MLGG: Pop Culture News, Reviews and Interviews

The Switch is so far behind its competitors in terms of its menu and general system options that it’s almost laughable.

Even older Nintendo consoles have a more flexible, customisable and feature-packed menus than the Switch does.

Though the argument could be made for keeping things simple and minimalistic, the fact that even the Wii had a jaunty earworm of a tune playing when visiting its online store – and the Switch is just silent – is embarrassingly bad.

Even the portable DS family consoles had tons of useful stuff that the Switch lacks; which is where Red Deer Games come in – or at least, seem to – with the nOS app.

nOS – that’s ‘new Operating System’ attempts to Nintendo what Nintendon’t – and provide users with customisable background themes, a calculator, notebook and a to-do list.

Additionally, it also has a decent paint app – with you also being able to use your own painted creations as background themes – and a sliding tile puzzle game too.

The problem is that, despite the fact that it’s titled and billed as an improved operating system for the Switch, it’s not really.

What it is, is an app that you have to open separately from the Switch menu in order to use it – much as you would a game. You can’t launch games or access the eShop or perform any other basic system functions within nOS, so its usefulness is pretty limited.

The paint app is a nice inclusion and a neat creative diversion – and the puzzle game is, I suppose, pretty decent if you like that sort of thing. Even that is fairly limited, however, despite varying difficulty levels and images to solve.

So it’s a bit of an odd one; not really the OS improvement you might expect it to be, but given the portable nature of the Switch it might prove useful as a note taking tool if your smartphone or laptop somehow both end up drained of battery or otherwise unusable.

It’s all extremely cute and colourfully designed, in a way that’s very appealing – but other than that, this is a strange piece of software that doesn’t do a great deal – and I can’t see it getting much use from most Switch owners, even if they are curious enough to check it out for themselves.

nOS is out now on Nintendo Switch. Many thanks to Red Deer Games for providing me with a code for nOS for review purposes.

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