While I would always love to see more racing titles on the Switch, I’ll admit that I think there’s pretty well a critical mass of lighter family-friendly ones on the system already. That isn’t to say that the racers at this level don’t have a place or aren’t terribly good, in fact some have surprised me to at least a moderate degree. That said, even in the more generic middle of the racing pack, it turns out there’s a fair amount of competition and there’s no guarantee of success.

Starting with what works, I’ll admit that while Mayhem didn’t make a great first impression on me, I did end up being fairly impressed with the level of skill it leaves room for people to demonstrate. I do wish that I wasn’t learning about how best to race in the game from the periodic hints that show while the next track is loading, but I suppose at least some care has been put into making the vehicular action more than the flat vanilla racing some games offer. You’ll be able to apply some technique to drift through turns, which then builds up a boost meter that you can opt to use later in bursts or even all at once. While it’s still a bit modest in its implementation, it’s nice to see the added effort!

In terms of the less thrilling side of things, I did find that the power-ups were uninspired and pretty generic. Granted, I have absolutely seen worse implementations, but outside of the more cutesy toy-ish looks of many of them there wasn’t anything to get very excited about, both visually and strategically. The other thing I wasn’t much of a fan of, though perhaps I could see some people liking it, is the game’s tireless commentator who feels more often like a desperate hype man trying to make pretty generic racing a little more thrilling by repeating a whole lot of phrases entirely too much. I suppose without him it could put the somewhat ordinary racing action front and center without distraction, but in the end I too often found him irritating and over-used.

Probably the best case scenario would be to enjoy this with your kids or other less game-savvy friends or family, though the performance and quality of play aren’t all that hot. Still, a little rivalry can help to spice up even more generic action, so in that context the game would probably feel its most exciting. Make no mistake, I have absolutely played far worse racing games on the system, but even in the pretty benign family-friendly racing space this struggles to place near the top of the mid-tier pack.