Drag x Drive review: "I'm left craving Arms' sauce from Nintendo's twitchy yet shallow basketballer, which feels like a tech demo"

You know when I have my Drag x Drive jeans on – straight-legged, dark blue denim – that means three things: I'm ready to drag, I'm ready to drive, and I am ready to play some ball. This wheelchair basketball sports game developed by Nintendo is a showpiece for the Switch 2's online multiplayer and specifically its Joy-Con 2 mouse control scheme. I'm pleasantly surprised to report that dragging to drive works really well. But it's not enough to keep me competing for the long haul.

Back to my jeans (don't worry, this is only one of two reviews I'll do this year that focus on my trousers – check out the Horror Special 2025 for more). While you can drag the disconnected Joy-Con 2 controllers across any surface, one in each hand, I find legs preferable here. Mimicking pushing the tires of a wheelchair, swift and long motions low down suit Drag x Drive the best for me. And yes, like a long session playing PlayStation VR 2, you can get sore quickly getting up to speed in Drag x Drive. Despite being evidently inspired by wheelchair basketball, there's not really any accessibility controls at all – which feels like Nintendo pinging off the backboard.

And one

The way Drag x Drive has you push your wheelchair across the basketball courts and the surrounding roller derby-like arena is surprisingly intuitive. The further you push forward in one swipe with both hands, the faster you'll go. Shorter adjustments with either wheel then allow you to tweak your angle, with longer ones, naturally, having you whip right the way around. Simply pressing on the Joy-Con 2 triggers when they're flat against a surface will have you grab the wheel to brake, coming to a complete stop if you grab both, or twisting you – momentum intact – if you just grab only one, for tight cornering.

I'm less sold on the surfaceless inputs for Drag x Drive, which come into play with tricks and the like. Hold brake and lift, for instance, and you'll pop up onto a single wheel in one place, meaning you can avoid opponents stealing the ball as easily. Lift the other wheel right after, and you'll do a bunny hop, giving you extra height for shots towards the basketball net from a distance. Passing the ball, meanwhile, is oddly just a button press (both the L+R bumpers at once), while actually making a shot requires you to lift one arm up, flicking the ball to throw.

How do you aim? Don't worry about it. Drag x Drive is a game where precision sometimes matters a lot, and at other times doesn't matter at all. Shooting for points is a case of the latter. Your accuracy changes depending on where you're positioned near the net, with maximum accuracy achieved quite robotically by being within the box past the free-throw line quite close to the net. Simply flick at this point, and you're essentially guaranteed to pull off a basic two-pointer, even if you're facing with your back completely towards the net.

Three-pointers, as you might expect, come from getting the ball in from beyond the three-point half-circle line, though you'll only achieve maximum accuracy from dead-on center in my experience. Likewise, you can modify points by degrees of +0.1 or +0.2 by scoring while doing a trick, like a slam dunk. While all of this, from the micro-points to nailing three-pointers, can make the difference in a tight game, in practice it's way more likely you'll miss, meaning it feels the most optimal to just glide near-ish the opponent's net and flick away without needing to aim to keep the points flowing.

Stealing the ball and blocking shots, on the other hand, does require quite a bit of precision – which isn't a fantastic combination given how easy the basic points are to score. Steer into anyone and you'll give them a good knock that can slow them down, but the only way to actively steal the ball from an opponent at close-range is to whack them head-on. Simple enough as a concept, but given you're steering by dragging on a surface while opponents are also doing the same, movement arcs can get pretty wild, and it's hard to recover from over-shooting your mark.

Successfully steal and you'll actually just knock it back behind the opponent, meaning you or a teammate need to scramble across to get it. In my time playing, I was more likely to get the ball from just being between two opponents while they tried to pass, or by nabbing it after they fumble a shot because – this early into Drag x Drive being live – they're trying too hard to pull off higher-value scores. I hate to say it, but while mega restrictive in its own right, I sort of prefer the way basketball in even Wii Sports Resort handles the dynamic between shooting and defending.

Given matches are primarily 3v3, the action doesn't get too hard to follow, but the tightest games end up being players just quickly wheeling it from one side to the other to score near-guaranteed two-pointers with little effort. Trickier plays, while cool to witness and to pull off, often don't feel worth it. 2v2 is possible, but only when you're in a lobby without enough players for a full game – bots only fill in slots if players disconnect.

Though there's classes like defenders, being an all-rounder currently seems to be the best way to run rings around opponents. At this time, you need to be matchmade into lobbies called 'parks' in which the action happens in real-time (it's pretty neat to see players on the court off to the side in another match), there's no quick matchmaking. It can mean it can take a bit of time for a lobby to populate, but staying within the same pool of players for a while is a nice touch – giving sessions a sense of community.

Half time

Occasionally mini-games act as palette cleansers between matches, involving the entire lobby. Currently, these are just quick races, or a scramble to grab a ball that bounces down from the ceiling. Single-player challenges, from bot match face-offs of varying difficulty, to time trials, jump rope, and more, toe the line between serving as diversions and training. Some of these may hint at ways online minigames could expand in the future.

Perform well in things like challenges and you can unlock gear for your customizable character. Still, helmets are pretty limited, and the looks you can achieve are fairly weak beyond customizing characters. I don't see myself ditching the kitty ears anytime soon, especially with how bland the smooth, somewhat sci-fi aesthetic is.

Playing Drag x Drive has me constantly thinking about Arms, the underrated 3D fighter that launched just a few months after the Nintendo Switch. A boxing game where fighters had special powers, it was all about making the most of the original Joy-Cons motion controls. Both are essentially sports games designed to showcase their console's unique control features.

But compare Drag x Drive's fairly featureless, almost Toonami-like customizable characters with the sheer sauce on display with designs like Spring Man, Kid Cobra, or the truly iconic Twintelle and it's no contest. It doesn't help that Arms' fighting managed to carefully balance its control scheme with tactical plays that packed a punch. In our Arms review, we absolutely loved it, especially how it's "bursting with character, color, and detail". In this regard, Drag x Drive drops the ball.

Drag x Drive feels precise when you're wheeling about, but the rest of the match design is anything but. Steering across ramps and up half-pipes make for a fun tech demo, but flicking widely to score points just for being close is dull. My basketball career ends with me impressed at the hardware that's gone into the Joy-Con 2 mouse controls, but disappointed by Drag x Drive.

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