Drag x Drive (Switch 2) Review
Summary: A lack of flair and features drag down this otherwise satisfying sports title.
3
Drag x Drive is an ambitious, unique, and creative sports title, held back by drab presentation and a severe lack of content and variety.
It’s a shame because the core three-on-three wheelchair basketball is a great time, especially with friends, that rewards skill and has a decent learning curve, with each game helping you to feel like you’re getting a little better as you get more accustomed to the controls.
On the surface, Drag x Drive feels like a tech demo, here to showcase what the Joy-Con 2s are capable of through a combination of their brand-new mouse and improved motion controls.
Each pad controls your player’s left and right arms. You drag them across a flat surface to drive your wheelchair forward or backward, press the Z buttons to hit the brakes, and raising the controllers and flicking them takes a shot.
If you’re not a fan of motion controls, you won’t like Drag x Drive. But if you’re looking for something a little different, and want a game that feels rewarding as you get to grips with effectively maneuvering your character due to its surprisingly demanding control scheme that feels like the antithesis of the usual pick up and play style motion controls you find in something like Wii Sports.
The most impressive part, though, is how well they work and the sheer physicality of them. The more you play, the better you get. To begin with, chances are you’ll be flailing around trying to get to grips with just moving around the court and the surrounding area, appreciating the subtle haptic click, click emanating from your joycons as your wheels rotate. Then, after a few hours of play, your arms will probably feel it, but you’ll be squealing around the court, flipping off the half pipe, and then dunking the ball like a pro.
Well, that one time. But I did it.
Annoyingly, this does depend on whether you can find the right surface to scoot your Joy-Cons across; Nintendo claims your legs or sofa will do. But didn’t take into account sofa covers that catch every time you rub your Joy-Con against them, or trousers that bundle up. Ideally, what you need is a table or the arms of an office chair. Something smooth. That won’t snag or bunch up when you draw the pads across it.
It’s also ironic that in a game loosely based on a Paralympic sport, there are no accessibility controls at all, just these fairly demanding motion controls that you can’t modify in any meaningful way.
Once you get to grips with the controls, though, and start to learn a few tricks, the Drag x Drive opens up a little, and moment-to-moment play can be genuinely fun and rewarding, especially when you manage to pull off some flashy spin or in-air maneuver that grants you bonus points. Though admittedly, these moments feel few and far between since you’ll spend most of your time dashing down the court only to drop the ball after being slammed into an opponent just before you try to shoot.
Then again when you are playing defence, getting up in the attacking sides faces, waving your hands about trying to put them off, and slamming head first into them, successfully stealing the ball, passing it to a team mate who then goes onto score a nailbiting last second slam dunk to secure the game, complete with tense slow mo. It is thrilling.
You can play offline with some decent bots, but Drag x Drive is meant to be played online, with your friends, over GameChat for the best experience.
The problem is that outside of this, there’s not a lot to do. Players are dropped into the Park (along with 11 others online) and left to mill around and take part in a handful of fun but simple time-based challenges, including trying to score as many points as possible, playing jump rope, or zipping through a basic obstacle course.
There are also group minigames to take part in while you wait for the main game to begin. These are quick little diversions like short races around the track that frame the basketball courts and sprints to get to a ball first. Simple, effective, but ultimately pointless. Thankfully, if they start to wear a little thin, you can opt out of them and continue trying to top the leaderboards in the solo mini games while you wait for a match to start.
The biggest drawback to Drag x Drive, though, is that there’s not much to do, and there’s no decent sense of progression. You can earn new cosmetics by winning games and completing challenges, but there’s no levelling system, and the options for customising your robo-baller boil down to a new helmet with cat ears or spikes.
I get the feeling this is already having a detrimental effect on the user base, only a week after launch, because during several of my play sessions, it took a fairly long time to get into a game, and several didn’t have a full player count. This might not seem like much, but the max is six.
My final gripe is that it’s just a drab experience. Nintendo is known for making bright, characterful games; that’s one of their biggest selling points. Drag x Drvie is just drab. The music is forgettable, the world is a mass of concrete, and the player characters are uninspired and generic. It’s missing that spark that something like Splatoon or Mario Kart has. I know it’s a budget title, but even Nintendo’s previous free-to-play efforts had more charm than this.
Final Thoughts
At its core, Drag x Drive is a unique and rewarding game, with a clever control scheme that you’ll either love or loathe. It’s a decent tech demo for what is possible with the Joy-Con 2s with a little out-of-the-box thinking, but it’s ultimately let down by a lack of features and drab presentation that lacks the usual Nintendo spark.
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