The 30 best Nintendo Switch games to play today

1) Luigi’s Mansion 3

Luigi’s Mansion has always been a much-loved franchise with the Nintendo hardcore, but as the biggest Switch launch of 2019 so far, beating out his more famous twin and that Link fella, the series’ third entry sees the green-suited scaredy cat offically go mainstream.

Happily, the game is absolutely worth its success. In our five star review, our reviewer said Luigi’s Mansion 3 feels like a playable cartoon, elevated to greatness by its creative, varied level design and clever puzzles. Then there’s Gooigi, Luigi’s Flubber-like sidekick who can be called upon at any time to help our hero out. Get ghost-hunting.

2) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

No doubt: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate absolutely lives up to its name. It’s both a greatest hits package of the long-running series to date and also a strong step forward in terms of the amount of content available to soak in.

Packed with 74 fighters on in the base game, including every previous brawler and some new ones, you’ll have a blast mashing attack buttons and pummeling the likes of Mario, Link, and the Splatoon kids (among many others). The new Spirit system provides a truly incredible amount of classic gaming references to unlock, and the core hook of pummeling gaming’s greatest heroes still hasn’t faded.

3) Theatrhythm Final Bar Line 

• Buy Theatrhythm Final Bar Line from the Nintendo store here

One the 3DS’ best games is simply bigger and better in every way in the Switch sequel, which takes 35 years’ worth of epic Final Fantasy Music and plonks it into a rhythm game that’s both easy to pick up and incredibly hard to master. Theatrhythm Final Bar Line crams in 385 tracks that span the entirety of the Final Fantasy series to date, and lets you choose between over 100 characters to add to your party. 

Theatrhythm doesn’t do anything drastically different with the basic rhythm game template. You’re mainly timing button presses and stick gestures with symbols that move across the screen to keep in time with whatever song is playing, with your team’s success in battle dependent on how you perform. But rarely is it done this elegantly, and with an almost comically incredible selection of soundtracks to revisit. For Final Fantasy fans this is a must-play, but we reckon anyone will fall in love with this one if they give it a chance. Just remember those headphones. 

4) Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes the best elements from previous games in the series, namely their tradition of creating scope and spectacle, but serves up perhaps it most memorable story to date, starring a cast of characters we were happy to spend over 100 hours the company of.

It may still scare off newcomers, especially those not keen on anime or cutscenes that seem to last forever. But if you’re looking for a meaty JRPG with engaging combat and a sprawling story about hope triumphing in even the darkest times, add this to your Switch library immediately.

5) Hades

That Supergiant Games’ dungeon-crawling indie masterpiece beat AAA big-hitter The Last of Us Part II to our 2020 game of the year award is a testament to just how brilliant it is. In Hades you play as Zagreus, the rebellious son of the titular god of the dead. Encouraged by the Gods of Olympus, Zagreus is determined to escape the underworld and his fun sponge of a father, but doing so is no easy job.

Hades is a rogue-like dungeon crawler, which means procedurally generated levels that ensure no escape attempt is ever the same as the last. But unlike most rogue-likes, which steal away all your progress every time you die (and you will die, a lot), here you retain much of what you collect in a run, allowing you to upgrade your stats, unlock new weapons and pick up valuable advice from the House of Hades’ colourful residents upon each return. It’s this feeling of constant progress that makes Hades so compelling, and when you add varied combat, superb writing and fantastic art directon to the mix, you have something unmissable.

6) Splatoon 3

Splatoon is a shooting game not too concerned with accuracy or multikills. Splatoon is a game of chaos that falls under a ‘shooter’ because there’s nothing else quite like it out there. Quickly cementing itself as a Nintendo staple, the Splatoon series is arguably the best shooter on the Switch platform.

Splatoon 3 built on its past incarnations with improved mechanics and a few new features. It remains as frantic as ever, with beefed up Turf Wars, Salmon Run and single player modes. There are a few new weapons, such as a bow and arrow, and player customisation options that ramp up the fun. All this, alongside a good ol’ polish, make Splatoon’s third instalment the benchmark of the franchise.

7) The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

In case you’d forgotten, the Nintendo Switch launched with a Zelda game that revolutionised the beloved series and shifted all of our expectations about what an open-world game can and should be. As a remake of a 1993 Game Boy game, Link’s Awakening is a bit more traditional.

