I awake, fist contorted into the shape of a Joy-Con 2, with a sharp pain in my right shoulder from a night of strenuous Table Tennis. There must be a new Nintendo Sports game out.
Like everyone else in the world, I poured days into Wii Sports back in 2006, and spent an ungodly amount of time taking to the skies of Wuhu Island in its successor, Wii Sports Resort. Perhaps slightly less like everyone else, I also took things far too seriously in the forgotten Wii Sports Club on Wii U, and Nintendo Switch Sports stands as one of my most-played games on the titular hardware.
All this is to say, my body was ready for Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. Its predecessor launched in a less-than-match-ready state back in 2022, but it grew into a far more appealing package in future updates. The big question was, would Switch Sports Resort be equally slow off the starting line, or would it come out of the gate swinging? As the stiff right shoulder I mentioned can attest, it’s definitely the latter.
Nintendo Switch Sports Resort is everything Switch Sports should have been at launch and more. With a 12-sport lineup, different game modes, vastly improved character customisation, and a surprising amount of single-player content, this sequel more than lives up to its Resort namesake. It may not be revolutionary in any way, but it hits just about everything I’d want from the series.
Let’s start with those sports — they are the main event, after all. Switch Sports Resort brings five games over from the previous entry (Tennis, Volleyball, Bowling, Basketball, and Golf), all of which play mostly the same as they did previously.
Volleyball still feels a little sluggish, Bowling and Golf still rule, and there are three different Tennis courts to choose between this time. Groundbreaking. The remaining seven sports will be familiar to those who have played the other series entries, but they are given a new lease of life on Switch 2.
Boxing is perhaps the least engaging of the new bunch, with the Joy-Con 2’s motion controls occasionally faltering under the combination of ducks, hooks, and jabs, but Table Tennis really picks up the slack on the motion front and provides a great sense of ball control in how you return your shots.
Archery has a great tactility to its ‘pull back and fire’ control scheme, and Thumb Wrestling is perhaps the biggest surprise of the lot, proving an instant party hit with its intuitive controls and unexpectedly deep tactical potential. Who knew I’d be so obsessed with the strategy of growing a really big thumb to easily pin my opponents?
It makes for a good selection, all in all, even if I would have liked to see a little more variety on display. Tennis, Volleyball, and Table Tennis are each good in their own right, but the gameplay is a little samey in the grand scheme of things — where’s Wii Sports Baseball or the OG Resort’s Disc Golf when you need them?
The big win for me is the three Leisure Sports (Power Cruising, Prop Plane, and Skateboarding), each of which boasts the most inventive controls and gameplay.
In Power Cruising (a legally distinct way of saying ‘you ride a Jet Ski’), you hold your Joy-Con horizontally in front of you, rev the engine by twisting back on one, and lean left and right to steer. Prop Plane has you hold the controller like a toy plane, twisting and tilting to control its course. Skateboarding is for the 99% of Switch 2 owners who didn’t play Drag x Drive, and sees you swipe along a surface in mouse mode to emulate pushing the board, lifting and flicking the controller to perform tricks.
They all feel unabashedly ‘Nintendo’ in practice, while also providing some wonderful single-player potential in between party sessions. Wuhu Island is packed with collectibles and challenges, and each of the three Leisure Sports offers a Sightseeing Tour mode, where you have five minutes to explore your surroundings and pick up as many of them as possible.
While the timer can sometimes feel a little restrictive (there is a timerless Free Roam mode, though none of the collectibles are available in it), I’ve been having a great time exploring the Island’s hot photo spots and whipping around slaloms as a breather between the more intense sporting challenges.
And Resort doesn’t shy away from said challenge, either. Adding to the game’s single-player suite is the new Island Crown mode, where you have to work your way up the Wuhu ranks to challenge the Island Champ in each sport. The match-ups start very simple (frankly, I felt bad for my first opponent in Boxing), but they soon work up to some real rivalries. I’ve taken a real shine to Table Tennis this time around, and the Island Champ gave me such a hard time that I ended up needing to change my shirt into something a little less sweaty.
Each sport also comes with its own set of achievements to unlock as you play. These can be ticked off in either single- or multiplayer modes, but they provide yet another reason to go back for more.
As someone who often struggles to find willing Switch Sports partners in the real world, I’ve relished the bonus single-player content, but of course, the game really sings in multiplayer. I invited some friends around for a quick whip through Wuhu’s activities, and we quickly fell back into the same laughs we all had in the mid-2000s with our freshly unboxed Wiis (most at the expense of my very excessive, but very effective, post-bowl leg flick).
Old staples like Bowling and Tennis are still smash hits, naturally, but we also had an unexpectedly good time with Archery, hunting down the courses’ Secret Targets and becoming gradually more excitable the closer to them we got.
Most sports have a different game mode to their name now, too, so you can switch up standard rules for section-specific Archery, cup-aiming Table Tennis, timing-focused Volleyball and more. I’m particularly fond of the Prop Plane’s dogfight-esque Ball Battle mode, even if it does feel like a slightly strange addition.
Some multiplayer restrictions are still in place — you still can’t play local co-op in Table Top Mode, which reduces the portable party promise somewhat — and you’ll need to get your hands on some bonus Joy-Con 2 if you want to play the Mouse Mode-specific Skateboarding with two or more friends, but on the whole, it’s still a damn good time.
That carries over into online play, too. In typical Nintendo form, there are a couple of bumps in the road to stop an online competition running completely smoothly (strange wait times between turns in Bowling, being kicked back to the lobby when changing sport), but it’s only very minor niggles when the rest of it is everything you’d want it to be.
Vastly improved customisation options provide a real reason to want to keep playing, too. While the whole business of buying clothes and accessories was locked behind online play in its predecessor, Resort makes things much more open, granting you points for completing any game, which can then be spent in the in-game shop. The shop refreshes weekly, with different collections for each user comprised of clothes, accessories, name tag options and sporting equipment that you can pull randomly from.
It would have been nice to pull back a little on the random element, too — if I really want to get a new hat, just let me get a new hat — but it’s a far better setup than the last game. You can also earn items by completing sport achievements or levelling up in Island Crown, so you’re never far off expanding the wardrobe.