Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour hands-on preview
There's an unspoken rule with video game previews, that you never say anything too negative, unless it's obvious the game is irredeemably awful and there's little to no chance of it ever being anything else. Which leaves us in a bit of a quandary as to what to say about Welcome Tour, which we would call one of the worst games Nintendo has ever made… if it actually was a game.
Nintendo themselves describe it as an 'interactive exhibit', that explains the features and technology behind the Switch 2 and how it works. That's fine in theory – if you want to spend all day reading little text boxes about how the console's magnet connectors work – but the problem with Welcome Tour is that Nintendo expects you to pay for it.
It is cheap but if this was free it'd be something you put on out of idle curiosity and turn off five minutes later, out of boredom and frustration. The fact that it partially fulfils the same role as the wonderful Astro's Playroom on PlayStation 5, which actually is free, makes things even worse.
Astro's Playroom went out of its way to show off the full capabilities of the PlayStation 5 in terms of graphics, fast loading, and the new DualSense controller. It looked amazing, it was packed with fun references to classic PlayStation games and hardware, and it was filled with charm and character – and amazing songs.
By comparison, Welcome Tour is bland, clinical, and purposefully unexciting. Why it's that way we can't begin to fathom but we can only assume it's because Nintendo know the content is so staid that it would've been disingenuous to have Mario jumping around, trying to make it seem more engaging.
Instead, you control a tiny little stick figure, looking down from a great height on an isometric world that is presented like a giant Switch 2 console, that other stick figures are walking over and exploring. It's separated out into several sections and you can only progress from one to the other once you've found all the little info descriptions for the hardware functions in the current area.
This involves slowly exploring every little corner, like a bad graphic adventure game from the 90s, until you stumble upon an interactive spot that informs you that you're standing next to a button or a speaker or whatever is nearby. This in itself is so staggeringly dull and frustrating – given how easy it is to miss a spot – it almost feels like a joke, but it's not. At least not intentionally. More Trending
Although the info points are technically the most important in-game objects there're more detailed text descriptions that usually have a multiple choice quiz associated with them, as well as a (surprisingly small) number of mini-games and tech demos.
We already played a couple at the preview event in April and predictably the ones later in the game don't get any better. The one demonstrating the difference between different frame rates is still the only one that's close to interesting (even though its most useful function is to illustrate how little difference 120fps makes visually) with the highlight of our latest preview being a version of a wire loop game that's used to show how the mouse controls work.
As with Mario Kart World, we won't be able to give Welcome Tour a scored review until next week, but there's no point doing a review in progress as it's very clear to us that the game, or whatever you want to call it, is not worth the attention. It's nothing to get angry about, given how inconsequential it is, but it's so perversely uninteresting we're absolutely baffled as to why it exists, no matter whether it's free or not.
Formats: Nintendo Switch 2Price: £7.99Publisher: NintendoDeveloper: NintendoRelease Date: 5th June 2025
Age Rating: 3
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MORE: Mario Kart World hands-on preview – the Nintendo Switch 2's best game
MORE: Why there'll be no Nintendo Switch 2 console review this week
MORE: Nintendo Switch 2 available on launch day morning at this UK store
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