TheBigBB
Formerly known as dmhawkmoon
- Joined
- May 5, 2002
- Posts
- 6,152
I love arcadey racing games, so I picked up Kirby Air Ride about a week ago. The simple control scheme led me to suspect that it might be another good racing game. Well it turned out to actually be better than I expected!
First of all, for you 2D fans, this game has the best Super Sprint clone I've ever played. It's like Super Smash Brothers Super Offroad. Literally. This game is by Hal, the guys who did Smash Bros., so it makes perfect sense. In fact, the entire game has a very Smash Brothers-ish feel. You get really chaotic courses with tons of powers and crazy obstacles and different routes.
The main challenge and originality of the game is in the 3D racing game, though. The game actually manages to be super deep using only the control stick and the A button. Here's how it works: Your vehicle automatically accelerates and reaches its top speed. You steer it. When you hold A, you begin to stop and (usually) build up a charge meter. The longer you hold A, the more charge you'll get when you let go. Of course, this is like a slide turn. You use this to go around big corners. You get an exponentially bigger charge for holding it til it maxes out, but you have to figure out when it's best to wait for that or to just get going sooner. You can also do a tighter turn by just tapping A really fast. If you're near a monster, you can tap A and you'll eat it and get its power. There are a ton of powers. Some are automatically activated in the right situations, and others you need to tap A to use. If you push the control stick quickly back and forth you'll go into an attack spin, also. To top this all off, there is an insane variety of vehicles and paths to take. A path that's a shortcut for one vehicle may take forever on another. You need to really figure out the weaknesses of each! For example, one ship is the glide star. It goes airborne really easily, and goes the fastest in the air, but on the ground it's super slow. You'll want to use this ship on courses that let you fly a lot, or just try to force it into the air using some hills. Another vehicle is the wagon star. This one accelerates fast, flys well, and turns well, but it gets no boost powers at all and its max speed isn't that great. There's a rocket star, which gets incredible boosts but not much else. There's another one which is very fast and instantly reaches top speed, but you cannot turn it unless you are airborne or you push A. So it barrels in a straight line, basically. hard as hell to work but super good to master.
There is just so much to this engine. It's a great game; a very unique racer. Pick it up if you thought F-Zero was good or if you like Super Offroad / Super Sprint (the offroad game only has one ship, but it's awesome anyway) or if you just like crazy racing games. It may seem weird at first, but once you figure out what's going on, it's a blast. And I haven't even talked about the arena mode...
Oh yeah, and some of the challenges are super super tough! It's not for kids only!
First of all, for you 2D fans, this game has the best Super Sprint clone I've ever played. It's like Super Smash Brothers Super Offroad. Literally. This game is by Hal, the guys who did Smash Bros., so it makes perfect sense. In fact, the entire game has a very Smash Brothers-ish feel. You get really chaotic courses with tons of powers and crazy obstacles and different routes.
The main challenge and originality of the game is in the 3D racing game, though. The game actually manages to be super deep using only the control stick and the A button. Here's how it works: Your vehicle automatically accelerates and reaches its top speed. You steer it. When you hold A, you begin to stop and (usually) build up a charge meter. The longer you hold A, the more charge you'll get when you let go. Of course, this is like a slide turn. You use this to go around big corners. You get an exponentially bigger charge for holding it til it maxes out, but you have to figure out when it's best to wait for that or to just get going sooner. You can also do a tighter turn by just tapping A really fast. If you're near a monster, you can tap A and you'll eat it and get its power. There are a ton of powers. Some are automatically activated in the right situations, and others you need to tap A to use. If you push the control stick quickly back and forth you'll go into an attack spin, also. To top this all off, there is an insane variety of vehicles and paths to take. A path that's a shortcut for one vehicle may take forever on another. You need to really figure out the weaknesses of each! For example, one ship is the glide star. It goes airborne really easily, and goes the fastest in the air, but on the ground it's super slow. You'll want to use this ship on courses that let you fly a lot, or just try to force it into the air using some hills. Another vehicle is the wagon star. This one accelerates fast, flys well, and turns well, but it gets no boost powers at all and its max speed isn't that great. There's a rocket star, which gets incredible boosts but not much else. There's another one which is very fast and instantly reaches top speed, but you cannot turn it unless you are airborne or you push A. So it barrels in a straight line, basically. hard as hell to work but super good to master.
There is just so much to this engine. It's a great game; a very unique racer. Pick it up if you thought F-Zero was good or if you like Super Offroad / Super Sprint (the offroad game only has one ship, but it's awesome anyway) or if you just like crazy racing games. It may seem weird at first, but once you figure out what's going on, it's a blast. And I haven't even talked about the arena mode...
Oh yeah, and some of the challenges are super super tough! It's not for kids only!
