Hands on with Kirby Air Riders - Preview
One of the games that Nintendo had at their booth this year was Kirby Air Riders, a game which is the sequel to the 2003 GameCube release, Kirby Air Ride. Going into the show, I knew that if there was one game that I was not going to be to wowed by it would be this and I was right.
For those that don’t know, Kirby Air Riders is a racing game, but the catch is that you are always moving forward. If you have played Mario Kart 8 or Mario Kart World, it is like enabling the auto-accelerate feature in those games. You have control over your turning, but that is really it, or it was. This new game lets you boost, which can come in handy and of course as a Kirby game, absorbing abilities. What was available to play at PAX Australia was a tutorial, some races and then the City Trial mode, and of course as with these sorts of events, the demoist put the first tutorial up. It was telling me how to turn in a racing game, I made a joke and they quickly realised I did not need instructions, so I jumped into a race.
There were three tracks available to players of this build, one was a vibrant grassy field called Floria Fields, one was a track surrounded by water called Waveflow Waters and the final was set among the trees. The last one was Mount Amberfalls and was the one I really liked due to its Autumnal design. Sadly, I did not get to play on the water track, as I just ran out of time before I had to move on. The grassy field track was fun, there were a few tighter turns than I was expecting, which was good as it gave me a chance to test out the boost, and the boost turn. When you boost, just by pressing and holding B, your ride drops lower to the ground and you slow down, this charges the boost and when you let go, you shoot off. But, as you are holding the button down, if you turn, you turn sharp, which lets you get around some of those tighter turns, which is great for the third track. Of course, once you let go of B, you get that boost again and once I got into that groove, I was making real progress.
After my races against the CPU, it was time to move onto City Trial. This is the mode where you race around a giant map and collect as many icons as you can, before the timer counts down to zero. The map is called Skyah and as you race around it, you will discover various rides you can swap too, but again those icons to collect. These icons will do things like improve your defense, your attack, top speed and such. There are also grey icons, which remove some of those buffs, so you want to avoid those. While you are trying to get your icons, so are the other players, up to 8 locally via wireless or 16 online, or in our case 4 at PAX Australia. Once you have your icons and the time is up, you then get to pick one of a series of minigames, in order to battle it out to be the winner. Our map was Kirby Melee and it was just total chaos, there were enemies all around the place, other racers speeding around and a giant clock counting down at the top of the screen. Sadly, I was not victorious in my session, but that is ok, it was still fun enough.
This is where the game falls apart for me though, I dislike the auto acceleration, it just annoys me. Now I understand in races that you can wiggle the stick to spin and attack foes, but if you push forward on the stick, your ride actual pushes its nose down and you slow down. The game actively punishes you for pushing forward. I can understand why the game is keeping the auto acceleration feature, but I don’t agree with it. By the time the 15 minutes or so from the game was done, I felt like I was ok with what I had played, that nothing there made me think that the full game would offer up anything that I just had to try. There are times when I preview a game and I get real excited for the full release, this was just not one of those times.
Kirby Air Riders will release for Nintendo Switch 2 on November 20.
