I've never once in my life regretted a console purchase. When I was young and rocking the Sega Saturn when all my buddies had the much more popular PS1, I was happy with my giant black box running Panzer Dragoon Saga, Fighters Megamix and Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo. When the Dreamcast came out and died a swift death, I was still happy with games like Shenmue, Evolution and Space Channel 5. Even the WiiU which I have played exactly half a game on since I bought it still has pride of place under the TV in my house. But when I look at the Switch I just can't help but feel a little bit of bile rise in the back of my throat.
I can't place exactly what makes me feel that way, probably the fact that it was extremely hyped by games media, twats on social media and even friends of mine. All of them going on constantly "have you played this on Switch?", "have you played that on Switch!?" "oh my god Zelda is SO much fun" etc etc. So when I did finally get one only to find it quite lacking it makes me feel a sort of disdain towards the thing.
But I'll be honest, I haven't really given it a fair chance. The first game I played on it was Zelda: Breath of the Wild and I know there are certain morons that will bite my head off for saying this but I HATED it. It's durability system made it immensely frustrating to play, the exploration while cool at first became a chore after a few hours, the combat was laughably easy and the whole thing was so easily broken by cooking and upgrades that I didn't feel like I was on an adventure while playing, I felt like I was just faffing around until Ganon died and the ending played. Then I moved onto Celeste and had a pretty good time with that but was having an infinitely better time with the PC version and then after that I played Bloodstained which was so buggy and lacking in performance that I couldn't believe that they allowed it to retail for the Switch at all. The only TRULY positive experiences I've had with the thing since I bought it have been Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster because portable Nocturne is awesome and Tetris99 which was fun but I haven't played that shit for months.
So this year, before I file it away mentally as a massive piece of shit I'm going to give it a fair whack. The Switch will be my focus for gaming purchases and off-stream playtime for the year. I started Mario Odyssey recently and I'm not overly taken with it but it's not awful. There's also a remake of the ORIGINAL version of Baroque (from the Saturn) which I've been meaning to buy for a while and Bravely Default 2 is just around the corner at time of writing so I'm pretty excited for that. Shin Megami Tensei 5 (the reason I bought the damn thing) will one day surface and a quick google of upcoming games yields a few results that have piqued my interest.
So the Switch has exactly a year to sell me on its library otherwise it's going in a cardbox box and getting less use Vita for the rest of time
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