Kirby Air Riders Gamescom demo preview — A bit different from your usual Mario Kart

At Gamescom, Nintendo showcased a wealth of goodies, including releases scheduled for this year and those coming soon. One of the titles I got to try was the new Kirby Air Riders, a successor to the classic Kirby Air Ride on the GameCube. It was announced back in June’s Direct and was one of the major titles coming out for the Nintendo Switch 2 in the latter half of this year. For those who don’t know what this game is, it’s Kirby goes racing! And for someone who’s not very well versed in the Kirby games, I thought we were looking at a Mario Kart-type game. However, from my time with the demo, it feels like a completely different ball game from its big brother.

Kirby Air Riders is a racing game at heart; you choose your racer, your vehicle, and race against friends or CPUs on different tracks. The demo I got to play was split into two parts. The first part consisted of tutorial levels 4-11, allowing us to get a feel for how the game works. This was helpful as it feels completely different from what you’re probably used to. You won’t be holding A to go; instead, you automatically speed away with the joycon steering the direction. This was easy to grasp and made sense when you realized you’ll be preoccupied with other things whilst you’re racing. One of these things is spin attacks, where you bounce the left stick left and right to perform a spin attack that can bump into racers or break blocks that have power-ups in them. The other main feature is the ability to harness attack and copy abilities. You press B to use Kirby’s signature copy ability, and if it’s a normal enemy type, you’ll spit them back out as a projectile. If it’s a power that can be copied, then you’ll be able to press Y at any time to unleash a special attack. It’s a lot less chaotic than Mario Kart, where you’re bombarding other racers with loads of items. Instead, you’ll be more calculated in your attack.

Another key mention in the racing gameplay is drifting. It is wildly different from what you would expect, as even though you can drift around corners, you’ll feel very weighted down and actually slow down, but once you release the B button, you’ll get a boost and rocket off your drift when you go into a straight line. It’ll take some getting used to, but it was fun nonetheless.

Other small features in the tutorial included gaining boosts when you’re flying and lifting the left stick in the opposite direction when you land to get a boost. Another fun mechanic – unique to the arena – is the ability to hop off your vehicle and switch to another one. You can also switch vehicles by locking onto a player’s vehicle and knocking them off of it, causing some fun chaos.

After we had done the tutorials, we got to partake in Kirby Air Rider’s main mode. The first half will see you and others placed in an arena for 5 minutes to collect as much loot as you can, and then the other half will be one of 4 minigames. Let’s talk about the setup arena first. In this, you’ll start with your chosen character and a standard vehicle. During a 5-minute countdown, you’ll be able to switch to any vacant vehicle and grab any power-ups that are lying around. These power-ups encompass abilities such as increased life, improved flight, and increased weight. This means you shouldn’t be aimlessly racing around picking up anything you can find – like I did. You’ll want to steer towards what you think will help you edge out your competition. The arena in which you do all of this is fairly large and open, and it worked less well when I was confined to smaller spaces, such as the city and underground. Perhaps I was just inexperienced with the gameplay, but I found myself hitting every wall and not really understanding where I was going.

After you’re all kitted out, you’ll be able to choose from 4 minigames to play in. I got to try the gourmet dash and the brawl-type knockouts. These minigames are pretty simple and don’t last very long, as I would have liked. Bashing players and taking their lives was really fun and brutal, and it fit well with the style of the racing game Kirby Air Riders. The Gourmet dash is a bit more simplistic, and I didn’t feel the rush to go back to it. You collect as much food as possible, which translates into points. From memory, the other minigame was a typical racing game where the player who was in front when the timer ran out won.

After two rounds, our time with the demo ended, and I felt very different from Kirby Air riders than I did before I went in. It feels nothing like Mario Kart or any other racing game, for that matter, with unique controls and different modes to engage with. I thought the time in the arena felt a bit too long and the minigames too short, but that may be down to personal taste. It may not be for someone who is content with Mario Kart and isn’t a big fan of racing games, but I can see why people are excited for this sequel.

Kirby Air Riders releases on November 20th this year, so look out for any news and our review when we play it. For all Kirby news, stay tuned to GamingTrend!