I spent this Sunday lost in the world of Hyrule in the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I loved it. Everything from the excellent climbing system (which creates a real feeling of tension when trying to reach something right at the edge of your stamina range) to the combat (fun and responsive) to the cooking (what a neat little tune!) to, most importantly, the world itself, which is probably the best game world ever created and is undoubtably the star of the game. Hyrule comes alive with its mountains and rivers and ruins and shrines in a magnificent way that feels as wondrous and new as entering Hyrule Field for the first time in Ocarina of Time 19 years ago.

The game is beyond reproach, and I can already tell I will spend dozens of hours exploring, fighting, and cooking in the giant world Nintendo has built. It feels great to love a Nintendo game again. Heck, it feels great to love any game this much.

But I spent all of Sunday playing Zelda on my 65-inch big screen TV, and I decided tonight to try and use the namesake feature of the Switch and see what it was like on the 6 inch 720p screen that comes with the unit. Others have said they've played many hours of the game in bed, and that the improved frame rate makes the title look even better when shrunk down to portable size.

I spent about 15 minutes with the game, explored a new area, climbed a tower and...put the Switch back in its dock. It's an exaggeration to say that I didn't like Breath of the Wild in handheld form...but it felt like a shadow of what it did on the big screen. Part of this may be that my eyesight isn't what it once was, I had to strain to see some of the detail in the Hyrule night, but more than that, I felt like the adventure was diminished when shrunk down to such a small canvas.

On the big screen the Sheikah towers felt huge and imposing, ancient relics of a lost era. On the handheld they were little columns of color in the distance, and not nearly so impressive up close.

On the big screen a swarm of Keese was terrifying, reminding me of the kryll from Gears of War, and causing me to panic and lash out blindly at them with my weapon. On the little screen they were annoying and I wanted them to go away.

Zelda proved what I have always known. That I am not a handheld gamer.

I like the immersion of playing on a big TV with room-filling sound. I like being able to make out all the detail in the image clearly, without squinting at things off in the distance, and being able to hold the controller down below my line of vision. Speaking of which, I like a big, chunky, controller that fills my grip and feels solid, rather than something delicate. I like a traditional console experience, or at least a PC with a reasonable sized monitor.

In a way this is disappointing to me. Handheld gaming fits into my life very well, with my long daily commutes and occasional downtime at work. Certainly it fits better than playing only at home when I can use my TV. The Switch was my last best hope of finally becoming a handheld gamer. It's something I've been trying to do my entire life. I owned the original grey brick Gameboy and then a purple Gameboy advance, a red DS, a red DS XL, and even a Vita. I have had some fun on those systems over the years, but I've never really loved any of them and the games I have enjoyed have tended to be on the quick and simple side, or strategy games that don't require quickly processing visual information from a cramped little screen and reacting. I played a lot of Tetris in 1989, as did everyone else. The original Professor Layton game was great, and I probably sank 50 hours into Animal Crossing New Leaf during commutes, but put something like Zelda in my hands and I lose interest, fast. Older 2D games fare a little better (I have enjoyed Sega Genesis classics like Sonic the Hedgehog and Space Harrier on my 3DS) but even then I'd rather be on a TV.

If the Switch isn't going to be my passport into handheld gaming I need to accept that nothing will. It's not going to happen. I love playing Zelda on my TV with the pro controller, so I'm not disappointed in my purchase, but for now the system stays in the dock. Maybe when there's a Professor Layton or Phoenix Wright game on it I will give that a try, or if Virtual Console ever shows up and I can play some older games with their low resolution graphics that don't lose so much from being shrunk down I will go back and give the Switch another try as a handheld. But Zelda sealed it for me in a way that nothing ever has before. If shrinking a game I love down to handheld size can make it into a game I only kinda sorta like, then it's clear that the problem, for me, is the handheld format, not what's available on it.

At least I have clarity. That's worth something. Not as much as being able to fully enjoy Zelda on the go would be worth, but something.