Switch 2 Launch Week: The Good, The Bad, and The Unexpected - NVC Clips

Really quick, we're going to talk about Mario Kart World, but I quickly want to talk about Game Chat because Tom and I used Game Chat together to play Mario Kart World.

And Tom, it worked really, really well.

Yeah, it was pretty good.

I mean, it is what we suspected.

It is basically just Discord, Nintendo's own Discord chat built into the Switch.

But it it functioned quite nicely.

I was sitting playing handheld with the official camera plugged into a USB directly into the system so you could see me and it was it worked out fine, right?

It was it was really a not a bad way to just hang out and play that game together.

Yeah, and I was sitting on the literal show floor of IGN Live when there was machinery behind me assembling the show that a bunch of people came to last weekend.

And the mic was doing a good job of muting, cutting it out, and cutting it back in.

But then Tom was like, sometimes I can't hear you talk.

So I just scooted like two feet closer to the actual TV because the mic is on the Switch 2 in the dock.

And then Tom could hear me fine.

Yeah, I was impressed by Game Chat.

Is it still going to be a lot of people's go-to?

I don't know, but it's a lot less cumbersome than it could have been based on how Nintendo has been at this kind of stuff in the past.

It has the button on the controller, which is still weird.

It could have just been under the hold the home button to access chat, but they wanted to make a big show of it.

And yeah, you have to have a phone number for Game Chat, set it all up, approve certain friends.

But once that's all done, that's a one-time setup that does take a little bit, but then it's pretty seamless to invite friends to Game Chat and get it going.

I'm going to keep testing it, trying it out now that I'm done with Mario Kart and can kind of play with the system in other ways.

But it seems cool so far.

And you can hide that Discord view if you don't want to see other people's screens or see who's talking.

You can hide all that, get your full screen.

So that's really nice.

So yeah, game chat is kind of cool.

Logan, you want to say about our our excursion night one with voice chat?

Yeah.

So we were setting up the switch to in the hotel room to play some Mario Kart, and it was like 1130 midnight.

We just got back from the best by 9 p.m. launch event.

And

It was a hotel TV, and it had one of those universal remotes that actually does nothing.

And we couldn't control the volume of the TV when the Switch was on, and it was just blaring.

It was intensely loud.

And so this workaround that we discovered is we started a game chat call with one of my Switch friends.

I texted him and said, hey, don't join this.

We're just testing something out.

And then when we're in the game chat lobby, but it's just us in there, we went and we adjusted the balance between game audio and chat audio.

So game audio was only at 25%.

and then it wasn't like our neighbors couldn't hear us playing mario kart anymore so that was a funny solution we did night one with switch two that was cool yeah should we talk about mario kart world should we get into the big launch game that's not welcome to it which we weirdly talked about first yeah mario kart world is here

My review is up now on IGN and on YouTube.

I gave it an 8 out of 10.

I think this is a great game that I'm hoping gets a lot better if they just fix some weird things, because foundationally, I think Mario Kart World is awesome.

I think the driving is amazing.

I think that it looks gorgeous, and I love the tracks and the characters and the karts and everything.

I think the content is all there, but there's just some weird omissions and some frustrating choices in terms of multiplayer, how progression works in free roam that just

really dragged it down for me, and I think the biggest key example of this is that Knockout Tour, as we've been saying on this show since April, is a blast.

It's the star of the show, it's the best new feature they've added to Mario Kart World, but on night two of Switch 2, when I was trying to play Knockout Tour online with a friend, and

in a public lobby with 22 other people like you would with any other battle royale like a fortnite a fall guys whatever that's just not an option you can only play knockout tour solo or two people on the same console in a public lobby if all four of us right now wanted to pull out our switch twos and play knockout tour together we could only do that with other friends or bots filling the room and that just baffled me because

Because this is like their flagship new multiplayer feature, this big online thing that could be really viral and I think really popular if you could play it under the right conditions.

But you just can't.

And then Tom and I tested it too to confirm it.

And Tom, it just really bummed me out that you can't do it this way.

Yeah, I agree.

I think what you said is a good summary of how I feel as well, right?

It is fantastically fun, flashy, gorgeous Mario Kart with an incredible soundtrack and just like a lot of little things where you're like, really?

