Everybody 1-2 Switch! Review – I Really Don’t 1-2

Everybody 1-2 Switch! on Switch

For a hybrid console that’s meant to make you the life of the party — as those initial Switch ads from back in 2017 would have you believe — it’s quite baffling that Nintendo has decided to put out a painfully mediocre party game in the form of Everybody 1-2 Switch! As someone who’s a bit of a 1-2 Switch apologist, the 2023 follow-up is uninspiring, boring, and even an occasional source of nightmare fuel.

In fact, I had spent all week sitting on the fence, trying to decide if I wanted to purchase Mario Party Superstars for a friendly get-together I was planning for the end of the month. When I was presented with the opportunity to review Everybody 1-2 Switch!, though, I thought, “Alright, maybe this could be a fun party game to play with my friends, and I could save a little bit of money,” and proceeded to boot it up. Long story short: by the end of the first session, I thought, screw it, and instantly purchased Mario Party Superstars instead.

The original 1-2 Switch received a lot of flak, but as one of the Switch’s launch titles, it served as a decent tech demo that really showcased what the console and its innovative Joy-Cons were capable of. It was a little overpriced, sure, but it had the element of novelty on its side, and it also served as a distraction that could keep your party guests entertained for an hour or so.

It’s been six years since that original Switch launch, however, and Everybody 1-2 Switch! feels like an archaic relic of the past that has no place in 2023 as a modern party game.

Everybody 1-2 Switch! comes with one quality-of-life update: the ability to enjoy the game with your mobile phone, just in case there aren’t enough Joy-Cons to go around. This is a nifty little feature, as Joy-Cons are expensive, and it’s easy enough to get your phones set up to start playing immediately. For the most part, this feature worked as advertised, but during my play session, I encountered a few hiccups where phones would get disconnected, or a particular mini-game would require camera access but one of my guests would need to fiddle around their settings to allow camera permissions. The game would then instantly boot players out of the party, stating that the mini-game can’t be started, forcing us to recalibrate all over again.

These unforeseen hiccups didn’t happen all that often, but when they did, it was certainly frustrating. So if you have enough Joy-Cons lying around, just use those instead.

As for the mini-games themselves, well… trust me, dear reader, when I say that they really could not have been more boring and mind-numbing. Most games simply require you to repeat a specific motion with the Joy-Con; Balloons, for instance, requires you to pump up a balloon without bursting it, while UFOs requires you to imitate weird gestures onscreen to make contact with an alien. It also doesn’t help that the aliens are the stuff of nightmares.

These are both fine for the first few minutes, but they quickly get old as you get through the glut of utterly uninspiring mini-games.

There’s also a quiz-style game that asks you some truly inane questions like what the opposite of north is, or whether positive poles attract. There’s also a Bingo-style game that’s basically — you guessed it — Bingo, which I’m sure is exactly what my guests would love to play at a party full of people in their late 20s or early 30s.

To its credit, Everybody 1-2 Switch! does have a handful of more interactive and interesting games, such as Musical Chairs, and one that requires you to hide your Joy-Con while the other team tries to look for it. But even then, these aren’t quite enough to salvage what is ultimately a very lackluster party game package. Even calling it a party game feels incredibly generous.

By the time I’d gone through most of what Everybody 1-2 Switch! had to offer, my mind was made up. I could not possibly expect my guests to sit through these awful mini-games. I closed the game, went to the eShop, and picked up Mario Party Superstars. I also played a round of Superstars on my own against three NPCs, and already found more enjoyment in getting dunked by Wario than I had waving my arms around trying to make contact with a creepy alien.

Everybody 1-2 Switch! will likely entertain you for 30 minutes or so, if that. But it’s hardly worth its asking price, and with two other Mario Party games already available on the Switch, it’s difficult to recommend this one to anyone at all.