The idea of purchasing a gaming console – not necessarily a Switch – first intruded into my brain about a year ago while shopping for souvenirs for a trip back to the Philippines. I got my brother a Switch Lite for a really steal price at a secondhand electronics store in Nippombashi. Testing it later at the cafe next door, I started to feel a temptation that comes around whenever one buys a really cool toy for other people – can I keep it?
It did ultimately reach my brother shortly upon our arrival in Manila, but the feeling of wanting one for myself, maybe something bigger and better and newer, had stayed as little more than a phantom itch at the back of my brain, until my wife two weeks ago suggested buying herself a Steam Deck. The discussion was a propos of a long break at the restaurant where she works part time. On particularly busy days when her shift would extend into late in the evening, they would make her take breaks lasting up to two hours in the lull dividing the lunch and dinner rush.
Our neighborhood being the exact opposite of a hotspot, there’s nothing else for her to do during her break but to take a counter seat at the dining area, have a light snack, maybe read from her Kindle, but mostly stare out into empty space until time comes to suit up and get back into the kitchen. This particular afternoon, I decided to spend the afternoon with her and snack on some sushi and coffee.
Like me, she had also been considering the purchase for quite some time now. She even had a list of all her games that have been play tested for the Deck. She had a check from work upcoming. The timing felt right. And besides, long breaks aside, the console would be a big improvement for when we next had to fly to Manila or wherever.
Here’s the thing though – I can be pretty jealous when someone around me has a new toy. It’s petty, I know – and what am I, ten? But the thought of her in bed on Sunday mornings next to me, fully immersed on her Steam Deck, while I had to make do with Youtube on my phone reminded me of school days sitting next to Christian from fifth grade, enjoying recess hour playing Pokemon on his Gameboy Advance SP (more on this device in a future blog post), hoping he would offer me a quick try without my having to ask, in the meantime keeping my nose in between the pages of an illustrated Encyclopedia borrowed from our classroom library because I just really, really like reading so much.
We sat it out for a few more hours, just so it didn’t feel like too much of an impulse buy, but upon arriving home we pulled the trigger. Having more money than me, she got herself a Steam Deck brand new from Komodo, while I made do with a secondhand Nintendo Switch OLED (yes, not the Switch 2) with the Tears of the Kingdom skinned joy-cons.
Why not another Steam Deck, you ask? Well for one, though it would turn out to be worth it later on, the price is quite steep, with the cheapest costing JPY 59,800 for only an LCD screen and 256 Gb of storage. Second, it didn’t seem very efficient having two of the same device in one household. If I ever felt the need to play my PC games on the Deck, I could always borrow hers – God bless Steam for family sharing. Besides, the Switch has the added benefit of easily docking to the TV and allowing multiplayer in console mode.
The Switch is fun. Having a handheld, in general, is fun. There’s something about PC gaming – sitting upright at the same desk at my home office, holding my mouse and keyboard in the same stance and posture as writing papers or arguing with ChatGPT – that still makes it feel like work. And besides, there’s the setup required, having to first close all my work programs to free up memory and processor space and then booting up Steam, that makes the border between playing and not playing all too cumbersome to cross. With a handheld, I can kind of just pick it up and go. I don’t even have to close R Studio. I can play a quick mission in Borderlands 2 and be back for work as easy as checking TikTok for a brainrot session.
The console is big. It’s not quite the beast in size as the Steam Deck, sure, but does anyone else miss the time when portable devices were actually, well, portable? Don’t get me wrong – I like the big screen and everything – but in handheld mode, the size can sometimes feel a bit cumbersome. Also, despite not having played any Zelda games in the past (what a poser, I know), the TOTK skin felt fresh and unique from the standard red-and-blue (the “red box”) design. It certainly caught my eye when I saw it on Back Market, but over time the green and gold combo started to remind me of Puregold. For all you non-Filipinos out there, that’s supermarket chain back home.
I’m not big on multiplayer battle games like League and Fortnite, so the games I’ve been playing on the Switch have been relatively chill, with a bigger focus on narrative. The first game I bought when the Switch arrived was Borderlands 2, which I felt was apt given that it’s also the first game I bought when I got my Macbook back in 2021. I got a copy of the Legendary Edition for a discount off Amazon and immediately got back into Pandora as my favorite Vault Hunter Zer0 shooting my way to Sanctuary. I’m happy to report that the gameplay felt quite as buttery on the Switch. Maybe even more so. The quality of the graphics that such a small device can deliver was a pleasant surprise, in contrast to all the little stutters and tears on my Macbook even at mid quality.
But where the Switch really delivers is in the puzzle genre. I got this indie game called Paper Trail by Newfangled games off a sale on the eShop, and I basically forgot about everything else. The game focuses on Paige, a Physics major who’s set to go to University, if only her parents would allow her to leave the house. Thankfully, Paige has a secret talent: she can fold space-time. The player guides Paige on her way to university, using Paige’s talent to bypass obstacles by literally folding the universe like origami, along the way meeting a bunch of quirky characters speaking a rather cute scat-like simlish.
Two weeks in, and buyer’s regret has not set in, and I have a feeling it never will. This is maybe one of my best purchases of the year. Already it’s given me hours of fun, and I look forward to getting more into gaming now that I have a dedicated console. Recently, I’ve been meaning to find a way to get away from my phone more, fearing that my daily consumption of TikTok and Instagram Reels is getting close to frying my brain beyond repair. Sure, the Switch is another screen, but it does get me away from the pesky notifications, and forces me to sit down and focus on one thing. It even gave me an excuse to blog about something.
Dominic Dayta 
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