But that doesn’t make it any less essential than Breath of the Wild for Zelda fans. While remarkably faithful to the original, the game has been rebuilt from the ground up with a gorgeous, toy-like visual style. And Link’s Awakening has always been an intriguing Zelda anomaly. It’s one of the few games in the franchise that doesn’t take place in Hyrule, Zelda is nowhere to be seen and, for some reason (never explained) Koholint Island is inhabited by Chain Chomps and Goombas, usually only found in Nintendo’s other quite popular series.

Unashamedly old-fashioned, but it’s aged like a fine wine.

8) Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury

Yet another game from the ill-fated Wii U’s library has made its way to Switch, and Super Mario 3D World remains one of the best plumber’s best, expertly bridging the gap between 2D and 3D Mario platforming. It was also the first three-dimensional Mario game to feature four-player co-op, which is just as bonkers and brilliant now as it was back in 2013.

But the resurrection of 3D World isn’t the only talking point here. You’re also getting an entirely new game in Bowser’s Fury, a fascinating open-world experiment that sees Nintendo’s mascot trying to take down a kaiju-like Bowser while dressed as a cat. Yes, it’s as weird as it sounds, and a must-play for Mario completionists.

9) The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Now this is controversial. Since the Nintendo Switch launched it looked like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would remain in this list for as long as it existed, but after much deliberation we’ve decided to replace it with this year’s sequel. It’s not that Tears of the Kingdom makes its predecessor a bad game; Breath of the Wild is no less of an all-time great than it was when it first launched alongside the Switch in 2017. It’s just that Tears of the Kingdom does everything better. 

The kingdom of Hyrule is just as richly drawn as it was in BotW, only now it also includes both the sky islands and the depths, giving the world a sense of verticality and scale that continues to blow us away several months from launch. And then there’s Link’s new powers, the headliner of which being Ultrahand, which allows our Hylian hero to build anything from a bridge to a screen-filling tank, and approach the game’s puzzles in any way you wish. 

Breath of the Wild reinvented Zelda and set a new bar for open-world game design. As a direct sequel, Tears of the Kingdom was never going to be that impactful, but if you’re going to spend 100 hours in one of them, there’s really no contest.

10) Super Mario Odyssey

Got a Switch? If so, you’ll need Super Mario Odyssey stat. Alongside Zelda, it’s one of the absolute best reasons to have the handheld. In fact, if you don’t have the Switch, we advise running out and buying one with both of those games right now. Go on, we’ll wait.

Odyssey is a phenomenal new 3D entry that builds upon the likes of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy with huge, open environments and loads upon loads of collectable moons to uncover by completing challenges and exploring. And this time around, Mario isn’t alone: his hat is actually an odd creature that can inhabit other living things, letting Mario control and use the myriad abilities of his many iconic enemies. Strange, right? Yes, but it’s a total delight.

11) Pikmin 4

Despite being over 20 years old, the Pikmin series has never returned Nintendo the kind of numbers a Mario or Zelda game typically brings in. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t beloved, and the Switch-exclusive fourth entry is the most approachable and content-rich of the bunch. Like its predecessors, Pikmin 4 is an adventure game with real-time strategy elements, in which you play as a miniature astronaut who assembles and orders around squads of tiny plant-animal hybrid creatures called Pikmin. These adorable little guys can help you solve puzzles, carry treasures and fight enemies, with different types deployed for different scenarios, and the game is all about efficiently managing both your Pikmin and time. 

Pikmin 4 introduces a dog-like companion called Oatchi who’s able to carry both you and your Pikmin on his back, as well as help out with tasks. The space pup’s addition makes exploration more enjoyable than ever, and while the chilled-out nature of the campaign is a far cry from the race against time that made the very first entry so memorably stressful, we think even hardcore players will have a tough time resisting the various quality-of-life improvements on offer here. 

Throw in new nighttime expeditions and the most detailed and varied levels in the series to date, and you’ve got a Pikmin game for newcomers and longtime fans alike.

12) Metroid Dread

As the first brand new 2D Metroid in nearly 20 years and the one supposed to bring a story arc that began all the way back in 1986 to a close, there was a lot riding on Samus Aran’s Switch debut.

Happily, then, Metroid Dread is an absolutely fantastic Metroid game that comfortably sits alongside the many critically adored Metroidvanias that the series has inspired. Samus has never felt this good to control, and while the game follows a similar template to the one made famous by the entries before it, there are enough additions to make it feel fresh.

