At first blush, it might be tempting to peg Kirby Air Riders as kart racing at its most hyper. Indeed, the more party-oriented City Trial and Stadium modes can be overstimulating to the point of being indecipherable. But give the standard Air Rides a few spins, let the idiosyncratic controls sink in, and it becomes clear that Air Riders is plenty sophisticated. It’s just so fast that, until you’ve had some practice, its small nuances blow by without you even noticing. Hell, it may even be fast enough to give the last remaining F-Zero holdouts a rush.
Air Riders is still relatively forgiving in comparison to F-Zero and its many descendants, and the main reason for this is in its track design. Even at their most technical, these courses are prone to funneling you in the general direction of the finish line. Most turns are even hemmed in by protective walls (even if many of these are invisible). And the option to turn on vehicle destruction is tucked away in a menu for only the brave few to find. As if to make sure players are aware of its broader level design philosophy, one of the game’s massive collection of achievements asks you to finish one of its courses without pressing a single button. Playing well, however, unsurprisingly requires quite a bit more effort than this implies.
In large part, this is because of the numerous and varied machines (what Air Riders calls its vehicles) on offer. At their most basic level, these machines work in much the same way, with a single button employed for both braking and the game’s trademark slingshot-like drifting. They also tend to have somewhat floaty steering, as many literally don’t touch the ground, even when they aren’t flying. Flying itself is a very large component of the game, with vehicle stats showing up for both lift and flight speed, but some builds will rely on flying far more than others.
The basics, though, only tell a small part of the story. In fact, the game’s machines handle in radically different ways. There’s a ground-bound tank that turns on a dime without slowing down, a machine that’s a burner when driving straight ahead but effectively can’t turn without drifting, and a paper airplane that lifts off with shocking ease. Many are so strange that they come with bespoke tutorials informing you on the ins and outs of their various peculiarities.
Even once you’ve mastered a few machines, this is still a game that asks you to regularly execute modestly skillful maneuvers, or else you risk finishing not only in last place but in a completely uncompetitive rout. Unlike in Mario Kart, struggling players can’t count on items to help get them back into the thick of things. Mainly, your ability to hang near the front of the pack will come down to your ability to stay on your opponents’ tails in order to gather the clouds of stars they emit like fumes from a tailpipe. This grants a slowly building yet hefty speed boost, but these trails of stars will eventually dissipate if you fall too far behind.
You can also gain an edge by defeating the enemies that occasionally appear around the course with a quick spin attack, which will grant short bursts of momentum. And if you keep an eye out, there are always a few prime opportunities to leverage your build’s strengths to your advantage.
Balancing all of this while still trying to maintain the cleanest possible racing lines through hairpin turns at breakneck speeds is no small task. All of which is a bit of a warning not to fall into the trap of thinking that just because Air Riders features Kirby that it’s an easy game. Instead, it’s a good reminder that designer Sakurai Masahiro’s Super Smash Bros series isn’t only renowned for its immediate playability, but also for a sky-high ceiling of mastery that’s made for one of the richest competitive scenes in all of video games.
Kirby Air Riders seems unlikely to match quite this level of ubiquity, however, partly because it’s a bit less of an optimal party game than Mario Kart World. The vehicles are just a bit too weird, and the sheer pace of things is hard to grasp right away, even for those with extensive racing game experience. But it’s just these same elements that make Air Riders feel fresh, bold, and creative in a way that Mario Kart World doesn’t. It’s also why this second entry to the Kirby Air Rider series seems likely to enjoy the same cult classic status as the original.
This game was reviewed with a code provided by Golin.
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