Kirby Air Riders for the Nintendo Switch 2 has forced me to admit something I am not proud of: I am terrible at this game. Typically, I feel like I’m pretty good at jumping right into a game and figuring out the basics. But there isn’t really anything basic about Kirby Air Riders. The only other game I could properly compare it to is… Kirby Air Ride, and I haven’t played that game in 18 years, so I haven’t got much muscle memory. It’s part racer, part mini-games compilation, part collect-a-thon, part open-world-cart-combat. It’s nothing like Mario Kart or any other racer you’ve ever played. There aren’t really any other games that scratch the same itches Kirby Air Riders or its predecessor does.
I actually got a pretty unique chance to play Kirby Air Riders with some Nintendo Canada employees. During the hour-long session, I got to engage with people who have had a ton of experience with the game over the last few months, as well as a few other journalists/creators. We got to see the online lobby, called the Paddock, where we could hang out between races. While in the Paddock, I got to run around with the other players and chill out on the couches while our Nintendo tour guide showed us the ropes. Even though I never met the people I was playing with, there was something about playing with a large group of people and chilling in this liminal online space that felt really nice and fun! Even the moments between gameplay were filled with silliness and catharsis, hard to find in video games nowadays. There’s a jukebox that allows you to change the soundtrack. What’s nice is that you can change the music that you want to hear, and it won’t impact the other players. You can also sit and watch a screen showing ongoing races in the lobby. You can also host a large group without actually playing yourself. The Paddock was simple in practice but actually quite dense with content, which, funnily enough, describes Kirby Air Riders as a whole.
The single-player campaign-type mode is called Road Trip. The way it works is you pick a character and a machine (vehicle) and slowly build your stats across various worlds. You ride down a road that consists of three lanes. Each time a round starts, you can pick which lane you want to go down based on what is also in that lane. Sometimes it’s a race, sometimes it’s a long jump mini-game, maybe it’s an all-out brawl, there’s always something new and interesting to do. Whenever you complete one of the challenges on the road, you gain overall stats that last throughout the campaign. The stats that you get consist of things like speed, weight, turning, gliding, defence, offence, and some others. Basically, the ultimate goal is to wind up with a machine that can do a little bit of everything. Or you can just build a super-fast machine that blows up in a single hit. You can really build whatever you want, which is a lot of fun and provides a lot of replayability. There are also a ton of machines that you can choose from. Some of them are big tanky vehicles that excel in combat, but maybe don’t do as well in races. There are also super-fast machines that can glide through the air for much longer. Or maybe you want to run one of the highly technical machines with high acceleration and turning stats for a high-speed, high-handling build.
My issue with Road Trip as an experience is that it’s sort of like watching football. The amount of downtime between the actual gameplay is basically the same as the amount of time you actually spend playing. Sometimes the drive to the next challenge takes longer than the actual challenge itself. Some of the mini-games are like eight seconds long, and I’m not exaggerating. The deeper you get into Road Trip, the bigger this issue gets. As you gain stats that raise your acceleration and overall speed, you finish each round faster than the previous one. While this mode is fun and works pretty well as a campaign, it’s got some kinks in it that seriously drain my desire to play it for a prolonged period.
Possibly the most talked about aspect of Kirby Air Riders is City Trial. If you’ve played the original, you know why people are so obsessed with City Trial. Playing one round of City Trial is probably enough to come to the conclusion if it’s for you or not. Personally, I’m leaning in the “not for me” direction. This is really tough for me because I played a ridiculous amount of City Trial in my youth. Basically, what happens in this mode is that you play in a large-ish city and its surrounding area. As you race around, you’ll find other machines you can hop on as well as many collectables and power-ups. Just like in the campaign, you’ll want to collect stats throughout the trial.
As the game goes on, various random events can occur. Sometimes a boss could appear, or a giant tower that needs to be destroyed will show up. You’ll also get hints that tell you about upcoming challenges you’ll have to face. What’s funny is that some of them will be truthful, while some of the hints will be lies. You can tell if a hint is lying if it contains a typo. But it can be hard to read the hint amongst all the chaos, so it’s pretty easy to miss a typo if you’re not careful. The hints are meant to tell you about the challenge ahead, so you’ll know what stat you should be focusing on. For instance, when I played with the Nintendo crew, there was a challenge meant for air-gliding. I was grossly unprepared and failed miserably, while the much more experienced Nintendo employee changed their game plan appropriately and absolutely destroyed the rest of us. Much like the rest of the game, City Trials works really well as a multiplayer mode but falls flat as a solo experience.
The thing that I love most about Kirby Air Riders is just how much there is to unlock. The feeling of progression is the game’s strongest aspect, in my eyes. There are over 750 achievements to unlock as you play. The first one you get is earned by just opening the game for the first time. As you earn achievements, you’ll also earn machine customization parts, characters, maps, machines, stickers, songs, and so much more. It feels like you are constantly getting an achievement or two after each race or challenge, so you’re constantly unlocking something. There are nearly a couple of dozen playable characters you can unlock, too, and each of them has various palette swaps. You can also buy headwear that can be used by all characters. I haven’t had this much dopamine through constant progression since Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which is fitting because Masahiro Sakurai is behind both games. His DNA is all over Kirby Air Riders, and his passion is felt immensely.
Kirby Air Riders works in a ton of ways. It’s a really fun way to spend time with friends and strangers online. It’s got a ton of unlockables, and there’s always something to do. Where it falls apart is in the solo experience. Road Trip works as a campaign for a little while, but it actually gets less fun and fruitful the further you get, which makes actually finishing the single-player content feel like a slog. The overall presentation is really stunning, and it’s nice to see Sakurai bring back a bunch of fan-favourite courses from the original game. I think this could be a Switch 2 essential for a certain type of person. If you’ve got a ton of friends who are all diehard Kirby Air Riders fans and down to play regularly, then yes. If you’ve got kids who are really into short-form content, then yes. But if you’re like me and you typically play games on your own, then no. Personally, I wouldn’t call Kirby Air Riders an essential. I think it’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, I just can’t see myself coming back to it again and again.
