After the relative grounding out of the Wii U console (RIP, you beautiful, strange beast), Nintendo hit an absolute home run with their latest console:The Switch. Released in 2017, the Nintendo Switch represents a sharpened, effective peak of Nintendo’s constant experimentation with their controllers. The console itselfisa controller. you may dock it into your television and play it big and loud. Or, you can “switch” it to a handheld console, and play it wherever the heck you want. The experiment worked and then some; it routinely tops best-selling console lists, has delivered countless viral and acclaimed titles, and continues to provide joys of playing full-ass games however you want.
If you’re looking the best of the best games to play on your Switch, look no further. We’ve rounded up the 25 best games you can play on the system, with an attempt to provide a broad swath of genres, tones, and vibes. These games represent just how much power and variety Nintendo’s latest system possesses, and makes us excited for the Switch’s future.
Grab an alive hat and take a deep breath of the wild: Here are the 25 best Nintendo Switch games.
(Oh, before we officially start, pour one out for these honorable mentions:ARMS,Bayonetta 2,Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons,Donkey Kong Country: TropicalFreeze,The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,Guacamelee!,The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening,Luigi’s Mansion 3,New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe,Night in the Woods,Octopath Traveler,Ōkami,Ori and the Blind Forest,Pokémon Sword and Shield,Thimbleweed Park,What Remains of Edith Finch, andYoshi’s Crafted World.)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
It’s just nice.Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the Switch continuation of the franchise that began on GameCube in 2002, lets you create a custom player, a custom island, and an environment to go hang out on other people’s islands. And that’s… kinda it? You can do things to earn bells, the currency of theAnimal Crossingworld, do your best to make Tom Nook happy, haggle over turnip prices, listen to dope music from Isabelle and K.K. Slider, and create social environments for very chill online hangs. It’s low-stakes, low-stress, high-reward, the perfect emotional antidote to the very troubling times the game was released during. Sing it with me:Meep mop meep mope mwamp mwope!
Celesteis a special kind of game, one that honors both Nintendo’s past while opening the doors to all kinds of emotional futures. It’s a 2D platformer with the aesthetics of an SNES classic and the streamlined gameplay of a contemporary wonder. You play as Madeline, a young adventurer determined to climb Celeste Mountain. Along the way, she climbs, she jumps, she traverses obstacles, and she reflects upon her own burning doubts and mental health struggles. Wait,what?Yep, buried in the center of this simple-looking game is a complicated, sorrowful, and ultimately hopeful examination of what it means to be a fulfilled human being. One sequence features a literal panic attack, and the purity of the retro graphics coupled with the comfort and care the recipient receives in that moment is something that will sit in my video game heart for years to come.
Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics
Call me old fashioned, but I think it’s dope that we have 51 of the best and most fundamental games ever made available at our fingertips in the form of Nintendo Switch.Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classicsis a thorough, charming compendium of some of our greatest games with the most staying power, in honor of Nintendo’s beginnings as a playing card company. You’ve got chess, Texas hold ‘em, mancala, connect four, Mahjong, and so many others — all rendered simply and invitingly, especially the sound design’s wonderful mix of sneakily funky tunes and tactile sound effects. There will undoubtedly be games you have not heard of in this mix (I for one cannotstop playing President), and you will undoubtedly have fun playing against randos online, friends online, friends in your own home on the same Switch, and even by yourself. They’re classics for a reason!
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
A deep JRPG with lots of appealingly difficult player choices, beautiful anime aesthetics, and a robust combat system,Fire Emblem: Three Housesis a home run for the Switch player who triedPokémon Sword and Shieldand decided they needed something more. If you only knowFire Emblemcharacters through their ubiquity in theSuper Smash Bros.franchise,Three Housesis an ideal starting point, giving you a sense of the franchise’s deep mythology while also setting you well ahead into its future. There are, as you might guess, three houses your character Byleth can support in an ongoing conflict. Depending on which side you choose, you will go through different narratives, turn-based battles will have different contexts, and new to the franchise, your life-simulating sequences will have different actions and consequences.Fire Emblem: Three Housesmakes you literally go back to school among its JRPG-plotting and battling, and you will love it, and you willhaveto replay it at least twice to try the other houses.
Golf Story
I’ve got a big sweet tooth. And one of my favorite flavor profiles vis-a-vis sweets is dark chocolate mixed with orange. Ooh, just thinking about it makes me salivate. I think it’s the combination of light and bright flavor profiles combined with a more mature, literally darker flavor profile, the oppositional nature of both providing the perfect base reality for the other to pop.Golf Storyis the dark chocolate and orange of RPGs. Its tone is very, very silly and very, very wholesome (orange!), but at its core is fundamentally sound, deep, satisfying gameplay (dark chocolate!). As the title implies, the game’s about golf. You play an aspirational golfer, a wouldbe Tiger who must play his way through some of the fiercest and silliest links to win a tournament and become a golf champion. But even if you don’t like golf,Golf Storyis a worthy play. Sidebar Games has a deliciously English-feeling sense of humor in their club bag, with nearly every interaction your character has resulting in smartly silly laughter. But they also have tons and tons of heart, giving the oft open-world feeling narrative a sincere, emotional resolution.Golf Storygoes down like candy in the best way possible, a piece of confection that won’t give you a toothache.
