After an 18 month wait, Nintendo's Online service feels disappointingly flat
You don't really associate the day-glo world of Splatoon with a sense of melancholy, so it's been strange these past few days walking around Splatoon 2's lobby and seeing the cloud of gloom that's recently hung over Inkopolis. There, in little sketches that hang over players heads like thought bubbles, were scruffy laments for the imminent end of free online, and the launch of Nintendo's paid service. Last night, as I walked the lobby one last time before paying up the £17.99 for a year's subscription, those thought bubbles were absent - another feature, it transpires, that's now behind a paywall.
We've known this day was coming for a while, of course, even if the details have been frustratingly slim in the run-up to its launch. It turns out that's mostly because the Nintendo Online service, now it's out in the wild, is slim - and often frustratingly so. It's still reliant on the accompanying mobile app for basic features such as voice chat, and comes with a selection of caveats and typically curious decisions - how your save data can now be backed up in the cloud, but the feature is absent from games such as Splatoon 2 and the forthcoming Dark Souls Remastered and FIFA 19, while the online backup will be lost when your subscription expires. Elsewhere, the NES emulator is hamstrung by the bizarre restriction that has you having to log-in online every seven days to maintain access.
It's strange, and a slight against what's otherwise a fantastic way to play older games, and an excellent foundation for Nintendo to build upon as it expands the service with new games and - with any luck - new console emulators. The front-end is snappy and sharp (and allows you to re-arrange the games on the home screen as you see fit, something which is like a satisfying mini-game in itself and displays the kind of functionality that's sadly missing elsewhere on the Switch's own front-end), while the selection of games is generous and varied.
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