Road Warrior: GeekDad Reviews ‘Kirby Air Riders’ for Nintendo Switch 2

Kirby Air Riders isn’t exactly the easiest game to sum up; it’s a quirky racer with the heart of a fighting game, and that may well prove a hard sell for the general gaming public. However, those who do find themselves beguiled by its unique charms are sure to fall in love with this oddball Switch 2 release.
Controls in Kirby Air Riders are deceptively simple. Machines (the game’s oblique name for vehicles) travel forward on their own, meaning all your chosen Rider needs to do is navigate left and right, with the occasional use of up and down on your control stick during gliding segments after encountering a jump ramp.
Button use is similarly spartan. B is the Boost Charge button, which can be tapped to brake or held to drift around tight corners, and then released to boost forward rapidly. The Y button is used, in some modes, to swap your Machine for another vacant vehicle. And that’s… pretty much it for the racing controls.

Mixing up Racers and Machines is the best way to find your own winning combination. image: NOA
The other major element of the gameplay is vehicular combat.
Wiggling the control stick while near an enemy performs a spinning strike, KAR’s equivalent of a standard attack. The B and Y buttons also pull double duty, with the former used to acquire copy abilities and the latter to unleash a blisteringly fast and punishing special attack once you’ve filled up your Rider’s Special Gauge.
The true breadth of Kirby Air Riders, then, relies heavily on how different Riders and Machines interact. The titular Kirby is the consummate all-arounder, the heavy, hammer-wielding King Dedede is a solid choice for traditional raceways but not much of a flyer, while the spritely Star Man shines in the air.
By the same token, the classic Warp Star is a Machine that works well on all fronts, with the lighter Winged Star and fragile Paper Star being better suited for gliding. Alternatively, there are also sturdy chariot-, bike-, and tank-style Machines, which excel on road races but are a bit too weighty to glide very far. Still, even related vehicles can control completely differently, and finding that personal sweet spot between Rider and Machine is half the fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs6fYLRfFMg
Much like the Rider/Machine mechanic, Kirby Air Riders offers additional depth via a number of interesting game modes. The six-character Air Ride is the most straightforward experience, combining racing and combat on themed tracks a la Mario Kart, with jumps, rails, boost arrows, and other environmental obstacles combining to make each feel wonderfully distinctive.
Up to eight players can participate in Top Ride, a fixed-angle isometric throwback — -think NES classic R.C. Pro-Am — -where the entire track is visible from above. You and your rivals jockey for position in short, multi-lap contests that feel cut from a wholly different cloth than the more frenetic Air Ride. Though I initially wrote this off as a simple bonus mode, I quickly realized that Top Ride has an allure all its own despite using most of the same components and concepts as Air Ride.

Don’t sleep on Top Ride. It’s a wonderful throwback racer! image: NOA
The innovative City Trial starts all racers on equal footing before providing five madcap minutes to collect power-ups and find the perfect Machine for your playstyle, all scattered across the city of Skyah. Random Field Events occur, including intense over-sized boss battles, and cutthroat opponents can attack and even destroy your machine as you frantically try and sniff out your preferred stat increases from streets and rooftops positively littered with colorful icons.
After the five minutes elapse, you’ll get a visual representation of your current machine’s stats: top speed, weight, cornering, charge, etc. Then, you’ll be asked to choose one of four Stadium events to determine your group’s winner. These can be anything from gliding or drag race contests to more Kirby-centric fare like the Gourmet Race, where you compete to gobble up the most food within the time limit.
Each Stadium focuses on speed, battling, or flight, and with so many options available, it can be a little difficult for green players to know which is which. Thankfully, the game is nice enough to let you know which choice is recommended to give your Machine’s build the competitive advantage.

City Trial’s Stadium events are nicely varied. image: NOA
All three modes support KAR’s robust multiplayer, though City Trail’s combination of flexibility (up to 16 players online or 8 locally) and cool Stadium contests makes it the real MVP on this front. In addition to Ranked and Quick Matches, the multiplayer Paddock provides a specialized lobby system where players can set up races, communicate using phrases mapped to their controllers’ thumbsticks, or just casually observe the unfolding madness.
On the opposite end, Road Trip, the game’s single-player story mode, reveals the game’s unconventional narrative and features elements you’ll encounter in all the other modes. Choose a Rider and navigate left and right to face various challenges across a series of branching paths, unlocking new Machines while honing all the skills you’ll need to succeed in the wacky world of Kirby Air Riders.
And boy, is this world wacky!
Air Riders almost feels like Masahiro Sakurai conceptualized half of its content before realizing this wasn’t another Super Smash Bros. title. That over-enthusiastic announcer? Smash Bros. The picture-based achievement system? Smash Bros. A seemingly twitchy combat system that belies a startling amount of depth and flexibility? Totally Smash Bros.

This is a picture of lightning-fast, hot buttered carnage! image: NOA
From epic cutscenes to a dedicated mini-game where you shovel Machine-themed gummies, Kirby Air Riders alternates between overwrought bombast and utter tomfoolery. You’ll no doubt find yourself slapping a chintzy, 1970s geometric pattern on a menacing war chariot and putting a silly hat on your most dangerous Rider. It’s Death Race 2000 by way of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, cartoon violence married with cheerful surrealism.
As such, Kirby Air Riders is an odd duck that defies classification. It’s built to appeal to racing fans, but it’s certainly no straight-ahead racer. It’s combat-heavy but far from a traditional fighting game, and it’s fiercely competitive but also wonderfully accessible. (It’s even a collect-a-thon that seldom makes you struggle for that next sweet unlockable.)
Yet underneath all these contradictions, Air Riders is everything you hope a new console title will be. It’s engaging, rewarding, and, above all else, fun. In short, it’s exactly the kind of peculiar gameplay experience that begs to be brought out after the Thanksgiving dishes have been cleared away.
Kirby Air Riders is available on Thursday, November 20, physically from your preferred retailer or digitally from the Switch 2 eShop, priced $69.99. Nintendo is careful to call it a “vehicular action game,” but I prefer to think of it as perfectly controlled chaos!
Review materials provided by Nintendo of America. This post contains affiliate links. Team Wheelie Scooter for life!