Console Gaming on the Go
Nintendo is largely competing against itself here. Yes, the PlayStation Vita has some cool indie games, and there have been plenty of handhelds from other companies with great tech behind them over the years, but all of them paled in comparison to Nintendo’s various GameBoy and DS offerings. While Nintendo’s home console business has had its hits and misses, the console holder has never done us dirty when it comes to gaming on the go. The Game Gear, PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation Vita each looked for all the world as if they would stomp the Game Boy, DS, and 3DS, respectively, but the exact opposite happened in every case.
Enter the Switch, which has no real handheld competition while boasting the most powerful internals and the best controls of any dedicated mobile gaming device to date. For once, Nintendo has the most technically able handheld on the block, even if that’s mostly because its only neighbor is the five-year-old Vita. Nevertheless, removing a Switch from its home dock and seeing Breath of the Wild running in all its glory – albeit it at a lower, but still HD, resolution than on TVs – is an astounding experience. This is the biggest, most fully realized game world Nintendo has ever made, and you can take it with you wherever you go.
If you choose to do so, you won’t sacrifice much in the way of controllability, either. Handheld gaming has always meant suffering from inconvenient, uncomfortable, and/or insufficient control options. And while playing Switch on the go is still a step back from refined Switch Pro Controller you can (optionally) use while playing at home, the Joy-Cons provide such a close facsimile to traditional console controls that it’s hard to complain at all. If they were any better, you’d just be holding a console controller.
In return for all this greatness when playing the Switch undocked, the tradeoff Nintendo has asked us to accept is to, well, not play undocked as much. What I mean by this is that the device’s stated battery range is a very wide 3.5 to 6.5 hours. Not too shabby at all – if you hit that 6.5 hours. But graphically intensive games, like the Switch’s marquee title, Breath of the Wild, are coming in at the low end. In fact, some users are reporting that Breath of the Wild lasts just over three hours on the go. That’s not terrible, considering what you’re getting in those three hours, but it’s not great, either, or even good.
