Many of us will have seen the meme format that goes “If I had a nickel for every time [X happened], I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?”. It’s a phrase that we could apply to a wide range of gaming scenarios, but having played Everybody 1-2-Switch!, the successor to 2017’s 1-2-Switch, we couldn’t help but be reminded of it.
Essentially, “if we had a nickel for every time Nintendo followed up a series-defining Zelda title with a mediocre party game, we’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice”.
1-2-Switch was released as a launch title for the Switch back in 2017 alongside Breath of the Wild and a handful of other games that made up the console’s relatively small catalogue at the time. One of these spawned one of the most anticipated sequels of all time, while the other was left as an ultimately forgettable mark on the Switch’s otherwise strong opening year (no prizes for guessing which was which).
Six years on and following the release of that much-discussed sequel (Tears of the Kingdom, if you were wondering), Nintendo dropped the surprise announcement that the company’s other “big” launch title would also be getting a follow-up in the shape of Everybody 1-2-Switch! The first game was harmless fun but overall pretty forgettable, so would the second be able to use the ensuing six-year gap to improve on the formula in any meaningful way? The answer: sadly not.
Being that bit cheaper than its predecessor (remember, 1-2-Switch launched at full retail price), Everybody 1-2-Switch! is a more attractive purchase on the surface. It’s true, there are fewer mini-games on offer this time around — 17 compared to the original’s 28 — but with the more respectable price tag of £24.99 / $29.99 and multiple variants of the 17 games at your disposal, this certainly offers more bang for your buck.
The actual quality of said bang (by which we mean the mini-games themselves, of course) is much the same as what we saw in the first title, albeit with the added perk of being able to connect and play using your phone. Overall, the mini-games are a mixed bag. Gone is the ‘tech demo’ appeal of the first title where we could look past the shortcomings of a particular game’s objectives because it showed us one of the Joy-Con’s cool features; we know what the Switch is capable of now, so the games have to be able to stand on their own two feet.
And, for the most part, they do. Mostly. A lot of the games are nothing new and anyone who has played more than one round of Mario Party (or even the first 1-2-Switch) will find very few surprises. ‘Balloons’ has you holding the Joy-Con horizontally and moving it up and down to inflate an on-screen balloon to its largest size before it pops; ‘Relay Race’ is a typical shake-fast-to-win affair as you emulate a sprint, passing the controller between teammates to run each leg; ‘Statues’ is all about trying to get to your goal undetected, walking with your controller and freezing when the on-screen child looks at you. It’s fun for a round or two, but we can’t see ourselves ever coming back for more.
The stand-outs are when the game embraces a WarioWare-esque weirdness and encourages you to laugh at everyone playing the game instead of thinking about the competition. ‘Hip Bump’ sees you and a friend standing back-to-back, pushing your behind out in quick succession to try and shove your opponent’s avatar out of a ring; ‘UFOs’ is all about repeating strange movements in unison to welcome extraterrestrial life to planet Earth. They’re silly, yes, but at least they’re not quite as forgettable.
The main game mode is ‘Team Contest’ where you choose between a 20, 40 or 60-minute party and race to become the first team to rack up three, five or seven wins respectively. There are also ‘Quiz Party’ and ‘Bingo Party’ modes where teams play either a quiz or (you guessed it) bingo instead of the standard mini-games, but in the absence of any kind of objective-based game mode like Wii Party’s Board Game Island or even 1-2-Switch’s ‘Team Battle’, many of the games lack a sense of replayability.
Fortunately, the new mobile phone connectivity provides some different ways to play that don’t always feel like covering old ground. One of Everybody 1-2-Switch!’s unique features is that you don’t need to have the required number of Joy-Con for everyone to be able to play, with 12 of the mini-games offering the chance to use your phone as a controller instead (four of them use mobile or smart devices only).
Choosing ‘Smart Device Mode’ from the game’s home screen brings up a QR code which you can scan to register your device as a controller. This opens up the range of mini-game possibilities to also make the most of the phone’s camera and touchscreen options, producing something that feels a little more like a new party game in the process. ‘Color Shoot’ has you using your camera to match the “trending colour” on the screen, while ‘Ice Cream Parlor’ will have you taking notes on your phone’s touchscreen and then relaying the orders back.
A lot of the games give you the opportunity to use your phone or Joy-Con, both offering motion control, which at least gives the chance for more people to get involved — and, as any party-game pro will know, these play experiences live or die on having a willing group of players.
Everybody 1-2-Switch! can be played by up to 100 people in Device Mode (something that we can only imagine being used at events and rarely by the average player) and after playing through all of the mini-games, we can see that this was a title that was designed with large groups of people in mind.
We tried out the game with two, three and four players on separate occasions and the lack of people in the first two instances was immediately clear. Each of the games is team-based, and a lot of the fun is lost in a 1v1, 1v2 or even a 2v2 scenario. There was nobody to pass the baton to in ‘Relay Race’ and ‘Musical Chairs’, which is all about being the last man standing, was over before it had even begun.
We can imagine that with a group of 10 or more willing friends, a lot of these games would be more enjoyable, but with no single-player mode and the team-based objectives dominating most of the options, you will need to get a minimum of four players involved to make the most of the games on offer. And we know that’s not always easy.
Conclusion
Everybody 1-2-Switch! is a perfectly serviceable party game when playing through one of the mini-games that offers something new, but those moments are few and far between. The rest of the games are not by any means bad, but they fail to stand out on the already-loaded table of Nintendo party titles. Combine this with the noticeable step-down in quality when playing with fewer people, and we are left thinking that this is a game which will only be brought out in very specific circumstances. It’s a perfectly harmless party game, but it doesn’t come close to what Nintendo has achieved in the genre in the past.
