I hope it’s not just me who feels this way but I was completely underwhelmed by that direct, it was the polar opposite of the Playstation one at the end of last year that had me grinning from ear to ear. I watched the whole thing waiting to be mind blown and was only mildly tickled by it! The most….excited I got was probably the Ninja Gaiden collection and the Mario items on Animal Crossing, so does that just sum up nintendo as a whole at the moment?
When this was advertised as the first direct for a year and a half and was announcing the games for 2021, I thought there would be loads of huge surprises and what I got was a smattering of remasters, indie games, jrpgs and a couple of very underwhelming new releases….I mean teen DC supergirls…..really?! I know, I know , that the Switch is a little power house for all of these genres I’ve listed above but it’s a NEW year and it’s still a relatively new console so surely there should have been something bigger coming out. I was almost forcing myself to be excited, even the Star Wars game announced made me doubtful as that will inevitably be a glorified mobile game or a fortnite rip off.
Of course there were things that looked cool, I could definitely have fun with friends on Mario golf, and I’d definitely replay Ninja Gaiden, but there was nothing that made me think I’d be running to the shops (or the nintendo store) ready to spend £60, not even close. I’m already thinking I’ll be waiting for Gaiden to go on offer at like £25 and I’ll probably never pick up Mario Golf as it’s simply not worth the money for the couple hours of fun you’ll get from it.
For me the closest to excited I got was probably at the announcement of Skyward Sword using the motion controls (although I’ve read that the motion controls are pretty poor), I am for sure interested at the prospect of using more of the motion controls which have felt barely utilized thus far. Plus it’s one of the few Zelda games I haven’t played, so yeh I’ll check it out. But even the way they announced it was almost….desperate “we’re sooo sorry we don’t have BOTW 2 but have you heard of this other game that kind of has some the mechanics we went on to use in BOTW, please give us money Zelda fans” it was just a bit poor.
I love Nintendo and I know that their whole game (excuse the pun) is focusing on their 2 iconic characters, indies, and jrpgs….but I just need more than that and remasters. Even the jrpg front was piss poor, and I’m fully into them at the moment! Oh and as far as new smash characters and Splatoon 3…..just fuck off. I got to the end and almost couldn’t believe that was it! Splatoon 3…..well perhaps I’m just not the right target audience, but there just seemed like there was nothing there for me, and I love my switch!
I think Nintendo risk dropping down in the opinion of many gamers if they don’t give us a bit more this year. But then again I be one of the few who didn’t buy into this, and I know there are lots of people who were probably blown away by this. So what did you think, let me know @RespawningUK