Like, wait.

what we can't do that okay that's all right sure you can't you have 200 songs and you can't look at any of the music individually okay that's i guess all right and like choice none of that like ruins the game or anything because i do think it is really really fun it is also just um coming off of mario kart 8 a wild transition because

the the one thing i'd say that i actively don't like about this game probably the only thing i really actively don't like is that it went to 24 racers the 24 racers just feels too insane to me it feels like there is so much going on and it feels bad to be able to fall from 12th place to 20th and still not be in last when traditionally 12th would already be the back of the pile um

But even that, you know, it's just a different flavor of Mario Kart.

Like you sort of said in your review, it's a chaotic party game and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

It's just different.

Yeah, no, the 24-player stuff I actually think is pretty fun.

I think it's fun, like, it does take some rewiring of your brain.

When you cross the line in eighth, that used to feel really bad, and before Mario Kart Wii, that used to be last place.

But now you cross eighth and you're like, all right, top third, that's pretty good.

Like, that's not too bad for an online race.

So, yeah, it definitely takes some adjustment.

Brian, we played Mario Kart in April at the preview event, but now you've spent time with the full build.

What do you think?

Um, I, I actually love the 24 racer thing.

I love, I love the chaos.

I love the litter all over the tracks.

I, I just, I love the going from second to 20th back to 16th.

And then, you know, you're getting to cut off on knockout tour.

I love all that stuff.

I've only played locally so far.

um with friends and family and it's it's been a blast we were talking about the camera before i want to touch on something real quick so i i've been playing with the camera and it's fine like the one where it films you and whoever else is in your living room and it puts you in little circles that are then hover above your heads while you're playing um this is called camera play

and at my preview event i asked the pr rep uh so how does the face thing work and he was like it's called camera play so now i'm making sure that i get that right it's not the face thing so there you go anyways carry on uh great um the yeah the the law the lawsuit is already starting against us saying that the wrong way no uh so that what's interesting about that was i thought it would sort of like

So you when you when you started out, you have your camera pointed at the couch and it puts you and your family in circles and you can adjust the size of the circles and it sort of like tracks your face for a second and then it kind of just stops doing that.

which is odd.

So it locks the camera into a specific position.

So you see your your face in it.

And then if you move or jump around or anything like that, you have to get back into that exact spot.

And it doesn't like follow you around the room a little bit, which I get it's like a, you know, cheap $50 camera, but I was was kind of hoping for a little more on that.

And the resolution is just like

not great it's it's really interesting playing this game and nintendo's whole thing now is like 4k 60 fps hdr and stuff like that and then you plug in this like what feels like a 2005 webcam and it's just fine that said uh it's really cool playing with like a kid and she knocks you out and you get to look directly at the camera and make some horrible face and that's that's reflected on their screen so that's that's really cool and then you can see when like you're cutting somebody off

their icon pops up with their face in it.

It's a fun little novelty.

Other than that, there isn't really a ton to do with the camera at launch.

But we've been playing like that, and it's been fine.

Knockout Tour is great.

The Grand Prix stuff is awesome.

I think I'm a little, it's taking me a minute to sort of be like, OK, so you want to play on the candy ice cream level.

you're the stage actually starts with you driving there rather than doing laps.

So that's one of my like two in Grand Prix.

It does, but it doesn't have to in versus race.

But anyways, yeah, I think one of my one of my like sort of little gripes is I would like the option in Grand Prix to just play laps on those specific things.

Not a deal breaker for me right now, but just a cool thing to add down the line like this is this is what's interesting about this.

And Logan, you know this better than anyone because you had to review the product that exists today.

But

This will, without a doubt, get a ton of content updates and quality of life changes and all this other stuff.

But like right now, as it is, it's just sort of like there's some things that are a little like, huh, that's interesting.

Like early on, we had to sort of tell each other at IGN, like if you want to unlock a bunch of costumes, I know you want to play as cow and you're excited, but don't because cow doesn't have any costumes.

So you have to play as other characters and then you'll be able to unlock

their their skins or their costumes or whatever and the way those are organized we you know we

You can sort them, so you can be like, here's all the Marios you've unlocked next to all the Luigi's.

