So then, enough prevarication about the bush. Let's take a look at the best games for adults on Nintendo Switch...
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt remains a masterpiece, and being able to take such a grand and engrossing adventure on the go is something well worth celebrating. The Switch's Complete Edition is a truly impressive achievement, and although performance isn't perfect, it's still an incredible and impactful role-playing experience. The Witcher 3 set the bar for modern RPGs back in 2015, and this port is a startling reminder that it has yet to be bettered.
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DOOM is one of the best first-person shooters we've ever played — an incredible game, flaws and all — and it's certainly one of the best in its class on Switch. There's a certain magical quality about having a game this good on the go. Its brilliant campaign is reason enough to pick it up, but DOOM's multiplayer was also surprisingly good, with small arenas that make matches feel reminiscent of the halcyon days of first-person shooters when Unreal Tournament reigned supreme. While it's perhaps not as polished as it is on other formats, having DOOM in portable form is a revelation, and developer Panic Button deserves high praise for porting over id Software's classic title so brilliantly.
And if you're after more of the head-splitting same, there's always DOOM Eternal to (rip and) tear through.
The House in Fata Morgana is over 40 hours long, and in those 40 hours, you'll maybe get to make about three decisions. It is a visual novel in the strictest sense of the word, and you must be prepared for that going in. But with a fantastic, original, slow-burn story about love, loss, hurt, forgiveness, and recovery, it's one of the best visual novels out there — and your patience will be paid off in the end.
Sniper Elite 4 is the best entry yet in this long-running franchise with great big meaty missions stuffed to bursting point with Nazis to snipe and stab in glorious slo-mo X-ray vision. There's a new-found flexibility to the gameplay, with Karl now able to shimmy and scurry vertically around levels and enemy AI that's much more up to the task than in previous iterations. There may be some slightly rough edges, with duff writing, naff characters, and gameplay that doesn't change much from start to finish but, overall, this is a playful, stealthy sniper's paradise and a truly impressive Switch port.
Dusk is one hell of an impressive piece of software and possibly the single best Unity port to Switch we've ever seen, sidestepping typical performance problems and delivering a brilliant experience of a brilliant game. It's not as good a game as Quake, but almost nothing is. There's a relatively limited arsenal of weapons — they're all great, but there's no iconic gun here, just your usual pistol, shotty, assault rifle, explosives, et al. We're being churlish with our criticisms here, though — ultimately, Dusk is another absolute cracker in Switch's FPS roster.
A remarkable breath of fresh air for a franchise that was getting a little stale, Resident Evil 4 is one of the best video games of all time and put the series on an action-based path away from the fixed-camera, pre-rendered, 'staged' survival horror of the previous games. What you lost in nail-biting tension was more than made up for by the brilliantly chunky gunplay and impeccable progression through a story that continually ups the ante and adjusts difficulty automatically to keep you on the edge of your seat without pushing you off entirely.
Ditching standard zombies for the more intriguing 'Ganados' and draining the colour palette helped make Leon and Ashley's story distinct from previous games. The excellent Wii Edition added pointer controls which worked fantastically well, although they might have made things a little too easy. Still, they were totally optional and there really aren't any bad ways to play RE4 on Nintendo platforms; whether you choose the original GameCube option, the friendlier Wii port, or the sharper Switch edition, you won't regret taking this European sojourn, in spite of the less-than-friendly locals.
Dying Light on Switch is quite a remarkable achievement. Its ambitious open world full of zombies is unlike anything else in the Switch’s library and, between the core campaign and six years of constant DLC updates, there’s potentially hundreds of hours of enjoyment to be had here. Granted, all of this comes at the cost of performance that can be middling compared to other platforms, but this is neatly balanced out by the convenience of playing in handheld mode and developer Techland has done a mighty fine job getting this open world running well on portable hardware. Switch owners who rarely play in portable mode may want to pause and consider buying it elsewhere, but we'd strongly encourage handheld gamers to consider this excellent Switch port.
While Wolfenstein II's graphical downgrade is hard to miss, that doesn’t detract from the fact that this is one of the best single-player FPS experiences you can have on Switch right now. The lack of a multiplayer mode (the versions on other consoles didn’t have one either, so don’t worry about being short-changed) still grates, but with its brilliantly written story and intense action, not even 2017’s excellent DOOM port can stand up to B.J.’s latest war on the Reich.
Veterans of the first game won’t be expecting a technical tour-de-force, but Deadly Premonition 2 still manages to underwhelm in pure performance terms. However (and this is a big however), it's a game with real character and it's very tough to dislike, even as you stutter your way around Le Carré on your skateboard. A horrific, adult experience that's also undeniably silly, if you've ever been intrigued by the original, we'd recommend giving this a go. It’s janky and derivative in many ways, yes, but it’s also irresistibly wonderful and strange, and there's no other video game quite like it.