Goodness gracious,Insideis gonna put you through the emotional ringer. Indie publishing wonder-team Playdead took the playbook from their previous cult classicLimboand heightened every inch of it, resulting in an immersive, simple-but-complicated, utterly devastating title. In a series of beautifully harrowing 2.5D post-apocalyptic cityscapes, your unnamed character will traverse platforming puzzles, avoid vindictive guards, and come across some surreally haunting sights — all while occasionally taking control of other entities’ minds in your quest. Its conclusions are purposefully ambiguous but nonetheless devastating; Playdead is playing with ideas of agency, control, and what it means to be merciful and kind even at your own cost, both on a general “life experience” scale and a micro/meta “this actual game you’re currently playing” scale. Take some time to, like, take a long walk after you finishInside.
L.A. Noire
L.A. Noireis a touch of an acquired taste, but for those who are in love with its thorough-yet-wonky hardboiled charms, it makes a more than worthy addition to the Switch, transplanting that wonderful Rockstar “immersive story-driven yet open world” energy into the palm of your hand with not too many kinks. You play Detective Cole Phelps (Aaron Statondoing some lovely mocap performing), a World War II vet-turned-cop who dives deep into the seedy underbelly of post-war Los Angeles, solving cases that get into the corruption of Hollywood, the prominence of drugs, and even the Black Dahlia Murder. There’s lots of fun components to the gameplay, from the uniqueness of examining crime scenes to interrogating perps based on evidence and facial tells (usually not terribly subtle), to the standard pleasures of driving around and shooting at baddies. Presentation-wise, it justfeelslike 1940s LA; every car, street sign, costume, and radio attuned exactly to what we love about this zone of crime fiction. And storywise, there are a number of wild twists and amoral turns to uncover and unpack. By the end, youwillfeel queasy about playing Cole, and if you’re a ginormous noir fan like me,allof this is catnip of the purest form. If you’re not, this is still the closest to aRed DeadorGTAyou have on the Switch so far, and it’ll scratch that itch while giving you new stuff, too.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Playing aLegend of Zeldagame has always been a comforting experience for me, my familiarity with the long-running franchise’s gameplay, tone, structure, music, and characters feeling like a warm bath. ButBreath of the Wildis intent on blowing up nearly all of these things I’ve found so set in stone and so comfortable, creating a brand new world of adventure and, yes, comfort in its wake. It’s an open-world adventure, with nooks, crannies, and gorgeous open spaces worthy of both aimless exploration and intentional choice (it’s just that sometimes your choice is “sword fight a monster” and sometimes it’s “fish for awhile”). Its sound design is much more sparse than any previousZeldagame; I am a huge fan of the pervasive music in the DNA of every previousZeldagame, and it took some time for me to get used to tunes only showing up at certain moments of action. But once I did, I realized how newly emotionally immersive this technique was, playing perfectly with the rest of the game’s newfound levels of invitation to the player. It’s no longer a comfort, it’s a genuine call to new adventure. And what’s moreZeldathan that?
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
How on earth doesMario + Rabbids Kingdom Battlework? The inexplicable crossover between theMariouniverse and theRayman/Rabbidsuniverse isn’t founded on either of those family-friendly games’ platforming. No, instead, Ubisoft and Nintendo want you to use these cuddly, silly characters to shoot the hell out of each other in tactical turn-based combat that feels less like Nintendo and more likeXCOM! Somehow, some way, it works phenomenally well. The gameplay is rich and deep, the combat never gets old, the sense of humor is so surreal, so loopy, and packs some bite, too.Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battleis that gourmet sandwich that sounds strange when you read the ingredients apart, but tastes like heaven when you bite in.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Simply put: If you own a Switch and don’t ownMario Kart 8 Deluxe, you’re doing something wrong. It’s a smooth, accessible, endlessly replayable take on the kart-racing, item-chucking, Luigi-death-staring franchise. It’s stuffed with tons of characters, awesome karts and cycles with noticeably changing stats, incredibly inventive tracks, and conduits for multiplayer laughs and action, either online or on the couch. Plus, if you only played the originalMario Kart 8for Wii U (remember Wii U?), you’re in for a treat, as every subtle component of the game has been finely tuned into the most easily-playable version ofMario Kartthus far. It may not be the absolutebestof the franchise (that would beMario Kart: Double Dash, no further questions), butMario Kart 8 Deluxemight be the absolute best multiplayer Switch game.
