Nintendo Switch 2 — The Games Worth Checking Out

The Switch 2 has been out for just over a year, which means we're finally past the phase where every conversation about it was really a conversation about hardware specs. Nobody argues about whether it's powerful enough anymore. The question that actually matters now is the one people should have been asking all along: is there anything on it worth your evenings?

Short answer: yes, and more than I expected. But the library has a shape to it that's worth understanding before you spend, because a couple of the most-hyped purchases are the weakest and one of the best things on the system is a game most people skipped.

Here are the Nintendo Switch 2 best games a year in, sorted by who they're actually for.

What a year of hardware taught us

Quick context before the picks, because it affects what's worth buying.

The Switch 2's real achievement isn't raw power — it's that the gap between "handheld mode" and "docked mode" stopped being a compromise you had to think about. On the original Switch, playing a demanding game handheld frequently meant accepting a visibly worse experience. On this one, most things hold together well enough in either mode that you stop making the calculation.

The other genuine surprise has been third-party support. Publishers who treated the original Switch as an afterthought have actually shipped ports here, and the ports are mostly real rather than heavily butchered. That single change reshapes what the console is for.

1. Mario Kart World — the one that justified the purchase

For: Everyone. Genuinely everyone.

Let's get the obvious one out of the way. Mario Kart World was the launch title, it was the system seller, and it's still the game I've put the most hours into.

What makes it more than a graphics bump over its predecessor is the structural change: the tracks connect. Instead of a menu of isolated circuits, there's a continuous world you drive between, and that turns the space between races into part of the game. It sounds like a minor framing change. In practice it means you spend real time in an open environment that's full of things to find, and the racing becomes a destination rather than the entire product.

The knock against it — and I think it's fair — is that the open-world layer is thinner than it initially appears. Once you've explored, the loop settles back into "very good Mario Kart." That's still very good Mario Kart, which nobody has ever managed to make badly.

2. Donkey Kong Bananza — the best first-party game on the system

For: Anyone who wants a proper single-player platformer.

This is my actual pick for the best game on Switch 2, and I don't think it gets enough credit because it launched a month after the console when everyone was still playing Mario Kart.

The hook is destruction. Almost all the terrain can be smashed, tunneled through, or torn apart, and the game is built around that rather than treating it as a gimmick layer. You can solve traversal problems by digging straight down through a level. You can find secrets by breaking a wall that a normal platformer would treat as scenery. It fundamentally changes what a level means — a space you excavate rather than a path you follow.

It's also the game that best demonstrates why the hardware upgrade mattered. That volume of simultaneous physics simulation genuinely wasn't possible on the original Switch. This is the first-party title that couldn't have existed before.

3. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — worth the eighteen-year wait

For: Players who want atmosphere and isolation over spectacle.

A game announced in 2017, restarted from scratch in 2019, and finally released at the end of 2025 had every reason to be a disappointment. It isn't.

What Prime has always done better than anything else is loneliness. You're alone on a hostile world, the environment is the antagonist as much as anything shooting at you, and progress comes from understanding a place rather than clearing it. Beyond keeps that intact while giving the exploration more room to breathe.

I'll flag one thing honestly: the pacing is deliberate to the point of slow, particularly in the opening hours. If your reference point for a first-person game is something that hands you a weapon in the first ninety seconds, this will feel glacial. That's the series working as intended, but it's a real filter.

4. Split Fiction — the best co-op game on any platform right now

For: Two people who want to play something together. That's the whole audience and it's a big one.

This launched on Switch 2 alongside other platforms and it's a genuine highlight. It's a two-player-only co-op adventure that constantly changes what kind of game it is — every chapter introduces mechanics it uses once and discards, which sounds wasteful and is actually why it never gets boring.

The reason it belongs on a Switch 2 list specifically: this is a console people hand a controller to someone with. The friend pass system means one purchase covers both players, which removes the single biggest barrier to co-op games actually getting played.

If you have a partner, sibling, or friend who plays games occasionally, this is the best possible use of a weekend.

5. Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition — the "wait, really?" port

For: Anyone who wants to see what the hardware can actually do.

This one earns its place partly on merit and partly as a statement. A dense, demanding open-world game running properly on a handheld would have been a fantasy two years ago, and here it is, playable on a train.

Is it the best version of the game? Obviously not. If you have a capable PC, play it there. But the value here is different: it's a game you can put hundreds of hours into, in bed, in a hotel, on a commute, and it's the complete package with all its post-launch content included.

It also set the precedent that made every other third-party port this year possible, which might end up being its most important contribution.

6. Civilization VII — the console that finally suits it

For: Strategy players who want "one more turn" in bed.

Hear me out on this one, because it's my personal most-played and I know it's an odd inclusion on a Nintendo list.

Turn-based strategy has always been a genre that suffers on console, because the interface assumes a mouse. What it gains on a handheld is more valuable than what it loses: the ability to play in fifteen-minute increments, anywhere, without committing to sitting at a desk. The "one more turn" compulsion is dramatically more dangerous when the machine is portable.

The touchscreen genuinely helps here — it recovers most of the precision a mouse provides, and the console version's interface was built with that in mind rather than being a controller port with cursor emulation bolted on.

If strategy games are your thing generally, my roundup of the best space strategy games covers the deeper end of that pool, though most of those are PC-only.

7. Kirby Air Riders — the surprise

For: Local multiplayer, and people who want something genuinely strange.

A sequel nobody expected to a 2003 GameCube game, directed by the same person, arriving twenty-two years later. On paper this is the definition of a niche curiosity.

It's excellent. The core idea — a racing game where you don't control acceleration, only steering and braking — is as counterintuitive now as it was then, and it produces a skill curve unlike anything else. Everyone's fast, so the entire game becomes about lines, timing, and reading the track.

It's best with four people in a room, which makes it a specifically Nintendo kind of purchase. If you play alone exclusively, it's a harder sell.

8. Deltarune — the one people skipped

For: Anyone who values writing over production values.

This is my "please don't overlook this" pick. It's small, it's odd, it looks like nothing next to the games above, and the writing is better than everything else on this list combined.

It's a turn-based RPG where combat can usually be resolved without violence, the humor lands consistently, and the tonal shifts genuinely surprise you. If you played the developer's previous game, you know what you're in for. If you didn't, the pitch is: it's a game that respects your intelligence and has an actual authorial voice.

It'll cost you a fraction of what anything else here does and it'll stay with you longer.

The one I'd skip

I said I'd name it. Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour — the paid hardware demonstration — should not have been a paid product.

It's a tech showcase that walks you through what the console can do, and as a free pack-in it would have been a genuinely nice touch. Charging for it turned a goodwill gesture into a minor scandal, and it soured a lot of people's first day with the machine. It's not offensively expensive. It's just the wrong decision, and I'd rather you spend that money on Deltarune.

What's actually missing from the library

Being honest about the gaps, because a list of good games isn't a complete picture.

• Competitive online shooters. Still thin. If that's your main genre, this isn't your primary machine.
• The really demanding recent PC releases. Ports have been better than expected, but there's a ceiling and it's real.
• A flagship 3D Mario. Notably absent a year in. Its arrival will be the console's real second wind.

None of these are damning. The Switch 2's identity was never "plays everything" — it's "plays a specific set of things extremely well, anywhere." Judged on that, year one has been strong.

If you're buying the console this year

Two practical notes to finish.

First, the games hold their price. Nintendo first-party titles famously don't discount the way other publishers' do, so waiting for a sale on Mario Kart World is a losing strategy. If you want it, buy it — a year of waiting will save you very little.

Second, budget for a decent microSD Express card up front. The internal storage is workable for a handful of games and genuinely tight beyond that, and running out of space mid-download is a bad first impression of an otherwise excellent machine.

If you're also weighing a PC purchase this year, my 2026 build guide covers where that money goes furthest — and honestly, for a lot of people, a Switch 2 plus a modest PC covers more ground than one expensive machine.