We Tried '1-2-Switch,' Nintendo's Party Game for the Switch Console

Nintendo representatives scolded me for TV-peeking at least a dozen times during my Monday visit to New York City's Nintendo Store, during which I got hands-on time with 1-2-Switch, a launch title for the company's upcoming Switch games console. That's usually the worst advice anyone playing a video game could receive. But that's not true here, where what's happening on the TV is less relevant than what your opponent's up to in real life. Unlike typical multiplayer games where opponents sit next to one another and stare at their corner of a shared screen, 1-2-Switch games are all about rivals staring into the whites of one another's eyes, trying to anticipate their next move. The result is sometimes awkward and sometimes goofy, but always reliably amusing. In the console-mobile hybrid Switch's case, the differentiating factor is a design that allows the console and controllers to be used in lots of different ways depending on what (and how) you're playing.