Drag X Drive – Highlighting Mouse Controls
Drag X Drive – Highlighting Mouse Controls
Publisher: Nintendo
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As much as I love Nintendo, some of the decisions they have made so far this generation with the Nintendo Switch 2 have baffled even me. As we have stated in the past, we thought that, although brilliant fun in an odd way, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour should have been a pack-in title with the Nintendo Switch 2. Over the past week we’ve been playing Nintendo’s latest release, Drag X Drive, and once again we are a bit confused: why wasn’t this a launch title to show off the capabilities of the Nintendo Switch 2 mouse controls?
During my time with Drag X Drive, both online with other media members during a planned session with Nintendo, and on my own with my kids, there is a lot of fun to be had playing the various mini-games. You can play some 3 on 3 wheelchair basketball (our personal favourite), compete to grab a ball falling from the ceiling, race around the track faster than your opponents, and free play as well. The ultimate goal here is, we believe, to showcase what the Nintendo Switch 2 mouse controls can do.
What we found, though, was that this not only showed off how well the Nintendo Switch 2 mouse controls work, but also how good that rumble feature is. As we pushed and dragged our Joy Con 2 controllers to propel ourselves forward and backwards, the controls gave us that feeling of actually pushing a wheelchair. I haven’t felt something like this since Sony launched the Dual Sense controller, and honestly I think Nintendo’s iteration of this high tech rumble is in many ways a better experience. I think I was more wowed by the rumble support, rather than the mouse support.
I’ve played a number of games that have used mouse controls already, including Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma and Civilization 7. And I’ve come away from both those experiences with the same conclusion: while Nintendo says you can use your legs as a on-the-go mousepad, it doesn’t really always work. In the games we mentioned, the Joy Con 2 not registering a movement on my leg wasn’t really an issue since none of those are time sensitive. With Drag X Drive, it most definitely had an impact, and ultimately we felt that using your legs as a mouse pad isn’t ideal, or recommended. We did have a better experience using our couch cushions, but did end up ripping one of the black pads off of our Joy Con 2 strap. This was disappointing, but ultimately was a result of the surface I used. Our solution? We pulled out an oversized mouse pad, laid it on the coffee table in front of our TV, and used that instead. Problem (mostly) solved.
When we finally arrived at that conclusion, we felt the experience we had in Drag X Drive was pretty solid. When playing online with media we quickly realized how bad we were at 3-on-3 basketball, but did get a few wins by being first to grab the falling ball, and during a race around the arena. Our hour long session online with other media also highlighted that Drag X Drive is best played with other people, preferably people you know and you can interact with via GameChat. In that scenario, we assume, the amount of fun you will have with this game is probably exponentially better than playing alone. A great group of family or friends will easily put hours in this experience in a single session, no problem.
There is still benefits to playing offline, though, as being good at Drag X Drive isn’t actually a simple endeavor. Controlling your chair is delicate process, a mixture of pushing forward in sync, moving just your right or left Joy Con 2 controller to turn, and pulling your break to quickly stop or spin around. And once you’ve managed to figure that out, there’s the process of shooting – a simple shooting motion with motion control is all it takes – dunking, performing tricks for additional points, passing and more. On the service, the 3-on-3 basketball experience is pretty shallow, but the digger you deep, the more you realize there is a pretty competitive game here to master. It is worth noting here that there is no offline, local multiplayer.
That said, who you play online with is going to make a big difference in the experience you are going to have. As was demonstrated time-and-time again during my online media session, this 3-on-3 experience can quickly turn into an induvial experience. Stealing the ball from the opponents is a lot harder than it should be, in our opinion, and getting down the court and scoring a bucket (or at least getting off a shot) isn’t all that difficult. And if you can do it alone, what do you need your teammates for? I do believe that this is probably an issue with our (very quiet) media group, so we will see how that changes as I play with friends. With more practice and a better group, this perhaps becomes less of a problem, but I spent more time fighting with my teammates to grab the ball after the other team scored, than actually working together to score buckets. Ultimately, there was a bigger risk of a turnover passing the ball as opposed to just going alone. I’m not sure that’s what the design team envisioned with this one.
There a bit more depth here than you might find in some of Nintendo’s previous oddities, like Wii Sports. There are a few different characters to choose from that provide a faster or more durable character. You can also change the colours of your characters. It’s all pretty basic, but nice to see it as an option, and an area that I think Nintendo will add to overtime.
Ultimately, I think that Drag X Drive is a game that’s pretty basic right now, but a title that Nintendo might easily be able to massage and improve over time. I hope to see non-mouse control controller options added; yes, this does break away from what Nintendo is aiming to do here, but it will make the title more accessible. With a good group, I think this will be a fairly popular game, but when you are competing with other online multiplayer games like Rocket League, there needs to be just a bit more. Right now I think this is a good game that will provide hours of entertainment, but I’m hoping that Nintendo will turn it into something great.
Article By Adam Roffel
