Nintendo's had an unprecedentedly rough year, with a continually eroding sense of excitement around its aging Wii console and a lukewarm reception greeting the 3DS. And with mobile competition nabbing pretty sizable chunks from the company's casual offerings, Nintendo needs to remind people what the console can bring that handsets can't.
These things still happen in the Volt, but not without the sense of something more going on beneath its white plastic console panels almost like its deciding how exactly to respond to your inputs, much as HAL behaved in 2001: A Space Odyssey.