It’s almost hard to believe it, but the next chapter in Nintendo’s legendary tenure in the gaming industry — the highly anticipated Switch 2 — is less than a month away.

At this current juncture, EZIYODA is so dormant and unloved you’d think it had been bought out by GAMURS, but I never miss the opportunity to turn a trick whenever Nintendo throws a bone my way.

Not that kind of bone, you saucy minx, though the ‘turning tricks’ reference would seem to suggest such.

Your boys at EZIYODA hit the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience, ostensibly to experience the Nintendo Switch 2. Admittedly, bigger outlets have already exhaustively covered all of the games and features available to me, but how many of them liberally apply the word fuck? That’s right, none of them (the fucking cowards).

Switch 2 hardware

The first thing that struck me is how pleasantly inoffensive the console felt in my hands. Whenever something is touted as being bigger — in this case, a 7.9 inch screen as opposed to the 7.0 inch screen of the original Switch’s OLED model — my mind immediately strays in the territory of clunkier, or at least heavier.

The Switch 2, on the other hand (or in the other hand if you’d prefer), felt practically weightless. This is especially surprising when you consider that my weapon of choice is actually the Switch Lite, and its humble screen size of 5.5 inches. Part of me is concerned that the 2 might in fact be too light, and that a mere tumble off of a table could prove catastrophic to all of its little doodads on the inside.

I have cats, man, and one of them is an asshole. When I’m forking over $700 AUD (the equivalent to roughly 62 American dollars), I don’t want the damn thing shattered within a week.

Aesthetically, the sleek black design of the Joy-Con 2s really gives off a premium vibe. With its red and blue accents, it is much less juvenile than the Switch 2’s neon Joy-Cons, the mish-mash of which I’ve always found to be quite jarring. I’m one of those misers that opted for the grey variants, after all.

With that being said, I really hope that Nintendo allows themselves to be playful as an alternative. This is primarily a console for young kids, and choosing your favourite brightly coloured controllers is a very real priority: sure, make the accented ones the standard, but let’s have some garish shit thrown in there, too.

I’m perhaps unnecessarily doomcasting here, and yet I can’t help that I feel as though Nintendo are playing the Switch 2 a little bit too safe. Their M.O. has always been on unexpected pivots, which is how we ended up with the Wii or indeed, the original Switch. By mirroring its predecessor all the way down to the packaging and branding, the 2 reeks of corporate sensibility.

I’ve already accepted the loss of StreetPass, but I’ve gotten too used to the Switch being absent of the stupid superfluous shit that makes Nintendo Nintendo. Sure, sometimes this results in a catastrophic misfire such as the Wii U — despite that, I long for that console’s mirthful personality. I can’t see us receiving an equivalent to its Miiverse, or the Wii’s wonderfully gratuitous channels that told us what to have for dinner or something similarly arbitrary.

We didn’t need any of that at the time. We sure did appreciate it being on offer though, didn’t we?

Mario Kart World

Upon our arrival (and after waiting in the lobby, where music from StreetPass Quest and Fire Emblem Engage were playing, much to my delight), we were paired up and put to work with the premier Switch 2 launch title, Mario Kart World.

As a perpetual loner, I was assigned a mystery partner who filmed the whole process surreptitiously. I wish I had known at the time, as I missed a plumb opportunity to liberally say my favourite word (that word being “fuck”, as we’ve previously established).

I have to confess, I was eating crow a little bit with how I felt about this title initially. I’ve made no secret of my belief in diminishing returns for hardware capabilities, and it seemed especially unlikely that a Mario Kart game would catch my eye for its visuals. Somehow, however, it achieved that quite swiftly, boasting courses that are absolutely bursting with life in every direction.

There is so much going on, and you can’t fully appreciate the magnitude of that until you have the console right there in your hands. It is a crisp, smooth treat for the senses, and in the case of dynamic tracks such as DK Spaceport, you really take notice when the mechanical gorilla assailant arrives on-screen.

As nice as it looks, it plays just as nicely, if not more so. The usual Mario Kart fundamentals are there, of course — though I kept instinctively trying to hold items whenever I received them, inadvertently launching them off at awkward times — and the new gimmicks are satisfying to pull off. Your kart snaps onto rails, making them easy enough to access, and jumping back and forth is a cool feature that evokes memories of Sonic Adventure 2, only without the Chao Garden.

It will most certainly be a staple of many Switch 2 libraries, an obvious must-have game out of the gate like the Zelda duo of Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild. I didn’t get a chance to mess around with its knockout mode or free roaming features, but just based on the core mechanics, I’m already sold. The rest will simply be a cherry on top for me.

Drag x Drive

The second game I trialled, Drag x Drive, is going to be a much harder sell for the general public. With its stark graphical design and faceless, anonymous characters, it is hardly inviting to the eye. It seems so obvious to me that, if this were packaged as a Mii game, it would have been much more enticing. I guess that’s just a Mii thing, though. Ohoho.

