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Five Under-represented Genres That Would Work Great on Switch | Culture of Gaming

While the Switch has a ridiculous amount of games to play and to look forward to, there's still a weird absence from same of gaming's greatest genres...

Remember when everyone was concerned about the Switch not getting enough support? Yeah, that’s not a problem anymore—as of July, the eShop has more than a thousand games, including hundreds of indie games and dozens of triple-A third-party titles. But while the genres of these games vary anywhere from platformer to top-down shooter to action/adventure, there are still a few underrepresented genres on Nintendo’s most recent console. So here are five kinds of video games that would work fantastically on the Nintendo Switch.

MOBAs

To say that Multi-Player Online Battle Arena games are hot right now would be a massive understatement–League of Legends (LoL) and DOTA 2 are two of the highest grossing eSports games of all time, drawing in millions of viewers on Twitch for the LoL World Championships and the DOTA 2 Internationals. While MOBAs have mostly found their home on PC, there are a few exceptions. Arena of Valor, currently the highest grossing mobile game in the world, is a MOBA that shares a lot of similar aspects with its older brother League of Legends. It works surprisingly well with touchscreen controls, especially with a larger tablet-like device such as the Switch.

First-Person Shooters

“Nintendo” and “shooter” are rarely two words you’ll hear in the same sentence. Nintendo likes to maintain their image as a family-friendly company as much as possible. For the longest time Nintendo has stayed hands-off of shooter since FPS games are well-known for stirring controversies among parents. But with Nintendo marketing the Switch more towards young adults, a couple of big-name FPSs have started to surface—specifically, Bethesda’s Wolfenstein II and DOOM. Despite the slight downgrades in resolution and framerate, the Switch edition of DOOM brought something new to the table: motion-controls. In our opinion, it makes those respective games easier and more fluid to play. Imagine playing OverwatchFar Cry, or Battlefield with motion aiming—if only more devs would bring their FPSs to Switch, that could become a reality.

Tactical RPGs

Has anyone else found it weird that there’s a strange lack of RPGs on Switch? Aside from the recent release of Octopath Traveler, last year’s Has Been Heroes, and a few smaller titles like I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear, there really isn’t anything available in the way of a good, old-school JRPGs. We’ll excuse that for the moment—what about tactical RPGs? Y’know, games like Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics—the classics! Excluding Mario + Rabbids, Disgaea 5, and the Banner Saga series, your tactical desires are relatively stifled on Switch. How come? Historically speaking, tactics games have worked especially well on portable consoles, and the Switch’s 720p screen will only improve the experience. Let’s hope that the upcoming Fire Emblem: Three Houses will scratch that itch. In the meantime, keep bugging Nintendo for a new Advance Wars–it’s bound to happen eventually!

RTSs

Real-time strategy games are primarily found on PC, if only because mouse and keyboard controls work well for them. We believe that the Switch can upset that trend. Now, you might argue “RTSs have never been good on consoles! Gamepad controls don’t work for those games!” While it may be true that a keyboard and mouse work better, don’t be too quick to underestimate the gamepad. We’ll point to one of Nintendo’s own series, Pikmin, as an example here. While not an RTS in the strict sense, Pikmin has several things in common with the genre: resource and troop management, a timed schedule, and a central base, just to name a few. If Nintendo, or an indie developer, were to take the concept of an RTS and refine it into a console-experience, like how Pikmin did, we think it could be a fantastic Switch game.

Rogue-likes

Rogue-likes are games of practice. You play through the levels repeatedly, not getting far at first but building your mastery of the mechanics over time. The only progress in a rogue-like is inside your head. You’re the one pushing the game further each time, you’re the one mastering the systems, and you’re the one that needs to interpret the situation and react accordingly. Even though you start from the beginning following each death, it never gets repetitive because of the procedurally-generated levels. And the best part? Each playthrough takes only about 5-10 minutes. Rogue-likes are the very definition of pick-up-and-play, and that’s why they are undoubtedly perfect for the portable Switch! Currently, the only good rogue-like on Switch is The Binding of Isaac, but if Nintendo could get rouge-like royalty like Spelunky and Rogue Legacy on there, we would never put our Switches down.

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