But it's not exactly clear who gets costumes and who doesn't.

Or how many they have.

Or how many they have, right?

Pauline has her base costume, and then there's a secondary one.

And then there's Koopa Troopa who, yeah, and that's it.

And I would file Koopa Troopa next to Cow and Goomba and some other ones.

How dare you?

okay he's an og so i'll give you that but so i think that like anybody who's part of like the core cast of mario characters has one or more costumes whereas like there are others that you know um are they've been recognizable to mario fans forever but they don't get anything and so it's not exactly clear on that until you go into the open world map and then hover over a character and see how many question marks are next to them so a couple little things like that where i'm just kind of like oh that's that's you know that's kind of annoying but when you're actually racing

This is fantastic.

It's everything I loved about Mario Kart 8 plus more.

The new trick system is just nuts.

It took me a minute to figure out how to wall ride and all that.

But once you start chaining all those things together, it's so much fun.

It's so beautiful.

It's so frantic and chaotic.

I love little things like the Kamek thing coming by and changing you into one of the local animals

lives by one of the Mario creatures that are indigenous to the specific area you're, you're killing people on in the moment.

So all that is, all that is great.

The open world stuff is where I'm like, I get it.

It's fun.

I'm a little less hot on it.

And this is somebody who played like 170 hours of Forza, right?

Like, I think it's like,

i wanna i want a little bit more to do there i'm not necessarily entirely clear why i should get all the peach coins right now i get excited when i see one and i want them but like i what is what is this sort of reward for for getting those right like it's i know that there's to put on your car brian isn't that all like shouldn't that be enough for you like you know this cool sticker that goes on a random spot in your car that you can't even choose where it goes it just goes on the spot depending on the cart you choose

it's it's us it's uh historically the thing that people love most about stickers is that you get one at a time and then you have to choose it and when you're done with it you peel it off and add a different one right that's what look at anybody look at anybody's car that has a bunch of stickers on it that's just one sticker right everybody like

You know, that's what it feels like.

And it's like I feel like I'm being nitpicky because like ultimately I'm where Logan is on this game.

I think it is great.

So when you're in the comments being like, they're so negative this week, I just want to let you know, I think this game is great.

It's awesome.

There's there's a bunch of little things that are mildly annoying.

But like the goal being collecting stickers and that sticker being like one sticker that basically represents your your menu screen.

and then appears on your cart or motorcycle in some form is interesting.

I think I just wanted more reward for the open world.

Nintendo's usually really good about that in their open world games.

So I'm hoping more of that is coming.

But the tracks that are here are awesome.

Unlocking the Rainbow Road Cup, the Star Cup, I think it's called.

Oh my gosh.

The Special Cup.

Yeah, I was playing it with my kid, and she was like, I think I like the Mario Kart 8 Rainbow Road better than this.

And then the track kept going, and she was like, no, this is the best one.

And I was like, yeah, I'm with you.

At first, I was like, well, OK, it just got started.

Let's see what happens.

And then it kept going, and it was like, this is fantastic.

So yeah, there's a ton to love there.

I love the way the game controls and plays.

I can't wait to see what they add to it.

Well, that's also just a really good point, too, even apart from Rainbow Road, is that the level design is phenomenal.

Like, it is kind of disappointing that you spend so much time on the highways because the tracks are so well designed, and with these new wall riding and jumping and all these sort of tricks you have now, they're also really intricate, and people are finding...

shortcuts that do not look like typical Mario shortcuts.

It's not just a hole in the wall that you turn right to go into earlier.

It's like a rail that leads to a wall that leads to a jump that leads to a different rail and that will get you ahead.

That'll that'll cut off a turn.

And that's so cool that they have this system that has given them the freedom to create a way more intricate levels that are also still really, really gorgeous.

Yeah, for sure.

I've been having a good time with it.

I've probably spent more time open world exploring than you guys.

Just because I just wasn't in the mood to race.

It was like late at night when I was playing.

And I did like two cups.

I was like, let me just go around and explore.

And it's, I do like some of the puzzle element of it of like, how do I get up on top of this building?

I see something up on top of this building, go into like,

photo mode, and then kind of pan the camera around to look at the different spots.

