Nintendo’s Switch 2 soups up the graphics, but does it deliver the games?

WASHINGTON (AP) — I’m cruising around Bowser’s Castle with my old pal Toad. It’s not exactly relaxing, what with all the lava pits and banana peels and turtle shells littering the road. Add 23 other characters — is that a cow driving? — who are trying to get to the finish line first, and it’s chaos.

The hectic, high-speed insanity of any race in the new Mario Kart World would have caused the eight-year-old Switch console to wheeze a bit. And that’s why we’ve got the Switch 2 ($449.99), the souped-up sequel to Nintendo’s popular home-and-portable hybrid.

It looks prettier, too. The 7.9-inch portable display (up from 6.2 inches) boosts the resolution to 1020p (from 720p), and while the LCD screen isn’t quite as sharp as an OLED screen might have been, it’s much cleaner than the original recipe Switch. It looks even better when connected to an HDTV since it now supports 4K and HDR.

Nintendo has always stood apart from the technological arms race that fans of Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox obsess over, insisting that first-rate games don’t necessarily depend on high-powered computer chips. But you could feel the strain in 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, with its at-times blurry graphics and sluggish framerate. The Switch 2, with a faster framerate of 120 fps, corrects much of the fuzziness.

That’s not to say it comes close to matching the high-definition performance of the PlayStation 5 or the Xbox X/S. If you’re expecting the jaw-dropping graphics of, say, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows … well, no.

There is good news for those of us who have gotten weary of the old Switch’s dinky 32 gigabytes of internal storage. The Switch 2 multiplies that by eight, for 256 GB. Of course, flashier games take up more space, so if you want more room you’ll have to invest in a microSD Express card — which is a bit pricier than the standard memory card used in most portable devices.

Magnets, how do they work?

The Switch 2’s Joy-Con controllers have undergone some tinkering. As before, you can attach them to the sides of the screen if you’re playing on the go. If you’re at home, you can attach them to a doohickey that feels more like a traditional joystick. Either way, they’re now more firmly connected with magnets, which provide a satisfying snap.

Both the left and right Joy-Cons now include an optical mouse, which you can use by placing the controller on its edge and rolling it around on a table. (Nintendo says you can also use it on your pants, but I prefer using a clipboard on my lap.) It remains to be seen how many Switch 2 games will call for a mouse, but 2K’s port of Sid Meier’s Civilization VII seems like a good candidate.

What about the social options?

And then there’s a new button labeled “C” on the right-hand Joy-Con. That calls up GameChat, which lets you start up a conversation with other players — provided you’ve all taken the time to register yourselves as friends. (Eventually, you’ll also need to subscribe to the Nintendo Switch Online service, but that requirement doesn’t kick in until March 31, 2016.) The microphone is built into the Switch 2, though if you want to upgrade to video chat, you’ll need to buy a separate Nintendo camera.

Finally, there’s GameShare, which lets you play selected titles with other Switch users even if they don’t own the software.

Nintendo has been emphasizing the new social features in its marketing, though it feels like it’s catching up to the competition. The kids I know who play Fortnite or Minecraft on competing consoles seem to have figured out long ago how to chat with their pals. Welcome to the 2010s?

Who’s got game?

As with any console launch, the driving question is: Does it have the games?

There are just a couple of Switch 2 exclusives out now: Mario Kart World and Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, a $10 demo package that really should have been free. There are some new-to-Nintendo ports of excellent titles like Split Fiction and Cyberpunk 2077. You can get upgrades of classics like the last two Legend of Zelda adventures. And the Switch 2 is fully backward-compatible, so you can play everything that came out for the Switch as well as a substantial library of older titles.

There’s no other machine that will let you play future installments of beloved franchises like Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Super Smash Bros. and Animal Crossing. None of those have been announced yet, but some marquee names — Donkey Kong and Kirby — will star in Switch 2 exclusives later this year.

There’s plenty of competition out there, though, and not just in the TV-connected console market Switch shares with the PlayStation and the Xbox. Nintendo no longer has the portable market to itself, thanks to Valve’s SteamDeck. Some models of that device cost less than the Switch 2, and it already has a huge library of PC games. Meanwhile, Microsoft announced over the weekend that it’s teaming up with Asus on the ROG Xbox Ally, a handheld that will be out before Christmas.

Honestly, we’ll probably have a better idea of the Switch’s quality a few years down the line, after developers get a handle on what the new hardware can do. If you’re dying to get back behind the wheel with Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach right now, though, you know what you need to do.