Hands-On Preview: Nintendo Switch 2
I got a chance to play some Nintendo Switch 2 games at the end of April. Nintendo was holding a whole event in Toronto, complete with staff, set decoration, tons of stations, and a big crowd of excited players. Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza were the big highlights, with Metroid Prime 4 and Drag x Drive making a big impact as well. I also played a handful of other ports and expansions. It was a pretty busy afternoon.
Mario Kart World
Mario Kart World was definitely the main event. There were dozens of stations set up, with two entire sections blocked off for the Grand Prix and the Knockout Tour. Both modes are absolutely excellent in their own ways. The Grand Prix is an enormous 24-driver version of the races we’re all familiar with. It’s crammed with new items, new cars, and new drivers. Plus, every racer has at least two alternate outfits that I could see. You can play as a cow! That feels significant. I saw items like the Feather back in play, plus there was this wild long-distance hammer attack. It’s strong enough to knock items out of your grip, which is downright nasty. I also grabbed some speed-boosting food, along with some mystery item that turned me into a Charging Chuck for a second. Not even sure if it was a good thing or a bad one, to be honest.
Knockout Tour is a battle royale race where you need to place high enough to continue after every checkpoint. I was terrible at this mode, but I can see the vision. This one could be huge. We also got to rip around in open-world mode for a minute. I love driving wherever I like in a Mario Kart game. But you go a lot slower on grass than you do on actual roads. This bums me out a bit. The actual racing feels great, however. This game is crazy slick, sporting unprecedented levels of Nintendo polish around every corner. I’m curious how much of an improvement World is over Mario Kart 8. I can’t wait to sift through an archive’s worth of side-by-side YouTube videos in a couple of months.
Donkey Kong Bananza
We’re finally getting another open-world Donkey Kong game! And it’s looking like a pretty good one, too. You play as DK, smashing your way through a bunch of cool, colorful worlds. The game is stuffed with collectibles to find, and retrieving them is incredibly fun. You can smash into the ground, the walls, and almost any obstacles you encounter. The animation is smooth, the visuals are slick, and the controls are super satisfying. Punching your way through stone is a frenetic, chaotic experience that I can’t imagine getting old at any point. It just feels so good to blow up everything you see. I honestly can’t wait to play the full game. Prepare to spend many hours destroying every smashable part of every world. That’s almost certainly what I’ll be doing.
Cyberpunk 2077
There was also Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2, which is a downright ambitious undertaking. The framerate is stable, but it’s also crazy low. Walking feels like you’re sinking into jelly. I asked the staff if I could switch to Performance mode and it uhhh, did not help. On the other hand, I played with an incredible handgun that I’ve never used before. I was mowing down faceless goons left and right, although they were moving a bit slow. The graphics were also shockingly good, though I wasn’t being especially scrutinous. The Switch 2 release includes the Phantom Liberty expansion, as well as some brand-new motion controls. Apparently the Switch 2 version is capped at 30fps in Quality mode and 40fps in Performance mode. I didn’t think I cared about framerates, but playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 has proved otherwise.
Metroid Prime 4
Metroid Prime 4 makes a very strong case for the Switch 2’s mouse control system. The game uses mouse controls for aiming and camera movement, which feels extremely weird at first. Locking on to a target locks you in place as well, forcing you to be precise and exact with your shots. It feels strange to play a console shooter in a mouse and keyboard stance, but the potential is plain. It all fell into place once I got to the demo’s boss battle. The fight teaches you how the whole control system works. By the end of the battle I understood, though it still felt pretty weird. The graphics are the natural evolution of the Metroid Prime series. The textures are detailed, crisp, and extremely clean. I was dropped right in the middle of the narrative, but I got the sense the devs are trying something new, plot-wise.
While the demo was a blast, I’m concerned about how well the mouse controls will work when you don’t have a gigantic mouse pad directly in front of you. For example, how well will this system work on couch cushions, or pants? In the case of Metroid Prime 4, can you use traditional controls as well as the new ones? The game seems designed top-to-bottom with that mouse business in mind. Either way, this game looks like an excellent entry in the series.
Street Fighter 6
Street Fighter 6, I thought, looked a little washed out on the Switch 2. But also, the gyro mode is an absolute blast to play. You don’t need to press buttons, you just wiggle the Joy-Con back and forth or shake the crap out of it. It seems like a great party mode for messing around while friends are over. Nothing even resembling actual competition-grade gameplay, of course. This is pure mayhem. It would still be incredible to see a couple of pros try and make something out of this mode. You can’t choose moves at all, the system just translates your shaking into violent chaos on screen. I have no idea how the rest of the game plays on the Switch 2, but that gyro mode is amazing. There’s also a calorie challenge where the goal is to shake the Joy-Con more than your opponent. Victory comes at a pretty serious cost with that one.
Drag x Drive
This game is a real workout for the hands. You’re using both Joy-Cons in mouse mode, moving them like you’re actually pushing a wheelchair around. It gave me a new appreciation for how difficult that must be in real life. At the end of a 15-minute play session, I was pretty wiped. I spent most of said session just figuring out how to move around. But once you do get a handle on it, the controls are fluid and intuitive. Drag x Drive is an ambitious, polished tech demo that shows off much of what the Switch 2 can really do. I’m less certain of its longevity as an actual game beyond that. We’ll see how it lands on its release date this Summer.
I also played the Switch 2 version of Kirby and the Forgotten Land. It features a bunch of new content for the game, though it doesn’t have any Switch 2 control features that I saw. The game looks great, but Kirby games almost always look incredibly polished and slick. I even dug into Hades 2, though that was just because I haven’t played it at all yet. The Switch 2 Pro controller feels great, and the actual system is quite satisfying to hold in one’s hands. That magnetic Joy-Con lock feels pretty reliable, which I was concerned about. There was a bunch of other games on display, but I simply didn’t have time to get to them all. Thankfully, the Switch 2 is coming out pretty soon, so I’ll have plenty of chances to catch up on what I missed.