Okay, played a good solid hour of it.
This was not at all what I expected.
I never played the Gamecube original, so this being a Nintendo game (and a Kirby game) I went in expecting something breezy and accessible. Instead, what I got was a frantic, sweaty, and highly technical racer that demands a lot from the player.
At first, I tried to play it like it was Mario Kart or Sonic Racing, which was a mistake. I had to unlearn a lot of my instincts as far as drifting and such, and really commit to the game’s mechanics.
The sense of speed and mayhem is intense, it often feels more like a hybrid of F-Zero and Smash Bros rather than your typical mascot racer.
It’s also very clearly the result of one auteur’s singular vision, for better (mostly) and worse. (Occasionally) It’s stylish as hell, and I have to admire Sakurai’s keen attention to everything from the menus to the progression. The game’s control scheme is a great example; it uses only two buttons, and while it works fine for the most part, there were times I wished that say using items or spinning could be mapped to one of the unused face buttons.
This is very much a niche game that makes no apologies for being one. While that makes its role as a tentpole of Switch 2’s first year an odd one from a commercial perspective, I’m still glad that a game like this can exist in today hyper-corporate landscape.
