I have been an avid gamer for over thirty years. My current platform of choice is my PC, but over the years I have had a few Nintendo consoles, all four versions of the Playstation and an Xbox 360. My ten year old son is very much into gaming and my 5 year old daughter plays lots of simple games on her iPad.
By its nature, gaming can be a solitary affair and last week I was sat watching my son lost in his 3DS XL, sat next to his sister playing her own game on her iPad. When their mum and I first got together we would enjoy playing games, but have not done so for years.
I decided last week to treat the family to a Nintendo Switch. Thanks to the recent rise in value of SBD, we went to pick one up a few days ago, along with a couple of games.
First on the Super Nintendo, and then on the N64, I have loved the Zelda series of games so insisted on buying Zelda Breath of the Wild. From what little I have seen so far of this game, I can tell I am going to love getting stuck into this - that's if my son can put it down. He insisted he didn't like Zelda games before we bought this.
Naturally, being a descendant of the ever popular Wii console, The Switch is very much geared toward multi player gaming. Each player has one of the Joycon controllers which seem packed with sensors. 1 2 Switch has many competitive mini games. Not only can two players do battle, but you can have team play. My daughter and I played against my son and his mom. Much fun and hilarity ensued. We played many different games like ping pong, had magic wand battles, milked cows and shaved our faces.
One bonus the console offers is that if the children want to play on it, but we want to use the television, they can take the console out of the dock and play it on its own screen. Here are my son a daughter playing Mario Kart 8.
We have only had the console for three days and I can truly say it has been worth every penny I spent on it. No, it doesn't have the most impressive graphics. The internal storage is only 32Gb - although you can add a microSD card to increase this. It may not be the most powerful console on the market, but what it lacks in processing power, it more than makes up for with great multiplayer ability, portability and just sheer fun. It is great spending more time with my children, who are playing together more rather than lost in their own separate virtual worlds.