You can’t talk about Metroid Dread without mentioning the EMMI, the terrifying unit of robots-gone-rogue that hunt Samus as she explores the Planet ZDR. No matter how many suit power-ups the bounty hunter recovers throughout the game, most of the time she’ll be defenceless against the EMMI, which leads to some thrilling chase sequences.

Intricately designed and boasting some of the best boss fights in the series, Dread is a must-play for Metroid fans old and new.

13) Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing has always been a relaxing escape from reality, but New Horizons couldn’t have come along at a better time.

In this, the first entry on Switch, you find yourself volunteering to be part of a desert island relocation, lead as you’d expect by the ever-resourceful property tycoon Tom Nook. It’s up to you and your swelling anthropomorphic animal posse to turn the island into a paradise, but the game asks very little of you.

Spend the day fishing or collecting fossils, chat to the locals or just spend hours designing outfits. It’s really up to you, and you won’t find a more pleasant gaming experience on any system.

14) A Short Hike

• Download A Short Hike

There’s nothing like a good aimless walk to nourish the soul, and A Short Hike understands this as well as any game we’ve played. As

Claire, an anthropomorphic bird, your loose goal is to reach the summit of Hawk Peak Provincial Park, a wonderfully dense little island resort, in a quest to receive a phone signal.

But if you’re playing the game properly, Claire is in absolutely no hurry, because while you can feasibly finish A Short Hike in an hour or two, doing so means you’ll miss out on a host of quirky side quests offered up by the island’s various animal residents. From fishing to cross-country foot races and volleyball, A Short Hike rewards easily distracted players who explore, and when you do finally get to the highest point, trust us when we say it’s worth it.

15) Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope

The first Mario + Rabbids game was surprisingly brilliant. The sequel unsurprisingly improves on a good thing and makes the tactical turn-based battles that form the meat of the experience even more accessible.

In Sparks of Hope, Mario and the now fully voiced (but still very weird) Rabbids head to space to chase down a new big bad, joining up with some new Rabbids and extremely familiar Mushroom Kingdom residents along the way. The story is mostly nonsense, but that doesn’t matter when the new combat system is so good. You can now move freely around the battlefield during a turn, which is a huge departure from the grid system traditionally adopted by strategy games, and is just a lot more intuitive. Each character has a very specialised moveset, which means gameplay never gets stale, while a truly wonderful score means every second spent in this world is a treat for the ears. 

• Read more: Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope review

16) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

While it might just seem like a mere port on the surface, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe takes the excellent Wii U edition and patches its one big deficiency, all while adding the excellent DLC as standard – and then does more.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe packs in a staggering 48 courses and 42 playable drivers, along with an array of vehicles and equipment, and the gravity-defying tracks are some of the series’ most dazzling creations to date. Better yet, it now has a proper Battle mode like the games of old, and the entire experience is playable anywhere. It’s tremendously fun.

17) Ori and the Will of the Wisps

The stunning Ori and the Will of the Wisps is one of the best-looking games ever made, for our money rivalling even some of the greatest animated movies for imagination and wonder, and it’s a minor miracle that it runs as well as it does on Switch, maintaining a silky smooth 60fps throughout.

In this brilliant Metroidvania, you play an acrobatic spirit creature called Ori, who adventures into a mysterious forest to search for a lost owlet. Like its predecessor, Ori and the Blind Forest, Will of the Wisps is deceptively difficult, but never feels unfair, and its emphasis on slowly uncovering its many secrets makes it a perfect portable game. If you haven’t already played it on Xbox One, this one’s unmissable.

18) Alien: Isolation

• Download Alien: Isolation for Switch

There’s something quite amusing about playing one of the most pants-soilingly terrifying stealth horror games ever made on the adorable turquoise Switch Lite, but that’s not the only reason that you should add the port of this 2014 classic to your library.

The game runs silky smooth on Nintendo’s console, especially in handheld mode, comfortably standing claw-to-claw with the PS4 version that came before it. Totally serviceable motion controls and HD Rumble complete the package.

