Skee-Ball

Genre: Sports (Skee-Ball)

Players: 1

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Review:

Skee Ball is the videogame version of, well, Skee-Ball, that game you often find in mini-golf arcades where you roll small balls up an incline to try to sink them in holes on a board at the end. This version of the game includes both motion controls using the Joy-Con controllers, as well as a more traditional layout using the control sticks and buttons.

The presentation here is simple, but not bad, depicting the games in a somewhat realistic fashion (this is an officially-licensed game, so that’s to be expected). The game’s music and sound all works well enough too – there’s nothing here that’s likely to impress you, but there’s nothing terrible either.

The game comes with a huge array of options, game modes, and different types of boards. Unfortunately, there are two major issues with all of this. Firstly, while the Nintendo.com page for the game lists the game as supporting two players, I’m having difficulty finding any sort of multiplayer in the game at all. And secondly, while there are a healthy amount of game modes here, they all need to be unlocked, and it seems that the only way to do so is through a lot of grinding.

This wouldn’t be horrible if the gameplay itself was engaging, but… well, for starters, it’s Skee-Ball we’re talking about here, this isn’t exactly a deep game this videogame is being modeled on. And secondly… the controls.

The motion controls here are pretty terrible. It takes a moment to figure out how they work, but even when you do, the game doesn’t feel like it’s responding properly at all. No matter how hard I tried to twist or hook my arm left, I couldn’t make the ball go left, and a light underhand toss would register as if I had flung the ball at the game with all my might. I tried fiddling with the motion controls to get them to work, but suffice it to say that they’re simply broken.

Well, that leaves the more traditional controls with the buttons and control sticks, and these controls work, but they’re anesthetic and remove any of the visceral fun that’s still left here in the transition from the physical game to a videogame. So much of Skee-Ball’s fun is actually feeling the weight of the ball in your hand and using it to judge your throw, but without even motion controls, what you’re left with feels empty and meaningless.

I still have to applaud the makers of Skee-Ball on Nintendo Switch for attempting to make this a thorough simulation of the real thing, but with busted motion controls and most of the content gated behind unlocks, all that hard work feels like it’s gone to waste, as only the most dedicated fans of the physical game will even bother to stick with the game long enough to see it.

tl;dr – Skee-Ball is the videogame version of the classic amusement park game, with both digital and motion controls. However, the motion controls are busted, and the digital controls sap all the visceral fun out of the game. What’s more, while there’s plenty of content here, most of that is gated behind unlocks that require grinding, and neither the content nor the game as a whole is worth that kind of hassle.

Grade: D+

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