Everybody 1-2-Switch!

Everybody 1-2-Switch! is just a very difficult game to enjoy. Most of the minigames are boring, and you have little say over how or if you can even engage with them. The game would be inoffensive if you had access to all minigames from the get go, and needing to unlock all of them individually is a baffling decision when combined with the random selection and weird preference towards UFO and Squats.

Everybody 1-2 Switch! will likely entertain you for 30 minutes or so, if that. But it’s hardly worth its asking price, and with two other Mario Party games already available on the Switch, it’s difficult to recommend this one to anyone at all.

I knew the writing was on the wall when Everybody 1-2 Switch! was announced in the same month that it was released, with little fanfare from Nintendo. Everybody 1-2 Switch! is fun in the same way that watching a bad movie is fun. If you’ve got some good friends together and everyone’s in a silly mood, you might have a good time throwing on Everybody 1-2 Switch and having a laugh at the absurdity of it all. But after about 20 minutes of this, most sensible people will ask you to close the game and launch Mario Kart, Mario Party, or even Switch Sports before they sink more of their precious time into Everybody 1-2 Switch!

If you’re looking for good party games on the Switch, you can do and have done better. If you’re looking for good games on Switch for casual players or kids, you can do and have done better. If you’re looking for good games on the Switch for multiple players…you get the idea. Everybody 1-2-Switch! is a game with no real reason to exist, and its lineup of mostly boring, overly simple, poorly-presented games fails to justify its existence. Moreso than its predecessor, you can easily skip this game, and your parties will be the better for it.

Everybody 1-2-Switch is a tedious and surprisingly small catalog of unoriginal and mostly poorly designed minigames that’s guaranteed to bring any party grinding to a halt. Even with a few interesting ideas, like Joy-Con hide and seek or the color scavenger-hunting modes, there are simply too few options to keep a group’s attention for one game, much less for multiple matches. Throw in the fact that many ideas are mind-numbingly boring, and others are rehashes of stuff found in the original, and you’ve got yourself a great way to rid yourself of unwanted friendships but not much more than that.

A game whose very existence is absolutely baffling, with a tiny collection of completely uninteresting mini-games, that remain dull and unimaginative no matter how many people are playing.

After just three or four sessions with Everybody 1-2 Switch, I'd seen it all and didn't want to go back. I don't know how this happened, but I do know that there are far, far better ways to entertain friends and family on Switch than this.