And the game? Well, that it can even be mentioned in the same breath as Ridley’s 1979 big-screen franchise debut should tell you everything you need to know. Rather than stalking you via pre-programmed patrol patterns, Alien: Isolation’s Xenomorph was brought to life by unpredictable AI, meaning an encounter could happen at any time, and you never felt in control of the environment. Play it on a busy train at your peril.

19) Celeste

• Download Celeste for Switch

A tough as nails 2D platformer about living with anxiety, Celeste might not scream ‘fun’ in the same way Super Mario Odyssey does but this charming tale about climbing a mountain absolutely ranks as a Nintendo Switch essential. The key is in its simplicity with each level being divided into bite-sized chunks that you’ll fail at over and over until finding your way across a seemingly insurmountable crevasse. The further towards the summit, the more challenging things get and the more powers you’ll amass to help you achieve the seemingly impossible.

Combined with a charming 16-bit art style and some exhilarating level design, Celeste adds up to an absolute gem of a game. And if things get too tough? There are some genius features you can turn on to make your journey easier.

20) Nintendo Switch Sports

It’s been over 15 years since Wii Sports turned everyone’s living room into a tennis court, and Nintendo’s motion-controlled multi-sport series has finally made it to the Switch. Tennis and bowling are virtually unchanged, but just as fun with the Switch’s Joy-Cons as they were with the Wii Remote. New sports like badminton and volleyball feel like natural fits, while chambara – a surprisingly deep sword-fighting game – and a Rocket League-esque take on football are also welcome additions.

A word of warning: Nintendo Switch Sports is disappointingly light on content for solo players, but online play is a lot of fun, and if you’ve got people over there are very few better party games.

21) Bayonetta 3

The multiverse is very much in vogue, and dimension—hopping is the order of the day in Bayonetta’s third outing, which longtime fans will be glad to know hits new levels of bonkers. 

The queen of character action games has successfully dealt with angels and demons, and in Bayonetta 3 her wild weaponry must be directed at a new, man-made threat. Combat has always been the star of this series, and fully controllable demons are added to your arsenal in the third entry, an idea that isn’t always elegant in its execution, but doesn’t half add to the spectacle. Sometimes the scale of the game’s set pieces is too much for the creaky Switch to handle, and not all the new features improve the experience, but at its best Bayonetta 3 is a stunning end to this deliriously OTT and very un-Nintendo trilogy that was well with the wait. 

22) NieR: Automata – The End of YoRHa Edition

As a game that famously necessitates multiple playthroughs to see the story properly resolved, NieR: Automata always felt destined for a portable platform like the Switch. And we’re delighted to report that it runs brilliantly on Nintendo’s aging hardware. 

In NieR: Automata you play as an android named 2B who’s part of a task force sent to rescue a post-apocalyptic Earth from machine occupation. The game is an action RPG that marries balletic combat and fantastic music with some of the richest storytelling in gaming, interrogating what it means to be human without any actual humans present. You owe it to yourself to play it through at least once, and the Switch lets you do that anywhere. 

23) Pokemon Legends: Arceus

A lot of us have been dutifully trying to catch ‘em all for more than 20 years, but while Pokemon games seem to have enduring appeal, it’s hard to argue against accusations of the series playing it safe for too long. Pokemon Legends: Arceus, then, couldn’t be more welcome. 

The latest entry in the long-running series ditches the traditional Pokemon game setup and plonks the player into an open-world for the first time. Set in the past when humans knew very little about the Pokemon roaming the wild countryside beyond their towns and villages, there are no gym leaders to fight here. Instead, your only job is to head out there and catch Pokemon for the first time, filling in the Hisui Region’s first Pokedex as you go. While battles are still turn-based, there’s less of an emphasis on combat in Arceus, and while this bold new direction for the series is a bit rough around the edges technically, it’s the most exciting Pokemon has been for at least a decade. 

24) Tetris Effect: Connected

• Download Tetris Effect: Connected for Switch

This genuinely life-affirming reinvention of arguably the most famous puzzle game of all time is superb whether you play it in VR, on a home console, or on the Nintendo Switch in your hands, but there’s something about the latter option that just feels right.

It’s probably the memories we all have of playing Tetris on the Game Boy for hours on end all those years ago that make Tetris Effect: Connected feel like it belongs on a handheld, and once you’ve put on some headphones, turned off the lights and let the game’s marriage of sound, music, visuals and timeless gameplay work its magic, there’s really nothing else that compares. A masterpiece.

