Nintendo Switch Sports gets a free update on July 26 that will no doubt lead to an increase in living room-related injuries. Soccer, one of the six sports you can play, is getting more motion control support so you can use your legs to kick your way to victory.
In addition to the football update, volleyball also gets some new moves: slide attack and rocket service. And for online players, Nintendo is adding a new S and Infinity rank so you can For real brag about how good you are at badminton.
In Nintendo Switch Sports, players use a combination of Joy-Con and motion controls to play. While bowling, you swing your arm back just like you would at the lanes, and for Chambara – the sword fighting minigame – you swing your arms hoping to hit your opponent.
Football was one of the minigames that didn’t really make good use of the motion controls, despite the fact that the game came with a Joy-Con leg strap. To play a normal match, players would control their characters via Joy-Cons using a combination of button presses and arm swings – not very intuitive considering no one uses their hands in real football. (Err, unless you’re the goalkeeper, I guess.) The only mode in football that used the leg strap was the special shoot-out mode where you and a friend compete against each other to see who can score the most goals.
With the new update, Nintendo Switch Sports will now allow you to use kicks to play in one-on-one and four-on-four football matches, bringing a whole new level of movement to the game and probably a lot more stubby toes.