At this point writing about the general inconsistencies and disappointments my family and I have had with local multiplayer action games on Switch has become a bit cliche… but it’s all true. If you aren’t subjected to a pretty regular stream of titles that get multiplayer fun wrong in some way or another, I would doubt you could understand the depth or breadth of the problem. Suffice it to say that the latest we’ve given a whirl, Pool Party, is more of the same in a general sense, though I’ll admit that the specifics of its gameplay style are at least unique.

What you have here is a set of mini game sort of competitions where the same base character design and general controls are used for pretty well all of them, though some details in how each one plays does differ. Each player will choose their color and a few other minor details to help define their ball player, and then it’s on to one of the game’s modest collection of generally sports-inspired variations. I suppose the good and bad thing about them all is that they share the same generally limited controls, which is good for consistency and minimizing confusion, but bad for the fact that even with different rules and objectives most of the events end up feeling very similar in the end.

The thing is, merely blaming the lack of satisfaction on the controls pretty well matching for all events wouldn’t be digging deep enough. On the level of playing multiplayer mini games based on different sports, the gameplay here is also lacking. Simply stated for the most part the competition has done better from the standpoint in having a bit more depth and just in the general fun related to play. Throw in a technical problem we had where our game inexplicably lost sound and never recovered in one session and there’s room for concern over technical issues of some kind as well.

I always tend to point to how well some titles have managed to pack some degree of skill and fun into their play, using the contrast to then point out how other titles failed to reach the bar that has already been set. The thing is, in cases like this, I think it’s also fair to point out that even without benchmarks to compare to, this would have felt like a pretty unsatisfying mess. No matter how many variations you include, if the core of the experience simply isn’t very fun to begin with, those numbers lose their meaning. Unfortunately, in the end this just feels quite generic and dull.