Nintendo Switch’s World of Goo shows off system’s Wii-style pointer controls

World of Goo is now out for the Nintendo Switch in North America for $9.99, and it’s one of the first games to take advantage of the Joy-Cons controllers’ pointer-style capabilities.

While previous Nintendo systems required a sensor bar for this style of controls, the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons only require you to rest the controller on a solid surface for a moment before being able to use the controller as a sort of mouse on your television.

You can watch the controller in action in the tweet below.

Here’s another quick video that shows how the controller works using only wrist movements.

This isn’t the same technology that was found in Wii or Wii U games that required the sensor bar and allowed you to point at the screen; Nintendo is using the sensors in the Joy-Con to tell where and how you’re moving the controller and extrapolating positional data after the cursor is centered.

This means you don’t have to actually “point” at the screen once you calibrate the controller. You only have to hit the plus or minus buttons on either controller to reset where the “center” of the screen is and aim in relation to that. You can also use both Joy-Cons as pointers in this manner at the same time to play with a friend in local co-op, which is a pretty neat way to enjoy World of Goo.

You can also use the touchscreen on the Switch itself to play the game in portable mode, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well the pointer controls worked in practice. You don’t have to worry about precision; the Switch’s Joy-Cons seem more than up to to the task of playing in this manner.