SNES, back when a brand new SNES game was something you could just walk into a local shop and buy.
I took its oversized box home, flipped through the glossy Player’s Guide, and noticed something odd — Samus Aran, the protagonist shown on the front cover wearing a thick red and yellow armoured suit shooting at the angry monster with a head full of teeth, was described as a “she”. And it wasn’t a one-off typo either — “she” “her” and “heroine” cropped up constantly throughout the guide’s seventy-ish pages, as if the character exploring this harsh planet and performing all of the cool actions in the illustrations really was a girl.
I checked the artwork again — thick armour, no pyramid-shaped chestplate or cleavage window. She wasn’t just carrying a gun but her entire right arm was enveloped in a cannon, apparently off on a serious sci-fi horror adventure all by herself…
I was shocked. Samus Aran was a girl? Really?
No, not quite — Samus Aran was a woman.
This revelation would have hit me around the head in the summer of 1994 at the very earliest, which would have meant I was at the time an enthusiastic almost-teen girl trying to find where I belonged in a hobby that had no problem basing mainstream advertising campaigns around masturbatory innuendo, exclusionary language, and to not put too fine a point on it, great big boobies. Games were by guys for guys, and I could either stay and accept that immutable fact or go back to whatever it was girls my age were supposed to like (I still have no idea what girls are supposed to like — I think I missed that particular memo).
At this time I had to learn to be begrudgingly grateful for the likes of Chun Li and Blaze Fielding — and what was I complaining about anyway? They could both fight and neither wore a pink dress, so what more did I want?
At this time I had to learn to be begrudgingly grateful for the likes of Street Fighter II’s Chun Li and Streets of Rage’s Blaze Fielding; both characters cut from the same “fast-but-weak” cloth, both featuring “bonus” panty shots as part of their standard animation routines, both designed as something of a secondary choice in the games they were created for. It was that or nothing — and what was I complaining about anyway? They could both fight and neither wore a pink dress, so what more did I want?
There are various ways of expressing what I wanted: “Representation” and “Equality” are both handy grown-up ways of framing it, but what it really boils down to is the simplest most complicated thing around — I wanted games to be fair. I wanted to not have to make do with the only choice on offer, or to tell myself the character I’d been lumbered with was wearing the bare minimum amount of clothing possible because ‘she wanted to’ and that I was prudish to question whether a leather thong was standard ninja outerwear.
I wanted Samus; a solo-flying, gun-toting, bounty hunter from the future who thought nothing of spin-jumping through lava, shooting alien space pirates in the face, and considered escaping a space station filled with dead bodies just before it explodes nothing more than an attention-grabbing opener — a prelude to the real adventure.
And that’s why Samus shocked me. Because she was fair.
There may not be a lot of common ground between someone who blasts huge alien brains for a living and a young girl living in the UK, and as characters go she’s so covered up and so silent, there was barely anything to her beyond the brief snippets of backstory mentioned in the guide, but through her I could see a future for myself, for women, in a hobby I loved so very much. She was an alternative made real, and not in the thin technicality of an optional bikini-clad “warrior” portrait in a create-your-own-adventurer first-person RPG, but on the front of a SNES game by one of the biggest developer-publishers in the business.
Samus proved people like me could be something other than a castle’s princess, a hero’s prize, or a pubescent boy’s pin-up fantasy
Samus proved people like me could be something other than a castle’s princess, a hero’s prize, or a pubescent boy’s pin-up fantasy — people like me could stomp through the rain of an alien world, could have the life-force sucked out of us by strange organisms in hostile environments, could navigate through hidden vents, or run so fast enemies popped when we touched them and soft walls crumbled before our unstoppable might.
But there was more to it than being the polar opposite of fast-but-weak: Samus wasn’t out there being an in-your-face “Grrl” either; she wasn’t the embodiment of the “Girl Power” movement that began making waves in the mid-’90s, and she neither wannabe’d my lover or for me to get with her friends — she just quietly was. She was proof just existing and doing what she did best — blowing things up with missiles and fighting Ridley to the death (again) — could be enough of a reason for her to be a woman; without any excuses, explanations, or as a reluctant alternative to a “real” hero, and I took that to heart. If it was OK for Samus to be here and be her uncompromised self, then maybe it was OK for me, too.
There are of course legitimate criticisms to be levelled at Metroid, Samus, and Nintendo’s ongoing treatment of the series and its star. The player’s reward for doing well in many classic Metroid games is often to see Samus in increasing states of undress, which feels completely at odds with the self-sufficient Chozo-raised hunter for hire character they’ve just cleared the game as, and her current characterisation veers wildly between “I will wipe out the most dangerous threat to the galaxy by myself” and “I’ll do whatever Adam orders me to under any circumstances”.
We’ll have to wait and see how she’s portrayed in the upcoming Metroid Dread, but on balance the series has got more right than it has wrong, and Samus herself still feels like nothing less than hope to people like me; a heroine not only in her own world but in ours, too.