Game: Instant Sports Summer Games
Genre: Sports, party
System: Nintendo Switch
Developer|Publisher: Break First | Plug In Digital
Age Rating: EU 3+ | US Everyone
Price: UK £22.49 | EU € 24,99 | USD $24.99
Release Date: August 6th 2020
Review code provided with many thanks to Plug In Digital
Motion Controls are Alive and Well
Some people forget that the Switch has motion controls. Yes, those little sticks on the side of your beloved handheld device essentially act as little Wii motes. The boom of the motion control era brought us amazing titles like Wii Sports which even convinced elderly people to get off the sofa and play a bit of bowling. While some may have more troubled memories of the years of waggle, I loved how motion controls made games accessible to more people.
The Switch continues this tradition of providing casual games for everyone. So it’s quite nice to see games like Instant Sports Summer Games still being released. Clearly this isn’t a game for the particular gamer who just likes their shooty bang bang game. But is it suitable for the casual crowd and family? Let’s find out.
Instant Sport
Instant Sports Summer Games is a collection of sports based mini games to enjoy alone or with up to four other players. You can customize an avatar to look as sporty or vampirey are you like, then you select your flag and jump into a event. There’s a decent variety of mini games on offer but quantity is not always everything. The game takes the ‘Instant,’ title almost literally by just letting you play one game at a time as opposed to allowing you to create a tournament by mixing in several games and tallying the points at end. Nope, it’s just choose a sport have a bit a fun and maybe consider going outside for a walk I guess? As you play the game you unlock coins which you can use to unlock more cosmetic items.
The Games
So what’s on offer? You have the usual track and field events like triple jump, high jump and javelin. But then you also have stuff like rafting, bowling and baseball. All the events have been simplified to attempt to be welcoming to a casual audience. For example baseball isn’t really a full fledged baseball game where you take turns to bat then field. Instead the game is simply players taking it in turns to hit the ball with the bat and the player with the most points wins.
Motion Control Issues
The motion controls are a mixed bag. The majority of the games only require you to use a single joy con and keep things simple. While the game does a good job showing you visual tutorials on how to play, the actual execution is often messy. Archery for example informs you to use the left joy con to aim and the right to shoot. Some sessions when I played this seemed to work quite well but in others the controls just didn’t sync correctly and I was doing all sorts of weird gestures with my left hand, to get it to aim at the darn target! Rafting made my arm sore as I tried to act out a paddling motion, clearly I need to exercise these muscles more. Bowling, something I was looking forward to, ended up being me flinging the joy con forward and the ball generally always bearing to the right. I just didn’t feel in control a lot of the time and that unfortunately reduced the fun factor.
The graphics are simple colourful character avatars on basic sporty backgrounds. It’s all safe. What I found kinda jarring was the characters in the crowd were basic 3D sprites simply moving up and down with no animations what so ever. It was kinda creepy and I think I would have preferred it, if they just stood still.
The Good Stuff
There were games though where the motion controls did work. Tennis was fun and I liked how you had control of where the ball would land. Generally the track and field events were simple and fun such as relay race, javelin and high jump. Though the later made me giggle because when your avatar lands on the mat they just lie there motionless like they just died. It’s important to find happiness in the small things.
Another positive was you can quite literally prop your switch up and play this game on the small screen. So theoretically you could play this game out and about with the family. A small feature but nice to know it’s possible to enjoy without a TV.
Without a Paddle
Sports games absolutely have a home on the Switch and there’s a sizeable audience hungry to get off their sofas and enjoy some active games. Graphical limitations can be easily overlooked but controls are essential and sadly Instant Sports Summer Games doesn’t quite hit the mark.
What could have been a fun game to enjoy with the family feels more like a mixed assortment of okay and not so. Fun to be had? Sure. But it’s hard to ignore this concept has been done better on older systems.
Final Verdict: I’m not sure
