Hands-On: Kirby Air Riders may be deceptively deep despite its simple controls

You can always rely on Masahiro Sakurai to describe a game in more detail than it perhaps needs.

Last week’s Nintendo Direct, which was solely focused on 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 Gamescom while the Direct was on, I didn’t get to watch it before going hands-on with Kirby Air Riders at 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 GameCube title Kirby Air Ride will know, there’s no need to accelerate in this game. Steering left and right is all that’s needed, while the B button brakes. Holding this button also builds a speed boost, so the general strategy is to brake-slide around corners then let go to boost before you slow to a stop.

Whereas the first game focused mainly on having players control Kirby, this time there’s a full roster of players to choose from (12 have been confirmed so far). These range from series regulars King Dedede, Meta Knight and Waddle Dee to less frequently appearing folk like Knuckle Joe, Susie from Kirby: Planet Robobot and the objectively best character, long-tongued slimy chap Gooey.

Taking the series’ agreed-upon lore and launching it into an open flame, Sakurai has decided that every character in Air Riders – not just Kirby – will be able to capture enemies and use their Copy Abilities. Scandal and chaos aside, it’s a fair alternative to the previous game’s solution, which was to make Kirby the only main playable character (and to prevent unlockable characters Dedede and Meta Knight from using the move).

While the standard Air Ride racing mode returns from the GameCube original, anyone who’s played that game knows the real main event is City Trial, the pseudo battle mode in which multiple players drive around trying to collect power-ups.

In Kirby Air Riders, City Trial can be played by up to 8 players locally and 16 players online. Apparently if more than eight players take part the game will split them into groups, but this wasn’t something I got to experience because Nintendo’s business area rig at Gamescom was set up for four players.

Players are placed in an open environment – a floating island called Skyah – and given five minutes to drive around, collecting as many power-ups as they can to increase their vehicle’s stats. Once the five minutes are up, you have to choose between one of four ‘arena’ mini-games, each making use of a certain stat. This could mean battling with other riders, trying to eat the most food, flying as far as possible or what have you.

Somewhat oddly, not everyone takes part in the same arena. You get the one you vote for, so if (as in my case) you vote for one that nobody else wanted, you end up facing off against CPU opponents which is a tad underwhelming. Hopefully with 16 players instead of just four it’s far more likely that you’ll face a human opponent at the end.

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.