Review: Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is the embodiment of a game that could have been an email. I never thought I’d say that about a Nintendo game, but here we are. While the game does boast some interesting mini-games, most of which are all about mouse mode, the majority of the game is spent collecting stamps and answering quizzes—the type you’d find on a community college’s online portal so that teachers don’t actually have to teach.

To be fair, there’s also another major component of this game: wandering around a bland and forgettable corporate game world. Gone are the Miis in favor of these new corporate things. Why Nintendo is so keen to toss the Miis in the garbage is anyone’s guess, but they did the same thing for Nintendo Switch Sports. At least Switch Sports had somewhat passable graphics and gameplay. Welcome Tour is an embarrassingly barebones game when it comes to its presentation. There’s nothing here that couldn’t have run on the Wii U, which is well over a decade old. Is this really the message Nintendo wanted to send for its Switch 2 tech demo?

The worst thing is Welcome Tour wouldn’t have even been a particularly great pack-in game. It’s no Wii Sports or Nintendo Land. Still, it would have been excusable as a freebie, since how much can you really expect from free? Unfortunately, Nintendo decided to nickel and dime everyone and charge $10 USD for something that undeniably feels like a bloated manual.

It’s perplexing how this game can even exist separately from a pre-installed menu option, but this is 2025 and Reggie’s Nintendo is long gone. It’s almost as if Nintendo had always planned this game to be included with the system, and then at the last minute some top executive got an unexpected increase in child support payments and decided to try and extract as much money from Nintendo fans as possible to pay for his estranged wife’s botox.

The game does not work at all as a paid experience. It hardly works as a free experience, but I can see how it would be borderline fun and educational in short bursts for young kids and hardcore Nintendo tech enthusiasts. If you get a thrill out of reading old GameCube manuals, then this is the game for you… kind of.

The Positives

Let’s talk positives about this game before we go any further. First, the quizzes, while mostly a giant bore, sometimes do have interesting information to share. For example, I didn’t know the speakers in the Switch 2 are the same as in the Switch OLEDs, but with some minor tweaks. I also appreciated Nintendo’s honesty in stating that the Switch OLED screen is better than the Switch 2 screen. That takes some serious Dragon Balls to say that in glorified marketing propaganda.

Indeed, there’s some unexpected honesty to be found throughout the game’s educational portions. It’s undoubtedly biased in favor of Nintendo, but it’s not as ridiculous as it could have been.

Additionally, there are some interesting tech demos. A highlight of the game is the HD Rumble 2 showcases, where you can really see just how insane the new HD Rumble is. The new Rumble can even produce sounds like a Mario coin as if it were a speaker.

While many of the mini-games are garbage, some of them are not. I particularly liked the UFO game where you need to dodge spiky balls and collect stars. It’s basic as can be, but it’s kind of fun. The stunt driving game was also enjoyable, where you need to tilt the mouse to avoid obstacles while driving. There’s a few mini-games I might go back to, but the novelty is already wearing out. Finally… oh wait, no, that’s about it for the positives.

The Negatives

Let’s move on to the negatives. We talked a little positively about the quizzes, but the truth of the matter is none of this is entertaining enough to be worth any amount of money—just like college. If you want nightmarish flashbacks of asinine school quizzes that range from baby-level easy to barely-awake easy, then by all means pick up this game.

I was already fatigued by the sheer number of quizzes up until the ending of the game, and then the final area throws a dump truck full of quizzes at you before you can mercifully see the end of the experience. There’s just too many quizzes here, and for what? There’s no reward that’s worth it. And all the information you learn is so useless in the real world that it’ll make you wish you spent your time learning computer programming or another language instead of wasting your time on factoids about the Nintendo Switch 2.

While most tech demos are harmless, some of them are actually not impressive at all. The HDR game, for example, which I can’t show here, was particularly unimpressive. I’d go so far as to say that I couldn’t see a noticeable improvement with HDR on. It’s a pretty sad demo that lessens excitement for Nintendo’s new console rather than amplifies it.

Moving on to the mini-games. While it’s true that there’s some good mini-games, a lot of them are so bad. First of all, the majority of the mini-games use mouse mode. That’s cool since mouse mode is a new addition to the system, but at a certain point whenever I saw a new mini-game, I instinctively thought to myself, “Oh, let me guess. It’s another mouse game.” And I was nearly always right. Some of them are fun, but they’re all rather simple. Furthermore, some of the time the mouse was janky and unresponsive, leading to disappointment and frustration.

The GL/GR button mini-game, which you can only play if you own a Switch 2 Pro controller or the charging grip controller, was ridiculously stupid and annoying. I don’t see any fun in it at all. Following that tradition, the touchscreen game, which again I can’t show here, was also more frustrating than fun. You’ll need to own a bunch of accessories to play all of the experiences here. You can skip mini-games if you don’t own the required tools, but where’s the fun in that?

This further exemplifies why this game should have been free. It’s just a marketing tool to sell you accessories. So why on earth do you need to pay money to be shown an advertisement?

Another ridiculous aspect of this game is the amount of boring walking you need to do. You’ll walk to and from exhibits and to find stamps for the applicable buttons and components of the Switch 2 system and accessories. Collecting stamps is fun for about 10 minutes; after that, it’s annoying and time-consuming.

What’s unforgivable is that you need to collect all the stamps of the area you’re in to be able to progress to the next area. That means if you want to play all the mini-games, tech demos, and quizzes, you’ll be forced to collect endless amounts of stamps. Nintendo tried to add some collectibles to the game in the form of lost items, but inexplicably made it so you can only carry one lost item at a time, forcing you to go back to the entrance to hand over the lost item to a soulless-looking employee before you can go and collect another one. Imagine World of Warcraft fetch quests without any of the combat, cool visuals, and audio—and also, you can only do one quest at a time. If that sounds exciting to you, please get some help.

Conclusion

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour would have been a passable interactive manual included for free with every system. As a paid experience, however, this is perhaps a new low for Nintendo. Why should anyone be expected to pay for what is blatantly advertising material? All of the tech demos and mini-games are so short you can finish most of them in literal seconds, and many of them are actually quite garbage.

I understand $10 isn’t that much money, but the very notion that you have to pay any amount is just nonsensical. If this game were free, I’d only recommend it if you were deathly bored and already exhausted literally every other game you own, and only for very short bursts of time. However, as a paid game, everyone should stay far away from this atrociously boring school test.