Cringeworthy buzzword of the moment: HD Rumble

It all started at the January 12th Nintendo Switch event in Japan. HD Rumble. It looked cool. You could tell how many ice-cubes were in a cup? Fascinating.

Then the Nindies Showcase happened on February 28th. Damon Baker used that buzzword so many times it began to lose its meaning. But still, I wasn't cringing back then. I had never touched an NS before, so I didn't know how meaningless it all was.

HD Rumble, in practice, is not all bad. Both JoyCon vibrate, or both sides of the Pro Controller. Usually there is only one motor in a controller that vibrates, but it seems like there are several in any NS-controller, with varying degrees of intensity. But really, it doesn't really make much of a difference to me. When I'm playing a game, I'm not really thinking about how realistic the vibrations are in my controller; I'm concentrating on accomplishing the task at hand. I can't tell that this vibration was stronger than the previous, or anything like that.

HD Rumble will be lost to the annals of history as another cringeworthy buzzword like Blast Processing on Sega Genesis. Unless you're really concentrating on it, like in 1-2-Switch, you can't tell the difference.

Whenever articles or videos talk about HD Rumble as if it's a feature that will sway a customer from choosing the NS-version over another, I just cringe inside.

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