Kirby Air Riders

Kirby Air Riders is a fast, fun addition to the Nintendo Switch 2's growing library, but, it might have been a better experience had it stuck some more traditional racing mechanics.

Here we are, the Switch 2 has its own racing game. The Mario Kart alternative is quite different, more substantial, but still lacks content despite a mountain of unlockables. We appreciate the user-friendliness ethos and the visual vibrancy, but it will always feel a bit thin beyond that initial layer - it's best suited to short multiplayer sessions, without the sustained appeal of a game like Smash Bros.

Kirby Air Riders is a visually stunning whirlwind of a game, filled with tons to do - if you like meticulously crafting vehicle builds and racing at breakneck speeds. It’s confusing for newcomers and difficult to look at, at times, but it’s sure to bring some people a ton of joy.

Kirby Air Riders immediately earns the merit of standing on its own, putting to rest the fears of those who thought it might try to compete with Mario Kart World. It’s not a technical triumph, but rather a creative manifesto from a designer who continues to challenge conventions within a company known for playing it safe. Not everyone will have the patience for its disorder, but those who let themselves be carried away will find a genuinely free-spirited game, more interested in provoking smiles than in ensuring stability.

Don’t think too deeply about Kirby Air Riders, and you’ll be swept away, quirks and all.

While the game is polished and slick, as well as varied and unique, it can also lose its luster quickly if you’re not absolutely hooked on its main mode, City Trial. With DLC and updates confirmed not to be forthcoming, what you see is what you get with this package.

Still, while Kirby Air Riders won’t be remembered in the countdowns of Nintendo’s greatest games, and certainly won’t have the longevity that Sakurai brought to Smash Bros., it’s a fun distraction and the kind of thing that you’ll pick up every six months or so for a quick blast and laugh. And sometimes that’s all a game needs to be.

Kirby Air Riders is a charming addition to the racing genre. Its unique outlook might not appeal to everyone, but it's still liable to find it a raft of fans, just like its GameCube predecessor.

Without dethroning Mario Kart World, Kirby Air Riders is a serious contender on a very specific path: that of immediate, multiplayer-focused fun, driven by ultra-accessible gameplay. With Masahiro Sakurai's distinctive style, the game offers exhilarating speed, a modernized City Trial mode that transforms each race into a mini-strategy, and a fairly clear art direction despite some excessive on-screen effects. Meanwhile, Mario Kart maintains its long-term advantage thanks to more substantial single-player content, longer races, a coherent open world, and an overall structure better suited for pure, unadulterated racing fun. Kirby Air Riders, therefore, appears less as a direct competitor and more as a clever complement: a blend of party game, arcade, and racing designed for couch co-op during evenings with friends.

A chaotic, vibrant combat racer with excellent visuals and multiplayer potential, shining strongest in Air Ride and City Trial, but stumbling slightly with uneven pacing and weaker modes. Fun, frantic, but occasionally overwhelming.

Kirby Air Riders suffers from the difficult task of outwardly conveying its true nature. Those hoping for a fun-racer in the vein of Mario Kart World might be quite disappointed. While the comparison is obvious and superficially accurate, Air Riders relies heavily on a unique gameplay experience. It rewards players who overcome the challenging initial hurdle and have the enthusiasm to delve into the mostly simple, yet complex, systems and mechanics. There's no doubt that casual gamers can enjoy the title. However, if you want to take a few relaxed spins, you'd be better off with the plumber's latest racing adventure.

Kirby Air Riders is a playful, chaotic mix of races and minigames. The game is charming and energetic, but can sometimes be a bit too much.

Kirby Air Riders is fun, colorful and full of modes, but ultimately too shallow to leave a lasting impression. The game runs smoothly at 60 fps on Switch 2, and its cheerful art style fits the Kirby series, though it never showcases the hardware’s true potential. The soundtrack and the full Portuguese localization, including narrator voices and cutscenes, are definite highlights. With traditional races, top down stages, open arena chaos and a small story mode, the variety is impressive, but none of the modes go deep enough to keep players engaged for long. The controls mix too many actions on a single button, creating confusion, and the visual clutter in the larger arenas hurts readability. Kirby Air Riders succeeds as a casual party experience and works well for quick sessions or for playing with kids, but it lacks the depth and competitive appeal needed to stand beside Nintendo’s stronger racing titles.

Kirby Air Riders delivers a unique racing concept with counterintuitive controls and innovative mechanics. The learning curve is steep, which contrasts with the character’s friendly appearance. The city challenge mode adds strategic depth but may confuse casual players. Despite being technical and fun, the game feels out of place compared to more accessible options in the genre.

With its many customization options and the simply fun nature of its gameplay, Kirby Air Riders makes a strong impression from the very first sessions. Beneath a deceptive feeling of simplicity lies a surprising amount of depth, one that takes hours and hours to fully master. Still, the experience may start to feel a bit repetitive after a while: unfortunately, the generous shots of dopamine the game delivers struggle to keep the player engaged past the ten-hour mark. There’s no doubt, however, that competitive players in search of yet another frantic, fluorescent, borderline-epileptic thrill ride will find exactly what they’re looking for.

Just like in Air Ride, the simplicity of Kirby Air Riders is deceptive. There’s more depth and challenge in this one-button racer than you’d expect. At the same time, those simple systems also hold the game back. Controlling a vehicle with a single button is a funny idea, but it feels like a limitation for the sake of limiting.

The best Nintendo games are famous for being both immediate and deep at the same time. Kirby Air Riders is too chaotic to be immediate, and too superficial to be deep. Everything else, however, is excellently executed.

While Air Riders might not be my personal cup of tea, it feels like a faithful and loving reward for all the folks who loved the original Kirby Air Ride. Without the benefit of nostalgia, though, you may find it harder to get up to speed.

Kirby Air Riders had a lot of potential as a fun racer, but it squanders much of that potential through an excessive reliance on randomness and questionable controls. Is it a totally bad game? No, it isn't. But it's not a truly great one either, and so far, it's the weakest exclusive title for the Switch 2.

What Air Riders lacks in modes, it makes up for in charm. There are a heap of customisation options, allowing you to pimp your ride with unlockable stickers and alternative colour schemes – you can even hang a plushie from your machine like a Kirby-branded Labubu...This is a tightly focused game that reminds me of Nintendo’s fun-first NES-era game design – for better and for worse. It has a sprinkling of Sakurai magic and oodles of visual panache, but at full price it is – like Kirby – a little puffed-up.

Although Kirby Air Riders will hardly be remembered as a true classic in years to come, it does offer a lot of fun, especially in good company.

Even though more than two decades have passed, it seems that nothing has changed for the mind behind the pink puffball, Masahiro Sakurai. Kirby Air Riders is, for the most part, the original game made again, with more flavor and style that only the Nintendo Switch 2 can deliver. But to me, it feels like this mix is missing a bit of substance.

Even with a ton of collectibles to unlock and challenges to take on, I can’t see myself returning to Kirby Air Riders much in the future. This is a racer that tries to buck many of the genre’s most traditional conventions, which, at the very least, makes it quite memorable. Ultimately, though, the content on hand in Air Riders wears thin in no time, which leads to it being a game that you’ll put down sooner than you might anticipate.