What is Kirby Air Riders? That’s the question I’ve found myself wrestling with throughout my time with it in the past couple of weeks. Is it a kart racer? Well… kind of. Is it a vehicular combat game? Sure, you could say that. Is it a multiplayer platform, designed almost completely to be played with others? Yes. Definitely. Yet there’s still a nagging feeling that Kirby Air Riders is one of those games that exists purely for its own reasons. As the first non-Smash Bros game to be directed by Masahiro Sakurai in over a decade, it carries an odd weight of expectation, only adding to the strange and slightly off-kilter vibes you’ll find when you check in for Kirby Air Riders.
Air Ride is the first pillar of Air Riders. This is racing, by way of Kirby and friends’ idiosyncratic flying, floating and grinding. It’s all largely controlled by the left analogue stick and a single button, with boosting and vacuuming up enemies forming your key abilities. Holding the button down starts a boost, with your racer slowing to a crawl before being unleashed when you release the button. Similarly, holding the button while turning initiates a drift, letting you angle your way around the corner, before launching yourself forward at the perfect moment. There is a sense of familiarity to this, part Mario Kart, part Sonic Racing, and as a basis for the game’s mechanics, it’s a good start.
You can then hoover up enemies and abilities from the track. This is your main offence, and there’s a real sense of fun to be had in sucking something up and spitting it at your nearest rival, letting you whizz past them. You can suck up fire, ice, poison or sleep abilities, as well as a host of others, aiming to use them to maximise your advantage. Aiming can be a little tricky at times, mostly because of the speed you and your target are usually moving at, and there’s not quite the surety you have in Mario Kart about how your attacks are going to pan out.
Still, the racing is fast, fun and frenetic, with a decent balance between the chaos of a kart racer and the fairness that you need to keep returning to it time and time again. It feels very different to its main rivals, and that uniqueness is probably its biggest selling point.
The second main mode is Top Ride. This takes the action and turns it into a top-down isometric experience, reminiscent of old-school racers like Super Offroad or its modern brethren Super Woden GP. This, of course, is all very Kirby though, and the small-scale courses look every bit as lovely as you’d expect with candy-coloured scenery and cute incidentals to careen around.
Top Ride is my favourite mode in Kirby Air Riders. It feels incredibly nostalgic, retaining that retro flavour of top-down racers of yesteryear, while boasting dazzling modern visuals. You can choose how many racers take part, though I’d recommend the maximum of eight, which gives you all of the competitive action you could want. Any less than that feels like a sidenote.
Playing in single player presents you with a cavalcade of task and rewards to make your time with Air Riders that bit more individual. There’s a large number of tasks to fulfil on each track – such as landing perfectly three times in one race, or being in the lead for longer than ten seconds – and you’ll unlock decals, machines, and riders as well as a host of other customisation options that let you tailor your vehicles and racer license to your own tastes.
Setting decals and messing with colour schemes and patterns is suitably user-friendly, and I can see people honing in on this mode to come up with some really unique and interesting designs.
City Trial is where things come a bit unstuck. Battle modes can be hit and miss in kart racers, and while City Trial presents some interesting ideas, it pumps the chaos up to 11. The camera also can’t quite keep up with the constantly accelerating action, and I found myself repeatedly dazzled by the hyperactive motion, often blinking sensation back into my eyes.
City Trial unleashes you in an arena where you spend your time whizzing around collecting power-ups, while trying not to lose them to your rivals. Once the timer runs out, you’re shown the number and type of power-ups you’ve acquired before then choosing a Stadium finale. You then take part in a minigame that, ideally, plays to your vehicles’ strengths.
Unfortunately, the balance between collecting power-ups and the Stadium finales feels badly paced. I often enjoyed just tootling around, nabbing power-ups while occasionally hitting other players, but it does feel like it goes on for too long, while some of the Stadium events then take all of 30 seconds to complete. It’s not without its charms – unlocking a bunch of new things each time you play definitely helps with that – and there’s the regular events that draw players toward a certain part of the map, but it’s just a bit too drawn out.
Road Trip pulls all of these things together into a journey mode. Along the way, you’ll take part in races, Stadium challenges, or fight bosses in the arena, with a story mode running through that gives you a glimpse into the lore behind Kirby Air Riders, continuing the perpetually perplexing decision to give Kirby a worryingly deep and dark backstory. The cutscenes look fantastic though, and Road Trip does a good job of feeding you events, unlocking rewards and keeping things moving along at a decent lick. I’d recommend playing on Hard, though; otherwise, it’s a little too friction-free.
Kirby Air Riders’ presentation is all very Smash Bros. The chunky menus are clear and easy to understand, and the upbeat soundtrack is head-boppingly cheerful, before it all gives way to chaos. However, just like Smash, in the right hands, Kirby Air Riders becomes more tactical, more skill-based, and the more time you spend with it, the more likely you are to be swept up by its unique charms. It doesn’t have the immediacy of Mario Kart, or the growing collection of recognisable characters from Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, but it’s undeniably charming.