And like, oh, okay, there's a ramp over here.

How do I get to this?

I think I can wall jump off, you know, if I wall ride, and they can jump off of that.

So I do like that.

Yeah, I think they did a really good job of the pathing.

Again, like, but to Brian's point, I think the rewards are very lackluster.

I think, you know,

would be nice if we had the system for mario kart 8 where you got the different wheels and you know body type things like where you could adjust on the carts more um you know to change kind of the stats in the cars and those type of rewards were hidden out in the world that would be very encouraging to a lot of people like oh i want to get you know this glider to go on this car or i want to get

you know, these special wheels to go on this cart, I got to go out and find this piece switch, or I got to go find this question mark, or I got to go find 20 peach coins to unlock this thing.

I think they could have done a really cool lot of really cool stuff with it.

But overall, I'm enjoying my time with Mario Kart.

I still have only finished two of the what eight cups that are there.

Just because I'm not the hugest Mario Kart fan, I do enjoy playing it.

But

playing it solo is just kind of, I don't know, boring to me.

I'm just not, I do not enjoy racing against just random NPCs for cups anymore.

Like I, that's something I've just kind of grown out of in time.

Um, but I like,

is the next time I have a get together with friends and stuff like that and family like best believe that's going to be like pulled out and we're going to be playing that for hours and hours on end because I like the thing is I just like seeing my friends and family's expressions when I hit them with shells.

We could do that now with camera play.

So yeah, you can look at them.

No, we look away from the screen.

We did a thing at IGN Live, which, Jada, you were on the stage hyping up the audience the whole time.

So they didn't let you go out and play very often.

But Logan and I did it where it was called Gaming with IGN.

And they put two couches and in the middle, a throne.

and um we all played mario kart world on 150 cc and that was my first time playing it at 150 cc and i realized like i had i got my switch launch night and then it basically sat in my hotel room i was just so busy with stuff it just i was like this will be my treat when i get home and

Playing with fans and just total strangers coming in and sitting down for the first time is some of the most fun I've had playing a video game locally since college.

It was an absolute blast.

And our system of, and I suggest you do this at home, even if you don't have a throne, get a little cheap crown or something.

Whoever's in first place gets to wear the crown like they do in the game.

And then when you lose, you have to take the crown off and give it to somebody else.

And I was on a hot streak.

I had like three or four games in a row.

And a couple of fans showed up.

And they basically looked me in the eye being like, I'm taking you down.

And they did.

And it was like, that was awesome.

That was awesome.

So I do hope you get to get some local multiplayer.

Because that's really, I think, where that game really shines.

No, totally.

I do want to point out.

I do want to point out, and then you close this out, Logan, but a lot of our staff dominated most of the people who showed up for iGym Live.

I know Logan didn't move off that throne very often.

So much so, there's a social video that we cut or whatnot, and people are like, what place are you going to get first place?

And it's like 24th place, but they finished.

So we dominated.

anybody out there i i was defeated by an actual child so to counter that it's checks and balances you know yeah we're not all we're not all perfect freaky good at games like they just figure it out really really fast now i yeah i had a ton of fun playing with fans also so if you're listening and you stopped by at gaming with ign at ign live thanks for coming by it was great to meet so many of you that listened to the show and liked the show like we really love that feedback and it was just great so so thanks for coming out that was a ton of fun but

i just want to talk a little bit about what i love about the game a little bit more because we were kind of in the weeds there for a tiny bit but this was one of the hardest games to score for me that i've written a review for because there's moments where this is a 9 out of 10. there's moments where this is a 10 out of 10. i think rainbow road is the best mario kart track of all time in in mario kart world i think it is so phenomenal and so cinematic and epic and and there's certain moments in there that i just love and i'll never forget the first time i did it

And I think that local multiplayer is where it shines.

And it was just a really fascinating review period because I'm reviewing this game at IGN Live on a huge TV in the front of the room.

And people like Jada or Mitchell Saltzman are coming over and playing with me, sitting down, doing a Grand Prix.

And that's just so much fun.

And even in those sections, when playing in multiplayer, the straightaway sections in between the tracks, which I'm not super hot on, I like them.

I think they're fun and it's cool they tried something different.

