Look, I don’t hate Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. I say that now because it really feels as though it’s been quite some time since a piece of software (let alone a launch “game”) has been so divisive. It’s not up to me to decide if this should have been a pack-in, nor whether you should drop £7.99 on it, though being completely up-front, if you’re reading this review at this point, you probably shouldn’t be grabbing it.
It’s not that there’s anything inherently bad about it, either. It’s more that this is very much something you should play first, before anything else, when buying your Switch 2. And I suspect most people are already deep into Mario Kart World, or exploring the neon-soaked world of Cyberpunk 2077, or perhaps even playing friendly adventure game Survival Kids. Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a tutorial you should play first, but crucially, it’s one that probably isn’t designed for you or me.
There’s a lack of the standard “Nintendo Charm” that you’d find in a first-party title, here. It’s very staid, and dare I say it, sterile in its execution. Welcome Tour does what it says on the tin, and very little more. You will create an avatar and then walk out into the world. Curiously, there’s no movement tutorial (that I can remember, anyway), yet there are detailed panels that will explain the minutiae of every function, and piece of hardware on the Switch 2 console.
I deliberately got someone in my house to play first who wasn’t what you’d traditionally call “a gamer”. Moving around on the in-world Switch 2 was easy enough, but once the mini-games started, the fun had was very much a mixed bag of excitement and ambivalence. You’ll be able to move around and check boxes, do quizzes (with no punishment for failing), but the mini-games are the actual source of the fun here.
Starting with a simple vibration-based experience you can find the vibration, and anyone can do this. As with all of the mini-games, once completed, a harder challenge within the same ideal will unlock. You’re rewarded with progress unlocking currency (stamps), and you move on. More mouse fun is present in the first area, but it’s here you not only get an idea of the functionality of the mouse Joy-Con option, but also the fact it isn’t quite as accurate as a mouse you’ve almost certainly used before.
Don’t get me wrong, placing a held Joy-Con down and it instantly becoming a mouse is never going to not be cool. But it’s reliant on the surface, and I understand now why when it was shown in hands-on demos why there were tables and mouse mats. Simply put, on your knees, or a sofa, it’s not as good as if you use it with a proper set up. It works well enough, however, and soon you can move onto different parts of the Switch 2 hardware, with more mini-games.
There’s an excellent frame-rate mini-game, which genuinely succeeds as one of the best visual explanations of what lower and higher frame-rates look like. Games like Speed Golf show that precision is possible, but speed is not a friend to the Joy-Con mouse controls. There’s a lot of mouse-controlled games present, and of course this makes sense as it’s “the” big new features controller-wise. Of course, motion and rumble (and even the touch screen) gets a good run out, too, and again it’s still cool to shake some virtual maracas that genuinely feel weirdly realistic.
There are some fun experiences throughout, yet despite the option to replay for higher scores/times/etc, I just feel few people will actually return other than to show someone new how things all work. Much of Welcome Tour feels as though it’s designed for when someone comes over and you’re showing off the shiny new toy, but it just doesn’t quite do it with enough panache to justify taking that slot, and Mario Kart World might be the more exciting option.
It’s not that anything within Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is bad, per say, it’s more that it feels like exactly what it is: a tech demo. This is a piece of software designed to show off the hardware to people new to gaming, new to Nintendo Switch, even. But it’s just missing the spark that Nintendo so regularly delivers. Of late Nintendo has delivered strange ideas within storied franchises, the likes we’d never have expected. To compare to this to even the likes of the Wii U’s Nintendo Land, let alone Wii Sports, it’s impossible not to come off unfavourably.
Ultimately, for less than a tenner you can satisfy your own curiosity, but go in knowing that it’s just not quite up to par for what is expected these days from Nintendo, and you perhaps won’t be disappointed. There are fleeting moments of promise, and some of the tech on show is genuinely exciting, but ultimately Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is just decent, when you’d expect more for something designed to show a new system. That said, it’s also the best example of the Joy-Con mouse tech right now, so there is that.
