Nintendo Switch - Game Previews (2 of 5)

Thanks to the fine folks at Nyteworks (www.nyteworks.net), I got advanced hands-on experience with the upcoming Nintendo Switch and many of its games. I’ll be covering my game experiences this week, ordered alphabetically for the sake of simplicity, and will be covering my hardware experiences on Episode 36 of the BumbleKast (scheduled Monday, Feb. 6th).

Fast RMX

Release Date: March 2017

Since F-Zero has been dead since the passing of the Gamecube, it falls upon others to fill the niche of ultra-fast futuristic racers, and Fast RMX seems poised to fill the role. You pilot sleek rocket cars across a variety of sci-fi terrains. As you travel you’ll come across lanes of orange or blue energy. You switch your vehicle’s own power to match those colors to receive a boost. Run over the lane with the wrong color and you’re slowed down. Other color-coordinated perks are orbs that fill your boost meter, which allows you to acceleratate, and columns of light that pull you into the air, where acceleration is higher.

The demo had a small sampling of the beginning stages, and they were definitely fast and challenging. If they scale at all like F-Zero GX, the game promises to be absolutely nuts.

In short: It’s F-Zero meets Ikaruga. Definitely worth a look.

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Release Date: March 3rd, 2017

This was the title I was looking forward to the most, and I’m very happy to say it didn’t disappoint. For those of you avoiding spoilers, I’ll be brief: after the initial cutscenes and getting the required gear, I was treated to a sweeping vista shot of the land. The game made a couple of heavy-handed “go here, please” efforts, but then I was otherwise free to do my own thing.

I grabbed branches for weapons and scavenged apples and mushrooms for health. Sneaking through the tall grass, I came across a camp of enemy bokoblins. A wild boar ran close to their camp, and their archer tried to bring it down while the other two hunted it down with their clubs. While they were distracted, I snuck over and took them out. I was decked out in a club, shield, and bow in short order. 

I came across another pair of bokoblins in a ravine, just outside of a putrid bog with treasures just out of reach. If I had come from another direction, there was a boulder primed on a cliff that I could’ve pushed down to smush them. Instead I climbed a tree and sniped them with my bow. They began digging up rocks to hurl at me. Through  expert skill (*cough* blind luck *cough*), I shot one of the rocks out of the air, sending it back onto the bokoblin’s head.

In my all-too-brief twenty minutes with the game, I played it with the new Switch Pro Controller and the Joy-Cons attached to the portable version of the Switch itself. While I’ll be covering my experiences with the hardware on the BumbleKast, I will say that the Pro Controller felt great. The Joy-Con/Switch controller was awful, and I went back to the Pro Controller as soon as possible.

If I had any complaint, it would be that the button mapping didn’t feel intuitive. I’m hoping that there will be an option to remap them. And while I’ll sorely miss the dual-screen option provided by the Wii U version, I was very happy to see that the map screen gave you multiple markers you could place anywhere you wanted for future referencing. You could place a grand total of one hundred markers.

The other highlight was comparing experiences with my wife on the ride home. Aside from the scripted beginning, we had entirely different adventures. We found different mysteries, approached enemies with different tactics, and died in different, brutal ways. The amount of freedom in the starting area alone is thrilling, and I can’t wait to lose myself in the whole game.

In short: A gorgeous, expansive open world with the hallmarks of the Legend of Zelda series.