And on just a basic zoom out level,

think the world that they created in mario kart world is incredibly impressive that there are tracks that to me live up to the quality of standalone mario kart tracks from previous games but there are multiple entrances in and out of them depending on which direction you're coming from and that it's all seamless i think that's incredible i think thinking about it is more impressive and incredible than sometimes actually playing in it when you're

driving on this really long interstate to get to the next track.

And the tracks are still the strong point.

And so that's where I'm just a little bit mixed on the straightaways.

But in local multiplayer, it's fun because you're throwing shells at each other and you can really try and snipe through your sight lines with the green shell when you have this really long stretch of road.

So it's more item focused in that way.

It's different than Mario Kart 8, which has a lot of very difficult technical twists and turns tracks.

But I think the tracks in Mario Kart World Rule, Great Question Block Ruins is one of my favorites in the series now.

It's this golden temple in the sky.

You're doing these U-turns around clouds and bouncing off and tricking.

There's some crazy shortcut potential in that track that's really cool.

I've seen some busted time trial ghost of people breaking these tracks, and I've been trying to break them myself, inspired by some of the stuff I'm seeing.

So yeah, I think the game overall is a total blast.

I think it is a really fun launch game.

It's great to have a new Mario Kart for the first time in 10 years.

and it's great i just think that 200 cc here would have been huge i think that those more kind of linear sections that can get a little slow and boring sometimes if you could just rip through those on 200 cc man it feels like it's made for that so yeah if this game becomes a platform with free content updates maybe some paid ones i know people don't want to hear that right now because this game already cost 80 and that's totally fair

But if this game gets supported over this generation, I think it could eventually become the best Mario Kart ever.

I think that the bones are so strong in this game and it feels so great to control and like it gets the most important things right in how it feels and how it looks and how it is to play in a room with people.

And that's what Mario Kart is about.

So I love this game.

I just think that it's a little rough around the edges in some places, and I'm excited to see how it kind of grows over the next several years.

Yeah, it's it's it's so much fun.

It's it's new Mario Kart and that just feels so great.

Yeah.

Well, we have to take a quick break.

We're going to come back and talk more Mario Kart World.

We have to say bye to Tom and Brian now, and we're going to get Seth and Reb in here.

So don't go away.

NVC will be right back.

We're back on Nintendo Voice Chat.

Logan Plant alongside Jada Griffin.

And unfortunately, Reb Valentine had some technical difficulties this week, but we are joined by Seth Macy.

Hey, Seth.

I thought you were going to say, but unfortunately, we're joined by Seth Macy, and my heart skipped a beat right there.

Oh, never.

I would never say that.

Yeah.

We got enough of you last weekend, Seth.

I did.

Yeah.

It was a ton of fun.

And yeah, I miss you all.

I miss everybody.

It was so much fun seeing everyone in person.

Same.

We're going to talk more Switch 2 here.

I want to get Seth's general impressions of the hardware in just a minute.

But we were just talking about Mario Kart World, so let's pick it up there.

Seth, you were just saying you were playing with your family last night.

What did you all think?

Oh, we loved it.

We had an absolute blast.

We played a bunch of battle mode.

Oh, like balloon battle?

Balloon battle and coin... What is it?

Coin ravage mode.

Coin runners, yes!

We only played like one or two coin...

Coin ravagers, yeah.

Just ravage all the coins.

I had the biggest stack of coins at the end, so I won.

That's kind of how it goes.

Same holds true for life, kids.

Pay attention.

Yeah, and then we played Knockout.

uh, tour, which was, that was the, the, that was the one, um, crazy how we would, you know, my wife was in like 24th place at one point and I was in like 16th place and my son was in nine.

And then it, I was first, uh, he was second and then she was third by the end of it.

Like, and it, it came down to the wire.

And I don't know if there's some,

ai sort of rubber banding going on there but like it didn't look like we were all going to finish at the last uh checkpoint and then we did and it was yeah it's so fun and then when we got done my son said we need to do this again and i was like yes yes we do so pretty far knockout tour

It totally nails just that.

It is nail biting.

Like it is stressful when you're coming to the line and it does a lot of things to kind of ramp up the pressure.

