Opinions for Drag x Drive, Nintendo’s latest first-party Swap 2 sport, went dwell throughout the online earlier in the present day, and the general consensus appears to be: Meh. By itself, that wouldn’t be a lot of a narrative, however Drag x Drive’s low overview scores imply that two out of the 5 lowest-rated Swap 2 video games on Metacritic had been revealed by Nintendo.
On August 13, the embargo dropped for Drag x Drive opinions, and quite a few retailers started posting their important value determinations of the arcade-y wheelchair basketball sport. Drag x Drive, which launches on Thursday, isn’t an enormous hit with critics. Many discovered it too difficult for informal gamers, however not deep sufficient to maintain skilled gamers hooked. Others complained that the controls, which rely closely on the brand new Pleasure-Cons’ mouse performance, are tedious and a ache to make use of, and even when you’ve mastered them, the 3v3 sports activities sport is simply not very thrilling to play or have a look at. So it’s not a shock that, as of 2:30 PM EST, Drag x Drive has a lukewarm 62 out of 100 rating on Metacritic and locations it in shut proximity to a different Nintendo-published Swap 2 sport.
That other game is Switch 2 launch title Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, a sport that many critics known as a glorified tutorial and tech demo hidden behind a paywall. And whereas it has some followers, it boasts a low general Metacritic rating of 54. Yikes. That rating locations it proper subsequent to Drag x Drive on the worst-reviewed Swap 2 video games record on Metacritic. The one sport with a worse aggregated rating than these two titles is Bandai Namco’s Tamagotchi Plaza.
So what can we take from this? Effectively, first off, it ought to be famous that over the subsequent few months and years, as extra video games flood the Swap 2, I anticipate these low-rated Nintendo video games to drift larger up the record as actually terrible rubbish lands on the console. However for now, I feel it reinforces the truth that the Swap 2 is a good console with maybe the worst launch line-up of unique video games I’ve seen from Nintendo in a very long time.
It’s additionally attention-grabbing that each of those poorly acquired Nintendo video games are new titles not related to a franchise and targeted closely on the extra gimmicky options of the Swap 2 {hardware}. In 2025, it appears lots of critics and gamers are finished waggling controllers or caring about bizarre options that only a few video games will use in any respect. That’s unhealthy information for Drag x Drive and Welcome Tour, nevertheless it means that Nintendo made the best name with its new console. As an alternative of going for a brand new, bizarre gimmick just like the Wii U, Digital Boy, or 3DS, this time round Nintendo simply made the identical console once more, but bigger, better, and faster. Seeing how well it has sold so far and the way poorly persons are reacting to gimmicks, this was doubtless a sensible transfer.
