Nintendo is a company that seems to thrive on strange hardware choices. From the look of the GameCube to the feel of the Wii Remote, to, well, the switch part of the Nintendo Switch, I'm reluctant to call them gimmicks. This is because, despite grabbing attention, they do seem to serve some kind of purpose.
After using them, I don't think the Nintendo Switch 2 mouse controls (arguably one of the biggest changes for Ninty's new console) are a gimmick, as such, but there are a whole lot of growing pains—and I don't know if the end result will be worth it.
First, let's start with the good parts. From my limited time with them (we've only just received the console for testing), the Nintendo Switch 2 mouse controls are smooth and intuitive. You don't need to access a special settings menu to turn them on, just unclick both controllers and place either one on a flat surface to get scrolling. As both Joy-Cons have the capacity to work as mice, it's functionally an ambidextrous set of controls.
You will want to slap on the included brace to the bottom of the Joy-Con before controlling, as it gives much-needed stability to the controller. Having only two points of contact with the table also leaves me less worried I'll wear down the Joy-Cons or surface over time, too.
I was worried mouse controls would have a delay, find some surfaces hard to read, or would feel a little artificially smoothed—none of those feel true in my time with them so far. I can confidently use the mouse controls on my lap, which I don't think I'll use too much, but it's a testament to how smooth things feel initially.
For the likes of browsing the Nintendo eShop, I'd actually argue the mouse controls are a better way of searching through games than the joystick. The eShop has multiple entries in a line or on a page, which makes the mouse slightly more efficient at scrolling. You can drag a page up or down, much like you do with a tablet, so you don't even have to use the joystick as you scroll.
It was when I booted up Cyberpunk 2077 that I ran into my first problem with the mouse controls. The Nintendo Switch 2 still wants you to treat the mouse Joy-Con as a standard controller in play. This means, as well as anchoring your hand to actually hit the triggers at the right time, you want to place your thumb in a place where you can hit all of the side buttons, too.
This becomes an even bigger problem when you have to click in the joystick to either run or crouch. I struggle to crouch without moving my reticle wildly to the left, which has already messed up some stealth sections. The mouse controls occasionally felt like using an upright ergonomic mouse, but without the specifically designed ergonomics to go with it.
A lot of my problem with the mouse controls isn't in the technical aspects of the mouse, it's the fact that it's still a Joy-Con after all of that. Swapping controls around is an option here, but given the limited buttons at your disposal, this means having to leave some controls out, and means customizing buttons every single time you play a game that has mouse controls.
As of right now, you can't actually turn off the thumbstick whilst using mouse controls, which means I've occasionally flicked onto the wrong page just because I've gotten a little too comfortable. The same is true of vibration, which feels uncomfortable and rattles in play. You can turn these off, but there don't seem to be more customisable controls to turn certain things on and off depending on how you want to use the Nintendo Switch 2. A 'mouse mode' could solve some of my woes here.
There is some hope here for mouse controls. The act of actually using them, I'd say, is fairly comfortable and intuitive so far, and there are games that could really see the benefit, like those in the RTS genre. However, controls feel unaccounted for on launch day, and are missing some extra customisation that could make them feel much better.
Cyberpunk itself feels like a great game to test them on, due to its focus on shooting, and I have positive feelings on the port as a whole. However, there are plenty of strange choices, like the fact that you can use mouse controls to move around in settings, but actually clicking on anything requires you to hit the A or B button.
This means placing the mouse and then moving my hand across to actually accept. Just allowing you to hit settings or equip gear with a click of the trigger would feel so much smoother. You can't currently change the control scheme at all for the mouse sensor mode, though there is a decent level of customisability for how fast the cursor moves.
On a similar note, you can access the map via mouse controls, but you need to use the thumbsticks to actually control it. This means I constantly lifted the Joy-Con up, changed some sort of setting, or clicked on a quest, then popped them back down again. Even looting and talking to NPCs are done via the right Joy-Con, which means I never quite felt like I was actually using a mouse.
Though the Nintendo Switch 2 has support for keyboards, the launch only seems to support them for typing, and no game I tried would work with a keyboard. I certainly feel like keyboard support would help my problems with mouse controls so far, but there's one thing it can't fix: feel.
The Joy-Con is a very light device. It's also rather small, and under my admittedly rather large hands, it feels like all the weight of the device is firmly in the centre of my hands. This leaves them feeling a tad unnatural. This is compounded by the fact that most of the controls of the Joy-Con are near the top. I constantly felt like my hand was craned over the top 40% of the Joy-Con, which left me feeling a bit unbalanced.
From my time with the Joy-Con mouse controls, I've felt my thumb most comfortable next to B and Y, which means reaching up to A often requires adjusting my palm to adequately brace against the bottom of the Joy-Con to keep it still as I press. This doesn't feel like the most elegant solution, but it's the only one I've come up with right now. Different hands will, naturally, have a different response here, and my partner's smaller hands didn't seem to have quite as much friction hitting the buttons. They did, however, find the Joy-Con to be rather small and angular in their palms, like I do.
It is worth noting, however, that this is only after a day or so with the Nintendo Switch 2. Not many of the Nintendo Switch 2 launch titles actually support mouse controls, and some you may expect to (like Hitman World of Assassination) don't. Fortnite is due to launch its own mouse controls over the coming days, but that is a game even more dependent on extra button prompts than Cyberpunk 2077.
It is worth noting, however, that I'm a fairly experienced keyboard and mouse player. I'm comparing my feelings using my gaming rig to the Joy-Con mouse controls, and that's not fully the point of them. They seem designed just to give a little more variety to the use of the console, and it certainly does do that. As of right now, it does feel like games need to be designed, or at least customised with them specifically in mind, to get good use out of them, so it's hard to say how they will feel a year from now.
The mouse controls are worlds better than gyro controls, at least.
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