The music changes, it gets more tense.

It starts to transition into the next stage of the knockout tour.

And then that rainbow gradient starts to kind of crowd inside of the screen.

And you know that you're getting close and,

yeah i've had several knockout tours where i have snagged the last spot to qualify of the group and it just feels amazing like yeah there's there's a clip in my review i throw a red shell behind me and it and it hits someone that was gonna like get the slipstream off of me and keeps them from stealing my spot like it is it's so much fun they they just nailed that so much how about grand prix seth have you played any of the the other tracks or modes at all

Yeah, I started just grinding through, trying to do what I do.

I go through all the 50s and get three stars, and I go through all the 100s and get... And surprisingly, to me at least, was that I did not get all three stars on the 50cc cup first try, which was not only surprising, devastating.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it did some of the things that I'm used to seeing more in the 150cc were like last minute blue shell kind of stuff.

So only on a couple of them, whatever, I'll knock them out again.

Are you going through them all individually?

Like you're doing them all on 50, then all on 150?

Yeah, that's how I do it.

That's how I roll.

That's how I've always done it.

Gotcha.

I mean, I, I just can't be bothered to go through all of them three times on the lower speeds.

Like, it's just.

I don't know.

Yeah, 150 is it for me?

Well, not everyone is a platinum grade Nintendo player like you.

Some of us.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

And like, I'm not I'm not saying that to shade.

I thought I'm just saying.

No, it's OK. You can.

I like I don't I get it.

Like, you're really good.

We played a bunch of we played a couple of races.

You're you did pretty good.

You did pretty good.

All right.

You're you're up there.

Room for improvement.

That's all of us, especially playing against Logan.

Mario Kart has been like my life the last week because of the review.

I've played over 35 hours of it, and I still am just excited to keep playing and figuring out all of its intricacies and all of its shortcuts and mechanics.

But I do agree, Seth.

I think the CPUs on hard are a little bit of a step up than they were in Mario Kart 8.

It's possible.

I'm just not as good at this game yet as I am at Mario Kart 8 because I had 10 years to play that game.

But no, there's times in the later Grand Prix where there's a computer up there with you.

And that is not always the case in Mario Kart.

So I appreciated that about it.

And I think that's cool.

I also wanted to share that.

So there's the like the guardrails on the

highway sections on the road to the next course.

And my brain is just so on Mario Kart right now that yesterday I was driving a real car on the highway and we passed one of those guard rails.

And the instinct in my brain was just to like start charging up to jump onto that rail.

I'm like, wait, no, this is real life right now.

This is not Mario Kart, but it's been all I've been thinking about.

And I'm just very excited to keep playing more online and everything and figure it out.

Free roam, Seth, have you tried that out at all?

I have not tried free roam.

I have been busying myself with sort of just like chipping away at the, you know, not easy, but more easily definable goals of Mario Kart world.

So no, I have not.

I'm looking forward to it, but not as much as I am just like traditional Mario Kart and, you know, and of course playing multiplayer.

With my family, one thing we found out last night when we were playing the battle mode was that it's best to keep the CPU on its easiest setting and not even turn it up one.

Because once we went from easy to normal, then we were battling the CPU and we turned it to easy and we were battling each other.

So that was just way more fun.

So that's my tip to you guys.

That's my pro tip.

Yeah, battle mode is totally fine.

It's a step down from what we got in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with the five modes.

Yes, I agree.

But it's a step up from Mario Kart 8's pretty unacceptable battle mode, which was just so barebones and terrible.

Like, this one falls somewhere in the middle.

Yeah, it's not a huge standout, but it's fun to me.

It's the first thing you brought up because people just always forget and overlook battle mode.

So I'm glad it got brought up on the show.

I wanted to share with free roam just for a second because I haven't really said my piece on it.

I think it's good.

I think free roam is fun and perfectly fine to roam around.

But like I said in my final preview, it just became clear pretty quickly that it's kind of like a side mode.

This is not the main course of Mario Kart World, which is fine because the racing is really, really good.

Yeah, it's just like, P-Switch has pretty much always come down to drive through the rings.

