If this winds up being a shorter, hollower, and less thought-out game review, then it’s only because Mario Kart Tour is a shorter, hollower, and less thought-out mobile take on Nintendo’s widely popular kart racing series. I understand why Nintendo wouldn’t put its games on something like Apple Arcade. If you want premium Nintendo games without microtransactions, the place to go is the Nintendo Switch, not some Apple subscription. But with Mario Kart Tour the fact that these Nintendo mobile games are equal parts glorified ads and free-to-play cash grabs becomes increasingly hard to ignore and forgive.
Mario Kart Tour feels bad from the start. Purists may argue that skill went out the window once Nintendo made power-sliding more automatic, but the racing in the mainline games I think strikes a nice balance between accessibility and finesse. As a one-handed mobile game, obviously Mario Kart Tour needs to be simpler. But swiping your thumb to steer isn’t bad because it’s simple, it’s bad because it just feels bad. Even the optional motion steering does little to make me feel like I have any real control over my character.
The inaccurate controls force the game to use flat, uninteresting track design to keep players from constantly crashing. You may not notice this at first due to the game’s high production value. Whether it’s remixes of classic tracks or new international tracks in cities like New York and Paris, this looks like a modern Mario Kart game. It even maintains the recent gimmick of switching between land, sea, and air. But race enough courses and you can’t help but notice the same boring loops again and again.
But the worse loop of all is still the loop of free-to-play mechanics, a business model so harmful that again Apple had to make a whole new service to counterattack. Mario Kart Tour is full of the expected by unacceptable gambling-like tactics. Want to use a rare character like Peachette? Better hope the real money you spend leads to a lucky roll. Characters, kart pieces, and even entire racing speeds are locked behind paywalls, including a bizarre subscription pass. And it feels particularly gross when paired with Mario Kart’s history of randomization and rubber bands AI difficulty. “Pay a dollar” to avoid the Blue Shell doesn’t sound out of the question.
It’s not all bad. While the game is online multiplayer only you don’t need a constant connection once the race actually starts. You can play on a subway and not worry. Plus just listening to my own music while playing leads to funny juxtapositions like Waluigi and Neil Cicierega. And while I would’ve enjoyed a twist on the formula (like in Dr. Mario World) the fundamentals of Mario Kart are still pretty solid.
But if you want to play Mario Kart on the go please do yourself a favor and get Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch.
from Geek.com https://ift.tt/2mjKaWb
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