Current Events > C/D: you can intuit the quality of a game based on if the Switch port is good

(+) Yeah! (+)

That's not to say that a great game with a bad Switch port, ala The Outer Worlds, isn't still a great game. Nor is that to suggest that a subpar game can't put in the time and effort to make a solid Switch port.

But from what I've seen, if a company is putting out a game on consoles as well as the Switch, and the console versions are optimised poorly and not very fun - the Switch port will be the worst version. Hands down. Nobody optimises for Switch better than they do for PS4 or Xbone. So more often than not, a subpar game is going to have an ever worse Switch port.

Some good games fudge the Switch port, and it sucks. But then you have the absolute cream of the crop - games like Doom 2016 - with ports so polished and enjoyable that it only serves to re-establish what a good game the original was. Nobody polishes turds for a console that runs worse than the ones they were originally made for - but when you've got a real gem, developers will polish that motherfucker to a mirror sheen.

It's moreso correlation than causation, but I think it's a solid rule of thumb that games with polished Switch ports tend to err on the better side of things. Lacking all other input, if you hear that a game was optimised for Switch in such a way that it's arguably just as good as the original, I think it's safe to say that it's going to be a pretty decent game regardless of what you play it on.

---