Nintendo Labo's latest addition is its most traditional, and its most substantial
You find the heart of a game in some surprising places. Take a typical Sakurai joint, which might nominally be about scrapping across large arenas and trying to knock your opponent off the screen. That's not what Smash is about, though - its real heart is in the menus, in their abundance and splendour and their hearty, generous and colourful spill. Play a game like Diablo and it's not so much about what happens when you're crushing skulls - it's about the screen where you're optimising your character so that they might crush skulls in the most efficient way possible.
Across Nintendo's Labo range - a much more peaceful affair than Diablo, it must be said - you'll find the heart in the cardboard itself that's flat-packed in each sizeable box. Maybe that's not so much of a surprise, really, but it's in the construction that Labo really shines. While everyone else at Eurogamer gets stuck back into Destiny 2, I've spent each evening over the past week piecing together the various devices in the new vehicle kit, and it's been a delight. There's something warming about sitting in the glow of a living room as the nights begin to draw in, sipping tea and poking pieces of cardboard out of thick sheets, the little bits of excess card dropping to the floor like autumn leaves.
And there's something so satisfying in piecing together a Labo kit, Nintendo making you complicit within its masterpiece of engineering with minimal fuss, friction and frustration. Indeed, even as you're folding cardboard and placing rubber bands and reflective stickers in their correct place, it's every bit the Nintendo game, from the playful energy of the instructions to the many, many flourishes that make a three hour construction session an absolute joy - the tactility of the blueprints, the precision and clarity with which you're directed and, of course, the sheer ingenuity you can find in a world of cardboard lug nuts and springs. No other game has made me smile as much this year, and certainly none have made me sit back in wonder quite so much either. It might all be meant for kids, but hey, just like Lego, Labo is too much fun to miss out on.
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