8 Most Disappointing Switch Games, Ranked

They say that happiness equals reality minus expectations, and, unfortunately for these eight Switch games, reality landed nowhere near what was expected. It’s hard to blame the critical and community reception for some of them, but not all of them are bad. Some just aren’t what people were hoping they would be. So we’ve ranked them by the size of the gap between promise and result, from the mild letdowns to the ones that stung most or didn’t justify for the cost. Consider this your reminder to check your expectations at the door.

8 Princess Peach: Showtime! (2024)

Expected: A showstopper.

Got: A chill, easy stage show

Here, Peach takes the lead in a theater full of costume-themed stage plays, including a detective, a mermaid, and a swordfighter. If you love Princess Peach and enjoy dressing up dolls — which, same — this may sound like a good conceit. Critics largely enjoyed the charm of the outfits granting Peach various abilities, but found that as a gaming experience it was “pretty, if shallow.” Others found that the game was short, without offering much of a challenge to justify its $60 price tag. Princess Peach: Showtime! only lasted between four and 10 hours and lacked some quality-of-life mechanics, like the ability to backtrack or jump to specific points within the game. Even though Showtime! seemed like it was going to be a full, dynamic action-adventure game, it mostly used just two buttons (A and B) for extremely basic actions and jumps.

7 Mario Golf: Super Rush (2021)

Expected: A bigger Mario Golf.

Got: One even thinner than the Game Boy Color version

The idea for this game is good on paper: What if golf, usually a fairly leisurely sport, were a race? Speed Golf does bring an unique, energetic twist to the action, asking you to sprint across the course to each hole while your opponents do the same. The trouble with Mario Golf: Super Rush was …everything else. The developer, Camelot Software Planning, launched the game with only six courses and a short adventure mode. Somewhat puzzlingly, it decided to ditch the familiar timed swing mechanics for a more randomized alternative. The game has since been expanded, but at launch felt a bit lacking next to the Game Boy Color Mario Golf.

6 Nintendo Switch Sports (2022)

Expected: A new Wii Sports.

Got: Not enough sports at launch

Motion-controlled sports games are difficult to do well. Especially when there’s one well-made, very popular game — Wii Sports — that has set the standard for the genre. Nintendo Switch Sports launched with six sports for $39.99. Golf, one of the five original Wii Sports staples, wasn’t among them: it arrived months later as a free update. The game also swapped the Miis, another Wii Sports signature, for new customizable “Sportsmates” avatars, and leaned heavily on online play. While a Switch 2 follow-up will be released Oct. 22 that will feature 12 different sports, the original game felt much more like an overpriced demo that probably should have been included with the console.

5 Mario Strikers: Battle League (2022)

Expected: A full Mario Strikers.

Got: Soccer matches, and not much else

Mario’s chaotic soccer spinoff has a cult following from its GameCube and Wii days, which is why Battle League was so highly anticipated. Especially because it was coming from Next Level Games, the studio behind Luigi’s Mansion 3. Here, we got matches that play…fine, but the content surrounding that gameplay was thin. Metacritic users criticized its lack of single-player content, and some went so far as to say it launched without any meaningful content. The other Mario Strikers games were over-the-top, rule-light, and quick-to-play. There were no referees, plenty of items you could throw at your opponents, and a charged “Super Strike” counted for two goals. Mario Strikers Charged on the Wii added different sidekicks and some of the first online play on that console. That made Battle League less an exciting Mario Strikers experience and more a soccer match with a menu around it.

4 Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (2019)

Expected: A comeback.

Got: Ten minigames out of the original 50?

As an original Wii launch game back in 2006, Banana Blitz was built around the Wii remote. Its 50 minigames, worked best when you flicked the Wii Remote to throw a dart in Monkey Darts, or tilted it to roll your monkey around the stage. When Sega made the HD remake thirteen years later, they kept ten of those games — goodbye, Monkey Bowling, Monkey Race, and Monkey Golf — and mapped the inputs to a more standard controller. This was not a popular decision. GameSpot noted that the ten included games ranged from “okay to atrocious.” Others were confused about why Banana Blitz was the choice to revive the series (why not Super Monkey Ball 2??).

3 Sports Story (2022)

Expected: A more comprehensive and varied Golf Story.

Got: Golf, and little else

Golf Story, a 2017 golf RPG from Sidebar Games about an underdog amateur honing his skills on the green, was a charming surprise that garnered relatively high reviews. Its sequel kept the protagonist and the humor while expanding the activity lineup to include tennis, soccer, cricket, volleyball, BMX, fishing, and baseball. Some of these sports were more developed than others. You could play a relatively expansive golf game, for example, but baseball featured mainly just a batting cage, and there were only a few goal challenges to prop up the soccer section. The lesson, here, is that Golf Story showed that just one sport, as long as you gave it enough of a spotlight, was enough.

2 Endless Ocean Luminous (2024)

Expected: A new scuba story!

Got: 99 mysteries to clear out, first

The Endless Ocean games on the Wii were a duo of relaxing scuba-diving adventures that came out between 2007 and 2010. The 2024 return to the series set you loose in a procedurally generated sea to explore with up to 30 others through online play. So far, so good. But the story mode introduced a fair amount of issues. Each mission only unlocked after scanning hundreds of fish, and the last few quests would only be available to players who cleared out 99 “mysteries.” (These were squares on a stone tablet that ‘unlocked’ after completing tasks like reading lore excerpts.) This lent the previously relaxing series a more grindy vibe that players did not love. Some critics noted that Luminous felt like less than an hour of story stretched over 20+ hours of gameplay. While the (procedural) ocean might have been technically endless, the plot was not.

1 1-2-Switch (2017)

Expected: A game that came free with the platform.

Got: A full-price collection of minigames

1-2-Switch launched alongside the then-new Nintendo Switch to illustrate what the Joy-Cons were capable of. Its 28 minigames are meant to be played while looking at an IRL competitor, not necessarily staring at a screen. The games themselves were clearly built for that, with a lineup including Table Tennis and Quick Draw. This would have been totally fine if it were a package deal with the platform, like Wii Sports. Instead, Nintendo sold it as a full-priced title…which left players feeling like they’d spent real money on a “game” that was more like a tech demo. It was popular enough — Nintendo reported that the game shipped nearly a million copies by April 2017 — but it didn’t do well critically. Metacritic gave it a 58, and that lasting reputation as a pricey Joy-Con tutorial has been impossible to shake.