Switch 2 Who? Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Shows Switch Still Has Juice Left

gamespot.com:

Despite the old hardware, Nintendo, Monolith Soft, and others are making the most of the Switch to bring games that still feel modern.

By Michael Higham on

Switch 2, Switch Pro, or whatever it ends up being called--it seems like every time a rumor stirs talks about new Nintendo hardware, or a conversation about visuals and performance in a Switch game comes up, we turn our eyes to the need for a new or upgraded console-handheld with beefier specs than that of the Switch. We know it's not coming anytime soon, though. Despite the grumblings about Switch performance, we're still seeing games make the most of the aging tech. And hot on the heels of a generational great on a six year-old system, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a technical marvel.

Tears of the Kingdom isn't exactly playing in the same ballpark as the more robust, graphically demanding games on other platforms. It also only needs to run 720p in handheld mode and shoot for 1080p while docked. However, it's able to achieve a relatively striking visual experience by leveraging a distinct art style and creating an unmistakable atmosphere that plays into the series' strengths. More importantly, its sprawling and dense open world now incorporates the exploration of islands in the sky and a massive underground system the size of the surface itself, all without demanding state-of-the-art hardware. So if you thought Breath of the Wild was big, well, Tears of the Kingdom is on a whole 'nother level.

The key is it comes together through seamless exploration and relative consistency of its technical performance. You can dive from a sky island, look out into the entirety of Hyrule, then drop straight through a chasm into the depths--having tested that myself,