If Nintendo Switch Sports Resort's sole mission is to make you look and feel stupid and have a ton of fun with friends and family, then Nintendo has accomplished that mission with flying colors (and flailing arms). Considering Nintendo's other outings with its motion-controlled sports games, that shouldn't come as a surprise--nor should the feeling of a sore arm the next morning: a feeling that I consider nostalgic at this point.
Switch Sports Resort delivers the best showcase of sports and modes, making it feel like a complete experience and the most cohesive package in the series to date.
For the nostalgic-driven players, it's easy to notice which sports from previous games aren't included among the 12 here, like Chambara, Badminton, and Disc Golf. But in place of those missing games are what I consider to be the greatest hits of the series, joined by welcome additions like the tension-fest competition of Thumb Wrestling.
Of those 12 events, there are three "Leisure Sports" (game modes that don't require the player to be standing or exerting the use of a limb to flail), which include Prop Plane, Skateboarding, and Power Cruising. With the exception of Thumb Wrestling, the other eight more traditional sports will require you standing up in front of your TV, Joy-Cons in hand, and using physical gestures to mimic the act of playing the sport. You'll swing your whole arm for Tennis as if wielding a racket; raise your arm back and then swing forward to bowl; or, in the case of Archery, hold a Joy-Con in each hand, raising one arm forward and pulling back with the other to simulate drawing a bow--it all still feels awesome, just as it has since the original game. The Switch 2's HD Rumble is used well to enhance the experience with better feedback. In archery, for example, the controllers simulate the tension of the bowstring.
Like playing actual sports, your enjoyment mileage will vary. If I'm not good at a real-life sport, then clearly something is wrong with the sport and its in-game version. This was the case while playing Switch Sports Resort's rendition of Table Tennis against friends. I was terrible at it and therefore I blamed the game. However, someone I was playing with was doing well and seemed skilled in what they were doing. While I refused to believe that I'm the problem and that it isn't a skill issue, that experience proved to me that it is, indeed, a skill issue, and I just suck at Table Tennis. And it's fine!
This scenario captures the essence of playing this game with friends: the natural banter that comes with the playful competition in sports. Because while this particular player was able to beat me at Table Tennis, I absolutely destroyed them at regular ol' Tennis--a legacy sport in the series, and one I've loved since the original 2006 game. "Friendly" competition or showboating skills aside, each sport achieves what matters most: They're all fun to play.
Some sports are easier to engage with than others. Tennis, Bowling, Golf, and Boxing are the most pick-up-and-play friendly, but that doesn't dismiss the depth of skill that can be learned and applied. Golf takes advantage of the Joy-Con's position, so newcomers will need to pay attention to the angle of your swing, while experienced players will naturally consider how much the Joy-Con is tilted. In both cases, it feels intuitive. Golf remains one of the more chill sports to give your arms a bit of a rest and offers a wide variety of courses with varying difficulties.
Among the don't-fix-what-ain't-broke sports is bowling, which returns with a mode that features obstacles to bowl around and simultaneous bowl, so you and your friends don't have to wait to take turns. 100 Pin Bowling from the original Wii Sports Resort returns too, and, as before, few things are as satisfying as getting a 100-pin strike on your first frame.
I sorely missed Boxing in Switch Sports, and now my arms are sore from its return--I love it. Boxing can feel like you're just swinging wildly until your opponent is down, but Resort makes the addition of a stamina gauge (despite having my own real-life stamina gauge) for added strategy, incentivizing you to be more deliberate and methodical in your approach with your dodges, blocks, and left-and-right hooks. I can't say I was either deliberate or methodical in the matches I played because I was having too much fun just punching the air with all my might. Did I lose? Yes, and I don't care.
Each sport offers its own distinct use of the Joy-Con, with sports like Volleyball and Basketball featuring a rotation of more complex movesets rather than the usual swinging and punching. As a result, these sports' tutorials are more cumbersome. When playing with a group of people, this can be a speed bump for the uninitiated, but it's worth having a little patience for the end result.
The complexities of Volleyball and Basketball are largely in the extra steps when learning about positioning for you and your teammates. Volleyball plays more like a choreographed dance as you change positions from passing, to setting up a shot, to blocking an incoming ball, all of which require the physical motion of raising your arms at just the right time. Basketball involves a few extra moves depending on your position. It took my friends and I a moment to fully grasp how to play it, but once I locked in with my teammate--leaning on communication and fighting off the urge to run in for a shot--a careful passing took place that, when done skillfully, felt satisfying. (It also helps that we won.)