25) Persona 5 Royal 

Part social sim, part supernatural dungeon-crawling RPG, Persona 5 Royal is the high point of Atlus’ beloved RPG series, and arguably the most stylish game ever made. It’s also over one hundred hours long, which makes the game’s long-awaited arrival on Switch such great news. After all, grinding your way through endless turn-based battles is a lot more palatable when you can do it while half-watching something on Netflix. 

In Persona 5 Royal you play as a teenager forced to transfer to a new school in modern-day Tokyo. The game takes place over the course of one school year, and a massive part of the experience is simply existing as a student: attending classes, forming bonds with classmates and eating lots of great Japanese food. After school, you’ll spend most of your time in a supernatural realm trying to steal bad intentions from the hearts of malevolent adults. Standard stuff, then. Whether you’re grabbing ramen with a pal or conducting a heist of someone’s corrupted subconscious, Persona 5 Royal is a uniquely engrossing experience, and the Switch feels like its natural home. 

26) Kirby and the Forgotten Land

27) Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Donkey Kong is a legend in the same way that most people regard Stan Lee and Paul McCartney. There’s no doubting he changed popular culture in a massive way, but that doesn’t mean you’re all that bothered about his new stuff. With the arrival of Tropical Freeze on Switch from its original home of the ill-fated Wii U, you should make an exception.

Rather than reinvent the platforming formula a la Super Mario Odyssey, this outing from Nintendo’s most famous simian polishes its frenetic 2D combination of jumping and climbing to a dazzling sheen.

What it lacks in originality is made up for in variety and charm, so that each of this game’s 60-odd levels bristles with an irresistible joi de vivre. So long as you’re OK with falling down potholes, being crushed by giant boulders and generally dying a whole lot. Tropical Freeze is not a game that you could describe as ‘easy’.

28) Portal Companion Collection

By now you really ought to have played the Portal games, as they are for our money the two finest puzzle games ever committed to code. But if for some reason Valve’s duo of masterpieces have passed you by, you’ll be happy to know that both games are now available on the Switch, and they perform extremely well.

Both Portal and its more ambitious sequel run near flawlessly at 60fps on Nintendo’s console, and the mind-bending puzzles are very well suited to handheld play. If you’ve never played Portal or Portal 2, fix that right now, but even those familiar with GLaDOS’ wicked ways should seriously consider the double dip. These games somehow feel as fresh now as they did 15 years ago.

29) Cuphead

Studio MDHR’s truly stunning playable cartoon is so successful that it’s now also an actual cartoon, but truth be told, Cuphead (perhaps unfairly) fell out of this prestigious list for a while. That is, until last year’s The Delicious Last Course DLC arrived and we fell in love all over again. 

Cuphead is a proudly old-school run-and-gun action game in which you mainly take on increasingly difficult bosses as an anthropomorphic cup. The visuals are heavily inspired by 1930s cartoons, to the extent that every frame is hand-drawn, and even if you struggle with the punishing reflex-based challenge, you’ll get your money’s worth just from looking at the thing in motion. It really is that impressive. And if you’re fortunate enough to own a Switch OLED, you won’t find a game that better shows off the display. 

The aforementioned 2022 DLC adds not only a host of equally brilliant new levels but also a new character, Ms. Chalice, whose different moveset completely changes how you play.

30) Metroid Prime Remastered

The long wait for Metroid Prime 4, which definitely, probably exists, goes on, but to tide us over Nintendo has finally put the original on Switch, and while Metroid Prime is more than 20 years old, Samus’ first 3D outing somehow feels as fresh now as it did then. Tallon IV remains one of the most intricately designed settings in all of gaming, and exploring it through the legendary bounty hunter’ eyes is a thrill whether it’s your first time or fifteenth. 

Metroid Prime Remastered isn’t technically a ground-up remake, but the GameCube classic has had a serious glow-up here. It’s easily one of the best looking games on Switch, while the modernised twin stick control schemes are a much appreciated addition, even if some may still choose to go old-school. What hasn’t changed is the game’s refusal to hold the player’s hand, meaning you’re bound to get lost now and again, nor has the slightly unforgiving checkpointing. And yes, there’s a lot of backtracking. But few games can match Metroid Prime for atmosphere and its pitch perfect combination of platforming, exploration and first-person combat. It was a masterpiece then, and nothing has changed in 2023.