I am, it seems, a miserable old man.

I’ve had the thing right around 24 hours at the moment and have spent maybe three or four of those hours playing games– mostly Zelda– so take this with as much salt as you feel necessary, but it’s interesting that this is the first game system that I’ve ever played that didn’t feel like it was for me, if you know what I mean.  And actually, seconds after typing that, it’s already not true, because I’ve owned a Nintendo handheld at a couple of points and those felt the exact same way.  The last Nintendo system I really embraced was the GameCube; I’ve felt like everything I’ve touched since then was too gimmicky to be worth a damn and right now that’s the vibe I’m getting from the Switch.  The Joy-Cons are godawful (and I don’t have especially large hands) and Zelda in particular has a really butt control system.  Mario’s feels a lot more natural most of the time but the Mario game really wants you to hold a Joy-Con in each hand with nothing connecting them and that feels really, really weird.

Also I fucking hate the cartridges.  Hate them.  Can’t wait until one gets lost; it’s inevitable.

I’m at the point where I can leave the first landmass on Zelda and past the first boss fight on Mario; I think the Mario game is going to get a lot more play out of me and the boy certainly seems to enjoy it quite a lot too.  I think the Zelda game has too much reading for him just yet and too complicated of a control system, which is a bit of a shame as the original Legend of Zelda was the first Nintendo game I ever actually beat.  The fact that so far it’s actually kind of boring and frustrating (whoever came up with the “weapons should break after fighting one enemy” thing should never work in video games again; I don’t care if it was Shigeru Miyamoto himself) isn’t helping at all.  That said the game’s gotten 10/10 review scores basically across the board so I’m going to assume it gets a lot better and keep playing for a bit longer.

Or maybe I’ll go back to Nioh again.  I paid, what, $80/hour for my Switch so far?  That’s worth it, right?