Everybody 1-2 Switch

Nintendo chose, unsurprisingly, not to send out review codes in good time as they usually do with Everybody 1-2 Switch. In fact, there has been virtually no promotion of the game, apart from a single bizarre trailer that mainly confused consumers with its lack of concrete details about the minigames the game actually consists of.

But as you might find out in a moment, there's a very good reason why Nintendo is hoping this flies under the radar, because Everybody 1-2 Switch is truly one of the worst "party games" I've ever played, and it lacks the quality control apparatus that defines a good 95% of Nintendo's overall output.

Okay, so the idea of Everybody 1-2 Switch is that two teams compete against each other in 17 mini-games (the previous game had 28), and you then pass the two Joy-Cons (with HD Rumble on them, of course) to the next player. Let me make it clear right here that 17 minigames are not enough - you'll quickly see repeats during a 45-minute sequence, and they're so short and so uninvolving that the entertainment value drops drastically the second time round.

There's a Quick Draw-inspired one with a feudal samurai theme, but it's pretty much the same as the cowboy game we saw in the first 1-2 Switch. There's one where you have to push your opponent out of a virtual arena with your bum. There's a trivia game where you have to answer the most ridiculous questions, such as which letter comes after another in the alphabet.

In WarioWare, it's all about the charm, the visual style, the self-conscious arrogance. In Mario Party, there's a fairly structured and engaging meta beyond the individual minigames. In Everybody 1-2 Switch, you really only have these 60-second rounds that don't offer exciting aesthetics, fun music or cool ideas.

And even then, there are a few of these minigames where everyone can join in. You know, "everybody". They can use their smartphones to go to a URL and then they participate alongside those using a Joy-Con. A clever idea that has been used by Jackbox since the dawn of time, but almost every time here we ran into problems, and like IGN, there was consistently one or two in the company who hadn't given their browser camera access, resulting in the given minigame being cancelled - for everyone. Cool.

It's actually not a bad idea, the smartphone thing. For example, there's a mini-game where you have to take a picture of something in your immediate surroundings that is a certain colour, and the closest wins. There is also a favourite where one team hides a Joy-Con for the other team to find.

But it all just gets so infinitely boring, so infinitely fast, and that's both due to a huge amount of repetition. When the games are so short and there are so few of them, you quickly find yourself playing the same ones over and over again, and since there are no real variations of each game, it's hard to stay excited. Nor is there any Mario Party-esque meta that would make the individual points add up in a slightly broader way.

And after just three or four sessions with Everybody 1-2 Switch, I'd seen it all and didn't want to go back. I don't know how this happened, but I do know that there are far, far better ways to entertain friends and family on Switch than this.