Many of us will have seen the meme format that goes “If I had a nickel for every time [X happened], I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?”. It’s a phrase that we could apply to a wide range of gaming scenarios, but having played Everybody 1-2-Switch!, the successor to 2017’s 1-2-Switch, we couldn’t help but be reminded of it.
Essentially, “if we had a nickel for every time Nintendo followed up a series-defining Zelda title with a mediocre party game, we’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice”.
1-2-Switch was released as a launch title for the Switch back in 2017 alongside Breath of the Wild and a handful of other games that made up the console’s relatively small catalogue at the time. One of these spawned one of the most anticipated sequels of all time, while the other was left as an ultimately forgettable mark on the Switch’s otherwise strong opening year (no prizes for guessing which was which).
Six years on and following the release of that much-discussed sequel (Tears of the Kingdom, if you were wondering), Nintendo dropped the surprise announcement that the company’s other “big” launch title would also be getting a follow-up in the shape of Everybody 1-2-Switch! The first game was harmless fun but overall pretty forgettable, so would the second be able to use the ensuing six-year gap to improve on the formula in any meaningful way? The answer: sadly not.
Being that bit cheaper than its predecessor (remember, 1-2-Switch launched at full retail price), Everybody 1-2-Switch! is a more attractive purchase on the surface. It’s true, there are fewer mini-games on offer this time around — 17 compared to the original’s 28 — but with the more respectable price tag of £24.99 / $29.99 and multiple variants of the 17 games at your disposal, this certainly offers more bang for your buck.
The actual quality of said bang (by which we mean the mini-games themselves, of course) is much the same as what we saw in the first title, albeit with the added perk of being able to connect and play using your phone. Overall, the mini-games are a mixed bag. Gone is the ‘tech demo’ appeal of the first title where we could look past the shortcomings of a particular game’s objectives because it showed us one of the Joy-Con’s cool features; we know what the Switch is capable of now, so the games have to be able to stand on their own two feet.
And, for the most part, they do. Mostly. A lot of the games are nothing new and anyone who has played more than one round of Mario Party (or even the first 1-2-Switch) will find very few surprises. ‘Balloons’ has you holding the Joy-Con horizontally and moving it up and down to inflate an on-screen balloon to its largest size before it pops; ‘Relay Race’ is a typical shake-fast-to-win affair as you emulate a sprint, passing the controller between teammates to run each leg; ‘Statues’ is all about trying to get to your goal undetected, walking with your controller and freezing when the on-screen child looks at you. It’s fun for a round or two, but we can’t see ourselves ever coming back for more.
The stand-outs are when the game embraces a WarioWare-esque weirdness and encourages you to laugh at everyone playing the game instead of thinking about the competition. ‘Hip Bump’ sees you and a friend standing back-to-back, pushing your behind out in quick succession to try and shove your opponent’s avatar out of a ring; ‘UFOs’ is all about repeating strange movements in unison to welcome extraterrestrial life to planet Earth. They’re silly, yes, but at least they’re not quite as forgettable.
The main game mode is ‘Team Contest’ where you choose between a 20, 40 or 60-minute party and race to become the first team to rack up three, five or seven wins respectively. There are also ‘Quiz Party’ and ‘Bingo Party’ modes where teams play either a quiz or (you guessed it) bingo instead of the standard mini-games, but in the absence of any kind of objective-based game mode like Wii Party’s Board Game Island or even 1-2-Switch’s ‘Team Battle’, many of the games lack a sense of replayability.
Fortunately, the new mobile phone connectivity provides some different ways to play that don’t always feel like covering old ground. One of Everybody 1-2-Switch!’s unique features is that you don’t need to have the required number of Joy-Con for everyone to be able to play, with 12 of the mini-games offering the chance to use your phone as a controller instead (four of them use mobile or smart devices only).
Choosing ‘Smart Device Mode’ from the game’s home screen brings up a QR code which you can scan to register your device as a controller. This opens up the range of mini-game possibilities to also make the most of the phone’s camera and touchscreen options, producing something that feels a little more like a new party game in the process. ‘Color Shoot’ has you using your camera to match the “trending colour” on the screen, while ‘Ice Cream Parlor’ will have you taking notes on your phone’s touchscreen and then relaying the orders back.
A lot of the games give you the opportunity to use your phone or Joy-Con, both offering motion control, which at least gives the chance for more people to get involved — and, as any party-game pro will know, these play experiences live or die on having a willing group of players.
Everybody 1-2-Switch! can be played by up to 100 people in Device Mode (something that we can only imagine being used at events and rarely by the average player) and after playing through all of the mini-games, we can see that this was a title that was designed with large groups of people in mind.
We tried out the game with two, three and four players on separate occasions and the lack of people in the first two instances was immediately clear. Each of the games is team-based, and a lot of the fun is lost in a 1v1, 1v2 or even a 2v2 scenario. There was nobody to pass the baton to in ‘Relay Race’ and ‘Musical Chairs’, which is all about being the last man standing, was over before it had even begun.
We can imagine that with a group of 10 or more willing friends, a lot of these games would be more enjoyable, but with no single-player mode and the team-based objectives dominating most of the options, you will need to get a minimum of four players involved to make the most of the games on offer. And we know that’s not always easy.
Conclusion
Everybody 1-2-Switch! is a perfectly serviceable party game when playing through one of the mini-games that offers something new, but those moments are few and far between. The rest of the games are not by any means bad, but they fail to stand out on the already-loaded table of Nintendo party titles. Combine this with the noticeable step-down in quality when playing with fewer people, and we are left thinking that this is a game which will only be brought out in very specific circumstances. It’s a perfectly harmless party game, but it doesn’t come close to what Nintendo has achieved in the genre in the past.