Thankfully, both Volleyball and Basketball offer pick-up-and-play modes, which alleviate the more cumbersome nature of learning all the moves. For this, Basketball features several modes that focus on just shooting hoops against opponents, and Volleyball narrows down gameplay to a rhythm game where you are tasked with timing your ball bumps on a beat. They're both fun bite-sized helpings of each sport, with Basketball's Five-Streak Battle being a standout thanks to its tension to land five consecutive shots while three other opponents shoot for hoops simultaneously.
As is the case with playing any real-life sport, it's par for the course to get a little worn out while playing, and that's where Sports Resort's Leisure Sports come in. Leisure Sports are a standout, with each sport offering a much-appreciated change-up from the usual arm flailing. In Prop Plane, you control a plane by holding the Joy-Con like how you'd hold a paper plane, guiding it around the game's open world; Skateboarding takes advantage of the Joy-Con's mouse features, sliding it back on the surface to simulate pushing a skateboard; and Power Cruising has you control a jet ski by holding a Joy-Con in each hand, steering as if they were handlebars and twisting the right one to trigger a boost (with an optional solo Joy-Con control scheme, too). Each of these sports triggered a deep sense of nostalgia in me, being reminiscent of playing with toys as a kid, with the Joy-Cons becoming an extension of that feeling. In this case, the game itself simulates my imagination and it's just pure joy.
Each Leisure Sport has its own chill sightseeing mode that allows you to explore the Resort's island from land, water, and air, but, on the opposite end, they also have competitive modes. Competing in each one is very fun in its own right, and this is especially true for Skateboarding and Power Cruising, both of which have whispers of Mario Kart-style intro sequences. There's a wide array of courses that increase in difficulty and introduce speed boosts, tight turns, and some genuinely thrilling course-specific moments, like skateboarding down a mountain on a narrow path, neck-and-neck with my opponent, for example. They're so fun that it feels like a glaring misstep to not include the ability to compete against CPUs in this format. Compounding the problem, none of the Leisure Sports can be played online, which isn't the case for the other nine sports.
Although Leisure Sports stumbles in their lack of CPU opponents, the other sports avoid the same pitfall with Island Crown, an in-game tournament-like mode where you can move up the ranks as you take on increasingly difficult CPU opponents. Three sports that are part of Island Crown can be played in co-op (Tennis, Volleyball, and Basketball), should you want to involve friends. Island Crown also showcases a large part of Resort's distinct personality, with each sport featuring its own ultimate opponent who you're moving up the ranks to take on. They’re colored with their own quips and share tips as you push through match after match. Ranking number one and taking down these pretty-faced athletes rewards you more accessories and items to customize your avatar with.
If you played Switch Sports, you'll be familiar with Resort's avatars and range of customization. They haven't evolved much from that game, nor did they need to. I mean, hey, I never thought it needed to evolve past the original Wii's Miis, and thankfully Nintendo continues to support them in this game too. So my dead-eyed Mii can still face-off against the new pretty-faced avatars. Additionally, there's an option to make all the CPU opponents Miis, which are populated from both Miis you've created on your console to randomly generated ones. The moment I realized this option was available, I changed it. Long live Miis.
The novelty of motion controls may be gone as motion-based functionality has been part of every Nintendo console for the last 20 years. What prevails, however, is the unabashed fun that ensues when gathering folks together to move and act silly in the name of virtual sports. Beyond that, Resort still manages to spark imagination with its Leisure Sports and showcases that there's still wonder in motion-controlled games, like when performing plane tricks with nothing but the motion of your hand.
As someone who played the original Wii Sports when it first released, and was awed by the rudimentary real-life movements being mimicked on screen, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort allowed me to feel that all over again as an adult. And it's a feeling best felt surrounded by friends. Whether you're a jaded 36-year-old man with no children (like me), a parent, a grandparent, or a kid, it's hard to imagine even the most calloused-hearted person not having fun with the game. Get your family together, get your friends, heck--invite your neighbors over, break out the party essentials, and have fun.