Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour review: "Mostly a fancy toy and not much more"

What even counts as a video game? Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour has made me ponder this existential question numerous times during the five hours and change I've spent with it, and even at its most expansive definition, my mind still balks at lumping Nintendo's odd Nintendo Switch 2 experience in with, say, Breath of the Wild. Technically, factually, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a video game in that there are interactive elements digitally portrayed, but it's really mostly a fancy toy and not much more.

Much of the conversation about Welcome Tour even before release has been about whether it's worth the $10 it costs digitally or if Nintendo should have just packed the thing in with the Switch 2 console in the first place. When I first got my hands on the title at the initial Switch 2 reveal event back in April, I spent a surprising amount of time with it (in part because the demo stations were regularly open) and came away calling it "a baffling, fascinating toy that still makes no sense to me."

That's mostly still the case, though Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour does make a bit more sense now that I've seen all it has to offer. It makes for an impressive tech demo to learn all about the new Nintendo console, but it's hard to shake the feeling every step of the way that it would have perhaps once made for an excellent E3 booth presentation or even a startup tutorial, as opposed to charging a nominal fee to play it.

Nintendo's official description for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour calls it, in part, "an interactive exhibit of sorts," and that's largely accurate. There's a real sense that you're exploring a giant interactive science and technology museum devoted entirely to the Nintendo Switch 2, which is overall impressive if somewhat boring. For example, I know way more about how the Joy-Con 2 controllers connect to the Switch 2 as a result of playing this game, and now have a solid handle on the whys and hows of mouse control. As a piece of educational software, if that was the goal, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is certainly successful.

Between the stamp rally requiring me to get familiar with every physical inch of the Nintendo Switch 2 console and its accessories – including the official Pro controller, camera, and even the Joy-Con 2 steering wheel – and the variety of quizzes, demos, and minigames, it's not that there's nothing to do in Welcome Tour. The problem is that everything is so brief and breezy and disconnected that none of it actually feels meaningful.

Many minigames

That didn't stop me from playing the little golf minigame that ostensibly teaches you about mouse controls until I earned all the medals, nor did it stop me from making sure I'd dodged falling spiked balls for long enough. But, on the other side of those experiences, it's not like I found them particularly engaging, and there's no version of this world where I could imagine myself actually recommending people seek either out.

That's the strange predicament that Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour falls into. It's not bad, nor is it exactly good, and I certainly enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, but not enough that I'm positive that I would have dropped money on the game myself. If the value proposition is Welcome Tour or two or so packs of Magic: The Gathering's new Final Fantasy set, my heart probably skews towards the Magic cards.

And that's the most damning thing about Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. As one of the two first-party Nintendo Switch 2 launch titles, "fine, I guess, but I'd prefer Magic cards" as my impulse is… not good. And it is fine! It's fine. But "fine" alone is not enough to make something worth bothering with when there are so many different ways to spend your time that are much, much more worthwhile.