Sometimes you're tricking, sometimes you're in water, sometimes you're gliding, sometimes you're wall riding, but pretty much most, it's grab blue coins, go through the rings, win this race, get to point A to point B, and I just think that

there's like five or six templates and then you just see recycled versions of those templates hundreds of times i'm at like 180-ish pieces so far i think there's about 400 in the game and yeah i don't think i'm going for more and partially that's because the tracking of them is just

non-existent, unless you use the IGN guide, which you should.

We have people working to track the piece, which is there's just no way to know where you have regions still to explore, where you're done.

The map is so bare bones, it doesn't even mark off the ones you've completed like every other open world game does for any activity.

It just drops you in.

There could be 30 more over there.

You don't know.

that stuff to me kind of points and the sticker stuff we were talking about earlier that's the only unlockable that shows to me nintendo also views this as a side mode this is meant to be jump in for five minutes before you jump into the races this is is not the huge main draw i think if i was like a kid on summer break i said this in my review this would be the best thing in the world i think it would just be so incredible to spend all summer just driving around a fully realized mario kart world i used to love just driving around in time trials to explore the tracks and it's good for that just kind of poking around and seeing

little details you can't catch while you're racing at 150 cc but yeah in the end it's just like it's not the main draw it is very seven out of ten to me when it's in free roam it's fine it's good it's decent but it's not like mario kart needed to be open world i don't feel that way

after playing this game.

I don't feel like Mario Kart needed to do it.

It's like, right now, Nintendo is on this.

If it has more freedom, then it's more fun.

That's kind of what I'm getting from them recently.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, obviously the Zelda started this trend, but it's just not always true.

I don't think that more freedom always means it's a better game, and that's kind of where I think Mario Kart World tries to go.

I think the world is really impressive, like we talked about earlier, but I just like the tracks.

I love the tracks so much, and that's still where it's at its strongest.

Either of you, anything else on Mario Kart before we move on?

Fire Emblem Free Realm.

Fire Emblem Free Realm, sure.

Yeah, you can battle anywhere.

Yeah, but it's a great game.

Mario Kart World is super fun, and I know I'm going to play hundreds of hours of this game throughout this console generation, and I'm excited to see it grow over the next few years.

But Seth, Switch 2, it's in your hands.

You have it.

Just talk to me about your thoughts on the hardware.

Feels great.

I mean, it feels amazing, actually.

The magnets are wonderful.

I love the way it feels when you release the Joy-Con.

That little button, it just feels perfect.

It doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart.

The problem with the rails, and I never had this, actually, but it always felt like on this Switch one, it just felt like maybe these are going to break.

They might kind of snap off or bend.

Yeah, and they do.

They kind of move.

It's the modern...

equivalent of the sort of like 3ds hinge like it feels like that on the on the joy-con on the switch one on switch two nothing like that whatsoever everything feels phenomenal um i definitely don't like this is such a dumb nitpick

the door on the back of the dock is the same i wish it had a hinge and didn't just fall off when you popped it open um i mean i know i don't know why they did it like that but that was the thing i didn't like about the oled was that i would always fall off and i'd be like god dang it man stupid tiny little nitpick

The screen looks great.

I haven't played handheld.

I didn't play handheld at all.

The only time I was using it in handheld was when I did System Transfer, which, oh, by the way, I didn't put it in the show notes, but I want to talk about System Transfer at some point.

Go for it.

Yeah.

It's got to be that kind of show, folks.

Okay, well, I was very pleased, not even pleased, I was completely surprised to see, and maybe I'm mistaken here, but every game I've ever played on the Nintendo Switch cartridge and digital was downloaded, or attempted to be downloaded to my Nintendo Switch 2.

So, wait.

I don't understand, you know, like I own Bayonet.

I own, I think, 40 games on cart.

And those all appeared.

And not like their save files, but the games.

So that was a welcome surprise.

I think that has something to do with like the virtual cart system.

I don't know.

They just tried to dump every license you have in some way in there.

Yeah, it's kind of, it's weird how it happens.

Yeah, because I went to apply the switch to upgrade to Breath of the Wild.

And it was like, you're out of room.

I'm like, you're out of line, buddy, because there's no way I am.

And then I saw like, oh, no, it's just every game I've ever played is on here now.

And I cleaned those off.

