Since my first iPod Touch, over a decade ago, I wanted to play Mario Kart on my iPhone. I tried other kart games, but none came close to the joy of Mario Kart. But Nintendo refused to make such a thing.
But something changed their mind. Nintendo’s stock was tanking. Fewer people were buying the Nintendo DS, the Wii U, or Nintendo games. The company was suffering, and it looked like they’d finally cave. After pressure from the public and investors, Nintendo finally pledged to make mobile games. But not emulators or adaptations of old favorites. They’d be entirely new games. People were excited, though disappointed that they wouldn’t get their old favorites. Still, new games could be cool, right?
Then Nintendo started releasing the games.
Fire Emblem Heroes, Super Mario Run, Animal Crossing, Dr. Mario, Dragalia Lost, all popular franchises, but all disappointing games. I’ve been playing Super Mario on the NES since I was a child. It was (and still is) one of my favorite games of all time. Yet I deleted Super Mario Run off my phone within the first week of playing it due to online-only gameplay, repetitive nature, and eventual freemium tactics. I deleted Dr. Mario World quickly for its slow gameplay. Fire Emblem was a card collecting game that rewarded users for pulling out their wallets.
Surely Mario Kart Tour would be better, right? Nintendo learned from their past mistakes?
Well, to Nintendo, they weren’t mistakes. The Nintendo brand is strong enough to push users into otherwise foolish freemium purchases. The end result? Nintendo has made horrible games that are more like cash grabs designed to look like games, and they’re raking in money.
I had some hope for Mario Kart Tour, but, after playing it for a few days, I’ve abandoned home. Nintendo just can’t make a good mobile game. Here’s what little they did right, and what’s very, very wrong.
In This Article:
Artificially Hard, Yet Still Too Easy
This should be the primary part of the game, the gameplay, but, frankly, it’s the last thing they thought of.
Most of this review isn’t going to be about the gameplay, due to far more problems with other parts of this game. But I did want to take a moment to discuss just how strange this game is to play. From odd controls, terrible balancing issues, a lot of luck, and, as it turns out, completely unnecessary gameplay, Mario Kart Tour comes off as… well, barely a game.
Controls
The default control structure is overly easy to use, but keeps you from doing good slides and getting the boosts that come with doing slides. They’re directional, with an arrow that shows where your kart will go. I turned this off right away and chose the manual drift controls. They didn’t seem very accurate, and it was kind of “floaty.” I then found that smart steering was still on, ignoring inputs it didn’t like and nudging me from edges. I turned it off, and the controls were far more refined.
But it’s not perfect. I still feel like I can’t drive very accurately. Part of this is the fact that it hops when I go to steer, as turning is drifting in manual mode. It’s not perfect, but I got used to it quickly. After all, it felt just like Mario Kart. I didn’t feel out of place.
Edges
This was a bit startling at first. I noticed an obvious shortcut through some grass and went to use it, only to find that there was an invisible wall there. The game wouldn’t let me go off track, even a little. Some stages will allow it a little, others will prevent it. The end result feels like you’re driving on rails, a sort of slot car game. I know Nintendo did it for simplicity’s sake, but shortcuts and making your own driving lines was a huge part of the fun of older Mario Kart games.
Game-Ending Red Shells and Bananas
This is perhaps the most frustrating part. You could be in first, with a large lead, and you’ll find yourself back in 6th from a red shell. When you get hit, you get hit hard, and your character won’t even start accelerating for a surprisingly long time after a hit. It’s extremely frustrating. Worst of all, if you try to balance things out with a red shell of your own, you’ll find CPU players are downed for half the time. You can’t catch up. Because there are only two laps in races, getting hit can end your race.
Mario Kart has always had this kind of imbalance. In Mario Kart 64, if the red shell collision was far enough in the distance, the kart would barely stop, then restart. It wouldn’t tumble or go into the air. It’s always been a bit of a joke in Mario Kart, to balance out the CPU with some luck. But it’s exceptionally bad and infuriating in Mario Kart Tour, where the gap between your slow downs and theirs seems to be much larger, and you have fewer laps to catch up.
Few Courses, But Tweaks
This game doesn’t have many courses, though it may have a few fan favorites from old games. You’ll also find that many courses are modified by going in reverse, or adding a different jump or area. Some add different paths. But it can still feel a bit boring. Everything feels very similar, and there will be tracks you’ll hate that you have to keep racing because some slightly tweaked version of it came up again.
Can’t Pause!
This is such a strange problem. The game needs to be online to download other racers’ times, and obviously it would have to be online in a real-time head to head race, but other than that? It wouldn’t have to be online. Therefore, you should be allowed to pause the game, right? Perhaps to adjust the controls, the sound, or something else? Well, no. You can’t pause. It’s like they made it intentionally infuriating on purpose! So, if you want to tweak a setting, you’ll have to quit out of the game after changing the setting and restart. There’s no easy button to restart a race, you have to quit it and try again from the main menu.
Hands-Free Win?
Look, ma, no hands!
Check out the video embedded above. Notice anything wrong? I don’t seem to steer! Well, it gets worse than that. After starting the game, I didn’t touch the screen at all! This is with the default controls, which have “smart steering” and automatically use items when you touch a power block. The result? You can often get 6th place without touching the screen. And, because Mario Kart Tour favors having the right items unlocked over actually winning, it’s enough to get the points required to get 5 stars or more!
With the default controls (throwing an item if you go through an item box), you can do quite well without ever touching the screen.
