{"id":69097,"date":"2025-06-04T00:02:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T14:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/?p=69097"},"modified":"2025-06-04T00:02:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T14:02:18","slug":"the-nintendo-switch-2-really-is-the-sequel-to-the-best-console-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/2025\/06\/the-nintendo-switch-2-really-is-the-sequel-to-the-best-console-of-all-time.html","title":{"rendered":"The Nintendo Switch 2 really is the sequel to the best console of all time"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are over 1,100 games registered to my Nintendo Switch account. When I was recently scrolling through them, I saw some titles that I don\u2019t even remember playing, let alone buying. Overall, however, I\u2019ve had so much joy from so many of those games that it would be hard for me to argue that the Switch has not been my favourite console of all time. And now I\u2019ve played the Switch 2.<\/p>\n

To be clear. This isn\u2019t a review. Because there was a Day 1 patch for the hardware itself, Nintendo wasn\u2019t able to send out review units ahead of launch. At least, that\u2019s what Nintendo of Australia has told me. If other parts of the world have reviews set to go live at launch, just be aware that the entire Australian media was left off that joyride.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not complaining, though. Nintendo got together a bunch of us media types to sit down and play with the Switch 2 for a full day. It was a lot of Mario Kart, a little bit of the Welcome Tour, and more than enough for me to say, with full confidence, that the Switch 2 is the sequel to my favourite console of all time.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

First, the hardware. The Switch 2 feels really good in the hand. It seems to get a bit hot in dock (and that\u2019s the only criticism I\u2019ll have of it), but the screen is big, bright, and close enough to my Switch OLED that I\u2019m not even disappointed that it\u2019s not an OLED. While it might look like a Switch, it has so many neat little features that are just begging for developers to be creative with it. The mouse pointer actually works much better than I thought it would, for a start. It allows for exceptionally precise movement and is versatile with the surfaces that it will work on. I tried it on my leg and hand almost the same experience as the mouse mat on the table. Hey, Microsoft, you know how you ported Age of Empires 2 to the PlayStation 5 recently? Time to make it portable, thanks.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the more advanced rumble is really effective. The Welcome Tour has a little minigame in it where you can shake the Joycons like maracas, and toggle between maracas filled with rice, and maracas with a rubber ball bouncing around. I was truly impressed with just how different those felt. The rubber ball, in particular, had some real weight with the way it bounced around in the Joycon.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the only fun trick these Joycons have, either. Somehow or other, the same rumble technology allows developers to have the Joycons make noises, with Welcome Tour again showcasing this by having it create the iconic Mario \u201ccoin\u201d and \u201c1-UP\u201d sounds. Who knows just how many sounds this feature can be used for, but between that and the tactility of the rumble, Nintendo\u2019s certainly gone all-out to make the controllers immersive additions to the gameplay.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Mario Kart World. A full day is nowhere near enough time to see everything that Mario Kart World offers, but we did get to play through all the modes and most of the tracks. A lot of it is vintage Mario Kart, with tracks being a nice mix of old and new, the battle modes being there, and Grand Prixes working as they always had. There is the neat addition of being able to continue driving around while you wait for the next race to start, but otherwise, Nintendo hasn\u2019t really touched that.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Knockout mode is an absolute, cracking blast. Starting with 24 racers across a continuous, non-stop race, the bottom few racers get knocked out at the end of each leg. Eventually, what starts out as absolute bedlam (24 items-armed racers is as chaotic as you think it might be) thins down, and the final two legs, with eight and then just four racers, switch to some real high-skill racing for the victory. In this knockout mode, every race is, truly, a story of three distinct acts, and while no one will ever be immune from sheer luck knocking them out early, being one of the final four, and then even winning, does feel like a sustained achievement. I fully believe that I\u2019ll be spending around 90% of my time in Mario Kart World in this mode.<\/p>\n

Add to it all the racers (there are SO MANY and yet all I want to do is play as Snowman), and then costumes (there\u2019s even an Arabian Nights-themed track and set of characters and seeing Daisy cosplay as Princess Jasmine is\u2026 a moment, I\u2019ll say that much, and my initial concerns that this would be somehow less of a game than Mario Kart 8 thanks to all the DLC that that game had is well and truly put to rest. Mario Kart World has greater vibrancy, energy, and variety than Mario Kart 8 had, and this is the perfect game to launch a console.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The only thing that didn\u2019t really grip me about the game was its free range mode, where you just drive around and\u2026 complete minigame objectives, for reasons? It\u2019s a little neat to know that you can drive through every single track in the game unbroken in the weirdest take on \u201copen world\u201d gameplay ever, but it\u2019s also an empty and low-energy affair that\u2019s entirely at odds with the proper racing. I just hope that all the unlockables aren\u2019t going to essentially force you to engage with that mode.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll save my consolidated thoughts on Welcome Tour for when I\u2019ve had more time to dig into it, as I was only able to access about 1\/3rd<\/sup> of what the full \u201cgame\u201d will offer. I will say that it\u2019s almost shockingly compelling for a tech demo, and I do actually want to see everything that it has to offer, but it is also a tech demo and charging actual money for it does come across as on the nose.<\/p>\n

Finally, we did get a chance to play around with the social features, including the camera, and while I was initially hesitant about whether I really wanted \u201cMicrosoft Teams, the Nintendo Switch edition\u201d, I\u2019m more sold on it now. My brothers and friends get together regularly to play games online, but we rarely bother with voice chat because it can be annoying doing it through Discord. Having all that functionality in a single button and the freedom to share games and so on while doing so is genuinely convenient and useful. I may well find myself organising video game nights in the future.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Again, this is not a review of the Switch 2. This is just my impressions from a day with the device and its marquee launch title. But I am quite convinced that Nintendo has delivered excellent and creative hardware, and it almost feels anti-climactic to call it a \u201cSwitch 2.\u201d It\u2019s much more impressive than being a mere sequel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are over 1,100 games registered to my Nintendo Switch account. When I was recently scrolling through them, I saw some titles that I don\u2019t even remember playing, let alone buying. Overall, however, I\u2019ve had so much joy from so many of those games that it would be hard for me to argue that the Switch has not been my favourite console of all time. And now I\u2019ve played the Switch 2. To be clear. This isn\u2019t a review. Because there was a Day 1 patch for the hardware itself, Nintendo wasn\u2019t able to send out review units ahead of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,92,95,96,16577],"tags":[13078,13077,13080,13079,12873,16399],"coauthors":[12758],"class_list":["post-69097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gadget","category-gadget-review","category-hardware","category-hardware-review","category-nintendo-switch-2","tag-gadget","tag-gadget-review","tag-hardware","tag-hardware-review","tag-nintendo","tag-nintendo-switch-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69105,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69097\/revisions\/69105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69097"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}