You can always rely on Masahiro Sakurai to describe a game in more detail than it perhaps needs.
Last week’s Kirby Air Riders” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/kirby-air-riders/”>Kirby Air Riders, saw Sakurai taking a healthy 47 minutes to break down his latest game, even though just a few minutes in he jokingly conceded that “it’s basically like Mario Kart”.
Because I was en route to Germany for Nintendo [5,519 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/nintendo/”>Nintendo’s business area. As expected, a 47-minute summary wasn’t really necessary to figure it out.
Flanked by an annoyingly eager assistant all too happy to whoop loudly at everything I did – a regular staple of Nintendo hands-on demos, intended to make sure beginners don’t get confused by the game and step away feeling empowered – I played through most of the Tutorial lessons to get the hang of the handling, drifting, boosting, floating and attack mechanics.
As anyone who’s played the original 
Although I only played City Trial twice in my session, it seems that there’s a lot of hidden secrets to be found in this new Skyah map. From impromptu giant boss fights and races designed to earn players more power-ups to a wealth of hidden areas – not to mention the returning ability to swap your vehicle for any of the others lying around, and the new ability to ram a weakened opponent and steal their vehicle – it feels like there are tons of potential strategies to be found here.
Despite its initial apparent simplicity, then, Kirby Air Riders feels like it’s going to need some extra time – a review period’s worth, say, minus whooping and cheering German wingman – to determine whether City Trial gets better the more it’s played, or whether driving around its single environment eventually starts to feel too repetitive.
Thankfully, with a release just three months away on November 20, we won’t have to wait too long to find out.
