Disclaimer: So this post turned out to be a lot more of me complaining about menus than anything else to do with the system, so we are going to turn this First Impressions into a multi-part series that (may or may not) will conclude on Friday with an actual attempt to talk about the functionality of the system, how it plays, how the controllers work, and the available games that Conklederp and I actually have an interest in playing. But for the meantime, here is an article to bore your cankles off where I talk about menus on the Nintendo Switch.
So Conklederp and I have had the Nintendo Switch for just under a month and I figure after playing three games (not all to completeness mind you) and a handful of demos, I now feel somewhat qualified to talk a bit about what I like, what I do not, and where I think improvements can be made.
I should also preface (reiterate for the handful of people who frequent us) this article with the fact that the most recent menus for Nintendo products I have experience with are the Wii and the 3DS. I do not know what the Wii U menu interface looks like first hand (aside from stills and Youtube videos), but the opening menu I have no real problem with. The one thing I do wish is that, like the 3DS menu, I could create folders, especially once I really start downloading smaller digital only games. So rather than having a single line of games that I would need to scroll through, having designated folders, say one for downloaded games, and one for demos would help to keep things a little more clean and less semi-all over the place.
The next thing I would be happy to have changed, is the location of the Mii Maker, which on the 3DS has its own icon, which I have placed in a folder with a lot of the other game system icons like the eShop, Activity Log, Camera, Swapdoodle, and Flipnote Studio 3D. Right now, the Mii maker is embedded in the System Settings and is the ninth item listed after Support/Heath & Safety, Airplane Mode, Screen Brightness, Screen Lock, Parental Controls, Internet (and then you can see the rest). I feel that the Mii maker should really be front and center having its own round icon on the front screen. Where it is right now, I feel is not very intuitive.
My second to last issue is not so much with the Nintendo News option, but how it is organized; there should be no surprise there. What I would really love, is that if each News post/article had a date at the bottom so that I could know how recent a post was made. Yes, the "What's New on Nintendo eShop" posts have a date, but that is integrated into the thumbnail, so I am not actually going to count that, but I do very much appreciate the effort. Additionally, why are the Nintendo eShop updates out of chronological order? Why is the order 8/04, 7/14, then 7/28? That does not make a lick of sense, unless the posts are ordered by how popular they are or how frequently they are clicked across all connected Switch units.
I should also note that the only channels that I am currently subscribed to are the Nintendo News, and the Blaster Master Zero Channel (apparently because I downloaded the demo), so my News is not inundated with a lot of randomness from every game out there.
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| Sorry for the rhubarb quality, unable to take screenshots of eShop. |
My last complaint is with the layout for the eShop. Again, maybe it is because I am just so used to the layout of the eShop for the 3DS, but I just like it a lot better than what is there for the Switch. Maybe it is because a lot of the available games are organized by folders. By the way, I love to organize by folders. I do like that I have the option to sort by price, but I would also like to sort by date released; or maybe "Recent Releases" already is and I am just so out of the loop that I am unable to tell.
What I think a lot of this boils down to, is that I am nearly five or six years into the 3DS and I have become so accustomed to being able to organize my digital games in a manner that I really like and am able to further customize if I wish, that not having that option in a more recent product takes me back a bit. I like being able to customize how my interface looks. I like being able to sort things in a way that I feel is intuitive, although I do recognize that it may not be so for everyone else out there.
So let us close things down then and I will be back on Friday to talk more about the actual Switch system and (maybe) not so much about things that probably do not interest people as much as they interest me.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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