Kirby Air Riders Review
Kirby Air Riders
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer:
Genre:
PEGI:
Comments:
I’m always fairly open about games I don’t think I’ll have a lot of interest in, but I’ve always got my review partners by my side (my family). Even when I’m not necessarily super excited about something, generally others are, and that was the case for Kirby Air Riders. I understand the scope of the game and what is being provided to players, and I think it is incredibly impressive. But a racing game where you don’t have to accelerate? Pass. The I played Kirby Air Riders and, well, opinions have changed.
Based on the feedback from my wife and kids, Kirby Air Riders probably would have received a pretty solid score regardless of my opinions – that’s why I love having my built in review team, as they see things I don’t. But Kirby Air Riders hooked me in ways I wasn’t expecting. Perhaps it was all the unlockables, or the variety of modes that allowed me to shake things up. Whatever it was, I cannot put this game down!
Controlling your racers in Kirby Air Riders is going to be too simplistic for some, and while I got past it, I’m sure others won’t. That’s a shame because I would argue it actually is harder to teach this than standard racing games because of all the unique machines and how they work. More on that later. For me, it was exploring this colourful world and trying to unlock more and more as I went. Beautiful tracks, beautiful animations, beautiful music; it all came together hour after hour into something I wanted to play. It pulled me into that, “one more race” mentality that had me playing long after I planned to stop. Kirby Air Riders isn’t perfect, but the sheer amount of content makes up for the dips here and there.
Air Riders is packed with almost two dozen unique machines to ride and riders for those machines, all with their own special abilities they can unleash during a race. Paring characters to machines provided different combinations of stats, and it’s fun to tinker with combinations to get the one you really want to use. The machines are wildly different too, including one that only allows you to turn when you break. This isn’t like Mario Kart karts – these machines can be wildly different from each other both in looks, how they control, and what they offer you on the course.
It’s about how you tackle each track, though, that shows the depth of Kirby Air Riders gameplay. How you land after a jump is incredibly important. Knocking out enemies along the track not only gives you a speed burst, but also fills your special meter. So not only are you getting from A to B faster than everyone else, you are looking for opportune times to knock out an enemy or two as well. Yes, the game has simplicity in that you don’t have to accelerate your machine and everything is mapped to basically teen buttons; that said, there is depth here you won’t appreciate until you’ve given the game a proper go.
I keep harping on the depth of the gameplay and the variety of the modes, characters and machines for good reason. Too many people are going to brush this off, and they really shouldn’t.
When you get tired of standard racing you can try top down racing, which takes everything you know about the game and flips it into a Birds Eye view of the track. It’s a slightly different set of skills as you race around tracks, and while this isn’t something I enjoyed for long periods of time, coming into it after some intense races was a nice change of pace.
City Trial was the mode I wasn’t as sure about, but really enjoyed, even against bots. For a set time, players will race around an open city map leveling up their machines; when the timer ends, all players compete in a mini game and attempt to win. These games range from crushing opponents to drag racing to scoring points on a giant board by gliding through specific locations on said board. And there is even more we haven’t discussed here. There are CPU bots you can play against, but the real fun I believe will be going online with others! It’s worth noting here that Nintendo invited us to an online play session that we had to miss for a personal emergency. We will return after playing online to update our thoughts! Building your machine can feel a little random at times as you don’t have as much control over your vehicle as traditional racers, so sometimes what you pick up is a product of what happens in any given moment. It’s a bit random, sure, but still loads of fun.
How you build your racer might open up new areas of the map, so you’ll be exploring this mode for hours upon hours and still likely not see everything! There is one downside. I haven’t experienced online matchmaking yet, so perhaps it’s not an issue there, but in local multiplayer, you pick between 4 events/challenges and you’ll end up doing one of them. That means someone might build a vehicle about strength, only to end up in a challenge that requires speed. I believe online you can pick specifically what challenge you want to do, which alleviated this problem. We still had fun with it locally, but there are situations where your machine just can’t win the event you are in.
We’ve come this far and haven’t even touched on the game single player story, Road Trip. This was the least interesting part of the game for me, as I decided I would rather play the other modes; still, there is a good story here that takes about two hours to complete, as you move through micro challenges, upgrade your machine, and take on familiar foes. It’s a nice addition, though, just one that wasn’t for me.
Coming full circle, Kirby Air Riders seems like a simplistic experience that won’t carry the same excitement as something like Mario Kart, but that is just incorrect. There is so much to do here, even if you only play single player. We haven’t even touched on it all, but it has great difficult settings, customization of machines with in game currency, 750 achievements to unlock, and more. And the game has a fairly consistent 60 frames per second, even with multiple people on the same console. This makes for an incredibly smooth racing experience. We cannot recommend this game enough. It’s the Smash Bros of racing games! And yes, we (purposefully) avoided making that comparison until now, but if you are familiar with how Smash Bros looks and feels, you’ll be comfortable here!
A copy of Kirby Air Riders was provided to us by Nintendo of Canada for the purpose of this review.
Article By Adam