And then it just started downloading.

You know, it was at the bottom.

sort of tier not bottom tier as far as like gameplay but just like size so every like yeah every minute like a new indie game was like finished downloading finished downloading so that was a huge surprise a welcome surprise um one i definitely didn't expect and one that i i still don't know if i'm right about it like i don't believe that they would have done something like that that just doesn't seem like something video game companies do give you access to games digitally that you bought physically

Let me know in the comments down below.

Yeah, well, it's not installing those games that you have on carts, right?

It's just they're showing up on the home menu, and you'll still need the cartridge to actually launch it.

But they're showing up as the full-size games on there.

So I don't know.

I think I'm probably mistaken, because that seems too amazing and wonderful to be true.

But yeah, it just downloaded everything.

I don't think that's quite true.

Okay, well then I'm spreading whatever.

It's uninformation.

So I apologize to our listeners.

I didn't even bother with system transfer just because I'd seen some reports like what you're saying is that it just downloads everything that you ever bought and I didn't want that.

I wanted to kind of curate everything I wanted to bring over and so I just started fresh and I just went to the eShop and manually downloaded stuff because yeah, I didn't need like

Snipper clips and all this stuff from 2017 that I'm not going to play again to just pop up on my Switch.

Jada, did you opt for the transfer route or what did you end up doing?

I did do a transfer or whatnot.

Thankfully, my Switch library is smaller than my other consoles.

I think probably around 30, 40 games like Seth.

No, no, no.

I own 30 to 40 physical games.

I want everyone to be clear.

I probably own 200 games on that damn thing.

Yeah.

So my library on my switch is probably smaller, so I only like 30, 40 games to download.

I did run out of space, though, even with those 30 to 40 games.

So I had to go out and buy a little 256 gig SD card because that was the only thing I could find like this weekend easily and get in time that I wanted it to download other stuff to play.

But yeah, it was it was pretty, you know, painless to get through the transfer.

I do wish that it wasn't the system transfer thing wasn't limited to just like one time without reformatting the system because I had multiple systems.

And I felt like the one that I used wasn't the optimal one to use.

Because I had like profiles on my

base 2017 model for all the different regions.

Just for just viewing stuff in the past, and I only had only ever transferred one of them to the my newer like Zelda switch.

And so only that one came over.

So I have to like off to go find those ones and look up their information for whatever their passwords and stuff to log into them.

And I just don't want to.

So those are probably just going to be

sitting in the nintendo servers until they decided to delete them for inactivity after however long they do that if they ever do that this is like a very niche problem it's not a real complaint it's just something kind of funny that happened over the last week because of of the situation when this console came out since we were all staying at a hotel in la when like brian and i got our switch twos and we we tried to with the new virtual game card thing you can link up to two consoles with each other that can pass those virtual cards back and forth but

But the consoles need to be physically next to each other to kind of make this link.

My Switch, yeah, they do.

They need to kiss and be friends.

And my Switch and Switch Lite, which were linked, were both here at home.

And so my Switch 2 was locked out of all my digital purchases for the first week, which was fine because I was just playing Mario Kart World and nothing else.

But yeah, it's kind of interesting that you need to have them all together to kind of link them up permanently.

But it's really easy to do that once I got home and actually had them all in place.

So yeah, it works.

Now my Switch Lite and my Switch 2 are the ones that are...

connected, and I've retired my OLED.

That one doesn't have anything on it anymore.

And speaking of, I think the Switch 2 screen looks really nice.

It isn't OLED, but it's way better than the Switch 1 screen.

It is way more vibrant and colorful, and the resolution bump helps a ton.

So yeah, I super love the screen.

I've played a ton of Mario Kart in handheld and haven't had any problems with the screen going from OLED to this.

So super happy with that.

little concerned about the battery life i think that it's rough it's it's it drains really fast i played on my flight home from la and i it died before the flight was over playing mario kart world so yeah it's it's a little rough but it's a powerful system that's what comes with the territory

one of our uh social uh one of my buddies on our social team he played i think he did the same thing where he basically plays flight and he was flying to the east coast and he had enough battery life to clear all eight cups in mario kart and his battery died like as he finished that oh damn oh that's perfect that's cool