Kirby Air Riders review: "This racer is also equal parts fighting game, minigame collection, and roguelike – and I'm shocked at how well that works"

I'm not particularly good at racing in Kirby Air Riders, I've come to determine. Years and years of Mario Kart – including this year's Mario Kart World – has poisoned my brain to play racers in a certain kind of way, and Kirby Air Riders just isn't that. For starters, Kirby Air Riders has no traditional acceleration; you just move forward constantly, so every race becomes a question of positioning, environmental loopholes, and exceptional brake usage.

But that's OK, because Kirby Air Riders is equal parts fighting game, minigame collection, and roguelike. That's not even accounting for the hang-out-and-play vibes of the online multiplayer lobbies or "machine" aka vehicle customization. Sometimes a video game is tricking out a bunch of sick rides with all the gear and decals you've unlocked and showing them off to the bros. Kirby Air Riders understands this and is designed accordingly.

Super Smash Kirby

If you're somehow not already aware, Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai is director on Kirby Air Riders, and that's likely something anyone will come to inherently grasp fairly quickly. Even if you missed the several Nintendo Directs where Sakurai gassed up the new Kirby game and had no idea that he also directed 2003's Kirby Air Ride, its immediate 22-year-old predecessor, it is apparent from the moment you start playing.

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The menu design alone with its colorful, clearly labeled blocks is enough to make a person go, "Huh, that sure is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate." But it goes deeper than that. There is the sheer amount of options available from riders and alternate color schemes to machines and customization to modes – Air Ride, Top Ride, City Trial, Road Trip – to the hundreds of unlockables and collectibles. It's all just Smash Bros. in vibe if not execution, and nowhere is this more evident than the little stage popups in Road Trip that 100% harken back to Smash Bros. screens indicating who you are fighting and where.

That's not even scratching the surface of the absolutely wild single-player story and narrative. There's a fictional justification for exactly how Kirby and the gang came to have little machines to ride on, and I am willing to guess you will have no idea where it's going. Or perhaps you do, and a living satellite spewing out a bunch of vehicles because of a wish it heard is just established Kirby lore with which I am not personally familiar. (That's just a taste; it gets wilder.)

The smorgasbord of things to do, see, and play in Kirby Air Riders is frankly a bit overwhelming and hard to digest as a single experience, but fascinating as a whole. Any single mode could have arguably carried a lesser game. The traditional races of Air Ride where you jockey for position and beat out the competition, the isometric Top Ride races and their unusual controls, the battle royale of City Trial leading directly into minigames, and the beefy single-player adventure of challenge after challenge that is Road Trip are like four different games bolted onto the same chassis. There is, quite literally, a little something for everyone.

This also means, however, that each of these – distinct as they are – will land in different ways. As established, I am particularly bad at Air Ride, though I am getting better with time and effort. Top Ride figuratively drives me up a wall with its top-down perspective in a way that gives me vertigo, and City Trial… well, there's a lot going on in City Trial, and it's mostly going on around me in my games whether I like it or not.

On the Road Trip again

All of these personal problems melt away in both Road Trip and during online play. While I only managed to dabble with the online component ahead of launch, competing together with a bunch of folks on GameChat or otherwise in matches through the Paddock lobby system where you essentially start up one of the game modes to play together with a specific set of settings of your choosing alleviates a bit of the friction that's part of playing all by your lonesome. Even if your buddies are all hungry for Top Ride after Top Ride, at least you're doing it with your buddies rather than just the computer.

Road Trip is what I find myself personally drawn back to time and time again. This despite the fact that it's essentially all of the single-player modes and minigames strung out into a single lengthy course where numbers go up as you collect more Defense or Boost and unlock new machines and level up while zooming through the story and a specific pathway and courses.

It's really just all of the different ways of playing that I am not exactly good at, but the combination of them all and the speed at which they come and go – never quite long enough to wear out their welcome – makes for an experience where I'm constantly left thinking, "just one more race" or "just one final battle." I suspect this is exactly where the designers want me.

Multiplayer is really Kirby Air Riders' happy place, which, again, is no surprise given how Super Smash Bros. it is on top of the fact that basically all racing video games yearn for human opponents by nature. I have to imagine that 32-player Paddock lobbies are going to be absolutely wild, and the different customized rides that people come up with will astonish.

Even so, it's not a particularly high high for me, but then neither are Kirby Air Riders' lows particularly low. While the individual elements and modes can be frustrating to me, especially in back-to-back events, a mix of everything under the Kirby Air Riders sun a la the Road Trip mode is pretty much an ideal way to spend an afternoon. It's paradoxical, but Kirby Air Riders really is a game where the sum of its parts is greater than the individual pieces.

I don't regret the time I've spent with Kirby Air Riders, nor am I necessarily hungry for more. Kirby Air Riders likely isn't the first or even the fifth Nintendo Switch 2 game I'd recommend folks, but it also feels like the first one that could speak to the largest potential audience for the longest possible time. It's consistently good, but not great, and maybe just consistently good without any real objective negatives will ultimately have a greater likelihood of resonating with people. I'm not hankering for more Kirby Air Riders just now; I'm good. But I'd also be up for another round if you're game.

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