Beyond that, it also has a somewhat imposing point of entry in its control scheme. I don’t speak for everyone in the gaming community, but I will be open about my awkward lack of hand-eye coordination. I’m a klutz, so having a hands-on game (literally speaking) where you are trying to move the two Joy-Cons across the surface amidst all the chaos was a bit more than I could handle.

It’s not to say it isn’t intuitive, as it very much is, and I really liked the way the haptic feedback clicked every time I dragged my wheels along. I just can’t see myself wanting to work towards getting better at this game, which functions more like a robust mini-game than a standalone title.

After fumbling around the tutorial for a few minutes, I was thrown into a 3-on-3 contest with the two people sitting next to me against our rivals at other stations. It was clear quite early on that they had mastered the control scheme much more easily than we had, and my blue squad was trounced, 4 to 10.

Ultimately, I blame my teammates, because they were shit house. The issue here is that I expect a majority of new players will be shit house, and unlike Nintendo’s other recent competitive online entries such as Splatoon or ARMS, Drag x Drive lacks the charm necessary to keep us onboard to ascend to a level beyond shit house.

I also kept forgetting that I had been told to put the wrist straps on, and every time I went to lift my hands for no reason whatsoever, I was restrained by the Joy-Cons tethered to the table. Although that won’t necessarily mirror your experience (unless you’re particularly fond of restraints), I think the true appeal of the Switch 2’s mouse feature will be in a more low-key environment, such as a new Mario Paint title.

I’d give this one a miss, and I expect the market likely will, too. Making your character clap like a buffoon sure was fun, at least.

Donkey Kong Bananza

No, autocorrect, that is not a fucking spelling mistake, so please leave me alone.

The final game I tested out was another one that I didn’t quite get, from viewing the gameplay footage alone. When I first saw the trailer for Donkey Kong Bananza, I couldn’t help but feel as though it looked unfocussed, almost sloppy in a way. DK was smashing his way through walls, floors, everything, looking less like a platforming mascot and more like a Karen who was impatiently waiting to see the manager.

What was the appeal there, exactly, for a character whose games had long been based on precision platforming?

Once that mad lad is in your hands, however, it makes sense in a manner that is actually quite exciting. Honestly, it’s better if you distance this DK from Rare’s interpretation that we’ve known and loved for over three decades. He’s not the cool, cocky 90s trope that he was back in the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy, and in fairness, he hasn’t been framed in that way for quite some time now.

Even in Retro Studios’ glorious Country revival, DK was more animalistic and brutish, so it makes sense to fully lean into that with this bombastic new design. He is as full of life as you’ve ever seen a Nintendo character, and put quite simply, kids will adore him — perhaps even more so than Mario himself.

This translates into the game design philosophy, as well. What I had originally believed to be unfocused as a drawback was actually freeing. See that goal up ahead? Sure, you could make your way right there, or if you’d prefer, you can just open up a hole in the wall to go do something completely different, often with a prize in the form of a hidden treasure.

Again, these are kids’ games, and if I were still a kid, I would find this kind of exploration downright cathartic. Going off the beaten path isn’t just encouraged, it’s constantly rewarded with a similar dopamine hit to snagging moons in Super Mario Odyssey.

This sense of scope is really quite mind boggling when you sit down and consider it, with nearly every single direction in play. It was aided by how fluidly DK moves, easily clambering up walls or scooping up rubble to fling at his foes. To that end, the gyro aiming option in this mode is buttery smooth. I rarely enjoy gyro controls in all honesty, but I could really see myself using them here.

It was most definitely my game of the show, and if the whole package is up to the standard of what was available in the demo, it’ll be in contention for my vaunted game of the year award.

Overall impressions

Sadly, I was only able to test out the aforementioned three titles, as I had to jet off to my actual paying gig within the hour. This meant that I was unable to try my hand at Metroid Prime 4 or the available GameCube entries. Yeah, I’m a hack, but you knew that when you married me.

Even when considering the limited time I had, I walked away very encouraged. I hadn’t necessarily felt any kind of desire for a new console prior to this. My Switch Lite plays the kinds of games that I enjoy (chiefly, first party Nintendo titles), I’m not left wanting for something more ambitious than that. If there’s a third party title that it lacks the processing power to run, then I’ve got a PC at the ready. No harm, no foul, right?

Now, I can understand how Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza need that extra bit of juice. I still frame the Switch 2 as more of a step up than a step forward, like what the SNES was to the NES, but maybe that’s okay for now. I like the Switch, I would have been happy to just continue with that, so the investment to continue with that, just better, isn’t too shabby, either.

The software, for the most part, feels very Nintendo. If they could perhaps expand that sense of whimsy to the console itself, I’d be entirely onboard for what’s on the horizon. Time will tell whether it can come anywhere near the lofty standards set by the Switch, but for now, we are trending in the right direction.