It’s not a stretch to say that Welcome Tour is the elephant in the room when it comes to controversial launch games on the Nintendo Switch 2. Priced at ten bucks (or a little more if you’re Canadian), Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is little more than an over-glorified instructions manual for what should have been free software pre-installed on all Nintendo Switch 2 consoles, ala Astro’s Playroom.
For the price of entry, I was hopeful that Welcome Tour would be saved by its innovative use of system features, such as the mouse control options available on the Nintendo Joy-Con 2 controllers. After all, Nintendo is no stranger to fun and out-of-the-box experiences that take full advantage of their unique hardware. Sadly, Welcome Tour, instead, feels strangely sterile and devoid of much personality outside of the gimmick of getting to explore a giant-sized and meticulously detailed replica of the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware. The setting and atmosphere of the game feel more like you’re walking into the Apple store rather than the fun world of beloved Nintendo characters.
The mini-games that are available to the player can barely even be classified as games, and the few stand-out titles within Welcome Tour that feel truly game-like only last for a few minutes, making them dead on arrival. Stand out experiences in Welcome Tour essentially boil down to the all the games that utilize the mouse controls, which tasks players with, for example, avoiding incoming detritus, zipping through laser fences as fast possible without touching the path of the beams, to gliding the Joy-Con 2 controller around to isolate the HD Rumble 2 features prevalent inside the controller.
“The mini-games that are available to the player can barely even be classified as games, and the few stand-out titles within Welcome Tour that feel truly game-like only last for a few minutes…”
Most of the time, however, instead of playing any fun micro games, you’ll instead be forced to wander haplessly around parts of the Nintendo Switch 2 architecture, looking for stamps, which are usually associated with different key parts of the console, such as the analogue sticks or the digitizer for the screen matrix. Although not particularly difficult to find, Welcome Tour forces the player to collect every single stamp in a given room, which boils down to slowly combing through the floor, praying you don’t miss one, as it sometimes will be the case, which again isn’t difficult but adds to the tedium of the experience.
Worse yet, in order to unlock some of the later mini games, Welcome Tour artificially prolongs its short play time by making the player earn coins by meeting certain point thresholds on previously unlocked minigames, which, when compounded by the stamp requirement to move on, gets old fast. Many medals are also earned only by completing little pop quizzes that crop up throughout the different parts of the Nintendo Switch 2, and unfortunately, as the name suggests, they feel like actual quizzes instead of fun or engaging games that you would want to pay for. In other words, you are better off spending your money by going to the science centre ora local amusement park.
If you’re a tech enthusiast or a hardcore Nintendo-phile, you may derive some pleasure from getting to see the nitty gritty of the Nintendo Switch 2 on display in Welcome Tour, but even then, the experiences themselves are so shallow and devoid of meaningful engagement that you will unlikely never go back after playing everything once, which doesn’t take very long if not for the tedium of collecting stamps.
“…in order to unlock some of the later mini games, Welcome Tour artificially prolongs its short play time by making the player earn coins by meeting certain point thresholds on previously unlocked minigames…”
Outside of the mouse centric minigames, some of the other experiences that Welcome Tour touts as worth checking out include stuff like discerning the frame rate of objects, or checking out the HDR capabilities by swapping between differently lit scenes via firework explosions and other un-fun gimmicks that feel more like training videos than anything your average consumer would enjoy.
The only saving grace I can say regarding Welcome Tour is the fact that I’m currently reviewing the Nintendo Switch 2 console itself, with Welcome Tour acting more like a comprehensive press release and breakdown of the system than a fun game to play, let alone recommend.
With the inevitability of a mid-generation refresh or new hardware down the line, Welcome Tour will likely only get worse with age, making an already not worth it experience just another forgotten launch title for in the way of greater things to emerge from that distinct green pipeline.
