Drag x Drive review: A great multiplayer game let down by a lack of features

When Drag x Drive was first revealed during the Switch 2 Direct back in April, some quickly stated that it was to Nintendo’s new console what Arms was to the original Switch.

It’s clear to see why – both games introduced a brand new IP and were designed mainly to show off the console’s new control method. In reality, however, there’s far more that separates the two than joins them.

Arms was a full price game with colourful characters, a solid single-player offering, a comical design and the option to use button controls if you weren’t sold on the motion controls. None of this applies to Drag x Drive.

Instead, this $19.99 / £16.99 title has a far less cartoonish look, is very much made with multiplayer in mind and is laser-focused on providing a very specific control experience with very few concessions made for those who don’t want to play that particular way.

In terms of the core gameplay, Drag x Drive is generally very good, and rolls into ‘excellent’ territory when everything comes together properly and your teammates are (literally) willing to play ball.

The control method – which is guaranteed to be divisive, so take this purely as one person’s opinion – is a brilliant way of taking the straightforward concept of 3v3 basketball and adding complexity to it.

Just as Rocket League forces players to get used to the extremely nippy handling, jumping and flipping abilities of its cars before they can truly compete on an expert level, Drag x Drive puts players in wheelchairs – even though it never refers to them as such – which means getting good at the game starts with the basic task of learning how to move around.

It’s certainly a unique way of controlling your character. While playing a game with a mouse is far from novel – mice have obviously been around for nearly half a century – the nature of PC setups means it’s almost always involved using a single mouse. As such, using two mice to roll a wheelchair around will be a new experience for practically everyone, and your mileage (so to speak) will vary in terms of how enjoyable you find it.

The sensitivity of Switch 2’s mouse controls is such that most players will find that playing with both controllers on their legs and swiping them up and down is a perfectly effective way of playing the game – I tended to alternate between doing that and sitting on the floor, swiping along the carpet. Both worked well for me, you’ll need to find what works best for you.

It should be noted that, while Arms understood that not everyone is interested in motion controls and gave players an option to attack by pressing buttons instead of flicking the Switch Joy-Cons, Drag x Drive offers no such option. You have to use the mouse controls, and that’s that.

“It should be noted that, while Arms understood that not everyone is interested in motion controls and gave players an option to attack by pressing buttons instead of flicking the Switch Joy-Cons, Drag x Drive offers no such option. You have to use the mouse controls, and that’s that.”

I understand why this is the case, to be fair. This isn’t as simple as swapping out a flick of the wrist for a press of a button – Drag x Drive is entirely built around the idea that controlling a wheelchair with two mice is part of the main challenge. Allowing the player to simply press the stick upwards instead would completely remove that challenge, all but guaranteeing that 95% of players would instantly switch to non-mouse controls.

It does, however, make the game a bit of an accessibility nightmare – which is rather ironic given its subject matter – because any player incapable of gripping both mouse controllers and constantly moving their arms back and forth at speed basically can’t play this game.

This isn’t just an issue for disabled players, mind you. If you can’t find a suitable surface to move both mice far enough – you need more space than a standard mouse mat would provide – then you’re going to struggle too. And obviously playing in handheld mode is a complete non-starter, it’s simply not possible to play the game without detaching the Joy-Cons.

Assuming you can actually play the game, then, it’s a joy. The standard 2-pointer and 3-pointer rules of basketball apply, but by pulling off special tricks, such as doing a little bunny hop while throwing, rolling up a ramp and dunking the ball, or performing an alley-oop with a partner, you can get fractions such as 2.2 or 2.4 points.

Not only does this make it far less likely to tie a game, it also encourages players to get the most out of their vehicle. Standard shots will get the job done, but when you’re evenly matched with an opponent and they start going Harlem Globetrotters on you, that extra razzle-dazzle might give them that extra 0.3 points to win the game.

As you may have noticed if you played the recent ‘Global Jam’ demo event for the game, Drag x Drive lives or dies by the players you’re teamed up with. If teammates don’t pass then you’re going to have a miserable time, but obviously this isn’t exclusive to Nintendo’s game. Anyone who’s ever played a team-based co-op mode in EA Sports FC or the like will already know that, despite what Michael Douglas said in Wall Street, greed isn’t actually good.

Naturally, the best solution to this is to get two other friends on-board and play with them, but as far as I can tell the only way to do this is in the Friend Park mode, where you host or join a lobby and invite other players. It doesn’t appear that you and your friends can team up in Public Park, the ‘true’ online mode where you play against random people online.

This is where Drag x Drive’s limitations start to become clear. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of ranking mode or league system, so it’s mostly a case of playing random matches against strangers and not much else.

There are a selection of single-player mini-games – these are time-based or points-based challenges which can earn you trophies – but while they’re a good way to help you refine your skills with the game’s unusual controls, it’s still a light single-player offering. You can also play games against CPU bots with nine skill levels to choose from, should you wish to play a normal match offline.

For now, that’s about it, meaning your decision to part with $20 will really come down to how enthusiastic you are about the main 3v3 mode, and how little you care about ranking leaderboards or any other progress of that nature.

I say “for now” because there’s a real opportunity here for Drag x Drive to continue evolving with ranked modes, new match types, extra mini-games, more customisation options, all the sort of stuff you’d expect from a team-based sports game these days. But it’s not here yet.

“There’s a real opportunity here for Drag x Drive to continue evolving with ranked modes, new match types, extra mini-games, more customisation options, all the sort of stuff you’d expect from a team-based sports game these days. But it’s not here yet.”

The game has the most important thing – the action on the court itself – pretty much locked in, and it’s genuinely brilliant when everything comes together. All it needs now is a reason to continue playing it beyond the first few weeks, because if players continue to have no need to join new matches they’ll start to lose interest and the community will die out.

Part of me wonders if Drag x Drive might have been better presented as a free-to-play title, or at least a game that’s $20 to buy but also free to Switch Online + Expansion Pack members, similar to Tetris 99.  That game’s now six years old and still has an active community because of how many players have access to it, and its regular events for free bonus content like game-themed backgrounds.

In an ideal world, we’ll be looking at Drag x Drive a year or two from now and saying “can you remember how bare bones this was at launch? And look at it now.” For now, though, there’s no way to tell whether we will, until Nintendo announces plans for future content.

As it stands, then, the game really requires you to like its gameplay on the court, because that’s what’s holding it together just now. Thankfully, that part is easy to like. Time will tell, however, whether this is the final, take-it-or-leave-it package, or whether Nintendo plans to continue building on Drag x Drive with extra content over time, transforming it from what it is just now – a perfectly fine, fun little diversion good for the occasional 10-minute burst of fun – to a must-have live Switch 2 multiplayer game.