You may have also noticed that the kart stays on the track. You’re right! In fact, there are many invisible walls helping you out in this game. Some will block shortcuts, others will prevent you from falling off the track. Just little things to make you feel like you accomplished something, even though you didn’t. The game is largely luck and purchased bonuses, and this proves that. You thought Mario Kart was about racing? Don’t be silly! It’s about buying stuff!
Long Loading Screens and “Bonus” Screens
When you finish a race in most Mario Kart games, you see your points add up, and then you can see the various stats about your race. Your lap times, your race time, your standing in the tournament. It’s all good, useful information. You get the same points for your position, so you can see what you need to do to win the circuit. This is all useful information!
Then there’s Mario Kart Tour. The objective of this game is to get you to spend money, so after a race, you get flashy graphics and sounds, stars and coins, ruybies, and other incentives to give you a small dopamine boost. This is why slot machines light up and make the sound of coins pouring down, even if you don’t do well. It’s to make you feel successful so you keep playing.
Mario Kart Tour is loaded with these useless screens, and they keep you from getting back into a race quickly. It’s obnoxious, especially since these breaks are only there to try to get you to buy something.
Locked Characters
After many hours, including playing all the existing courses and tours, you still won’t have much.
You won’t have a core set of drivers to choose from. You’ll get one driver when you start, and you’ll be able to unlock more as you play. You won’t unlock any through gameplay though, only a few are rewards between “cups.” Defeat Donkey Kong’s challenge and think it’ll unlock the driver and his cart? Nope! So how do you unlock drivers? By gambling, of course!
You’ll win (or, more likely, buy) rubies by winning circuits or completing random tasks, like using a particular item X number of times. Then, once you have 5, you can try your luck with a loot box. It might have a new driver in it! You can also trade in those rubies for time on a coin track. Here you can collect far more coins than you can in races, which you can then spend thousands of them on a new driver. But only one driver will be available like this during a set period of time. For the most part, you’ll have to buy these rubies and log on every day to see if you can unlock new drivers.
As of this writing, the only way to get the titular Mario character? Pay $20. Yup! $20 just for one character. Now you’re starting to understand what Mario Kart Tour is really about.
Best Levels Hidden Behind Subscription
$5/month to remove some of the issues with the game.
There’s a 200cc class. You’d think you’d get this from playing really well, but nope! It’s only for people willing to shell out $5/month. That’s the same price as an Apple Arcade subscription, which gives you access to hundreds of full games. Here you just gain access to a higher class which will allow you to drive faster, get more points, and unlock more rubies and upgrade bonuses. It’s a $5/month subscription to make the game a little easier, and remove some of the artificial blocks that stand in the way of you moving forward. It won’t unlock special drivers on its own, but it will make it easier to unlock drivers and circuits.
Imagine the audacity of asking people to pay $20 for Mario, pay for drivers, experience, karts, gliders, and levels, pay for chances to gamble and win items, and then also ask for a subscription! It would be like if casinos charged you a monthly fee to be allowed to go there to throw away your money! You’re paying to pay.
Nintendo purposely crippled the game for freemium, then they made it even worse by hiding the best items behind an expensive subscription! You could pay $5/month for hundreds of games from Apple Arcade, or just for a few bonus items from Nintendo, your choice!
Basically? For $5/month, the game will be slightly less of a rip-off, but for that price, they’ve already got you, sucker.
You’re Not Getting These Items
I found that there are certain items that you’re just not going to get. I intentionally put my character in last place a few times. Not easy considering the always on gas and the auto-steering away from walls and corners. In fact, I, on more than one occasion, took 6th place as a result of never touching the screen. That’s enough for 5 stars if you bought the right karts and drivers!
But even if you are in last place by a large amount, you’re still not going to find stars or lighting or infinite mushrooms, like you would in previous games. You won’t find the items you need to boost your standing. You’ll still get the same useless bananas or coins. It’s a game that wants you to lose, that wants you out of the standing so you buy something to help. I have played this game now for many hours, I haven’t gotten a single star or lightning bolt, but I’ve had plenty of them used against me.
What Driver Did You Buy?
Sure, you got first place, but did you really “win” if you didn’t buy Mario for $20 to do it? Nope!
Want to win the game? Buy all the drivers. Win races? No, don’t be silly! This game isn’t about winning races! It’s all about the points. Some drivers, carts, or gliders will get more points than others on particular tracks. That means you could come in, win the race by a lot, and still not get 5 stars! It also means you can come in 5th, but have the right driver, cart, and glider, and still get those 5 stars.
You know the fun of watching a Mario Kart circuit, trying desperately to do well enough in the standings to win a cup? You might have gotten third on that first race, but if you win the next three, you can still win the cup! That’s fun. This doesn’t have that. You could win every race and still not get to move on, or get in 6th place and still get 5 stars on a track. It’s absurd and boring.
Pick the right driver, kart, and glider, and you could win 5 stars while coming in 6th place!
This is a game where the gameplay matters less than the items you’ve purchased with your own money. It literally puts purchases over gameplay. I’ve gotten 5 stars on tracks just for having the right drivers and karts unlocked. Meanwhile, I’ve also gotten 6th place by starting a race and never touching the screen. You can get a perfect score without racing at all! That makes it more of a slot machine than a video game. But there’s a problem with that analogy. Slot machines occasionally give out money. You get nothing from this besides flashy graphics and sound effects.
Locked Out
Thinking about playing this game for a few hours, unlocking things, and leveling up? Think again! Eventually, you won’t be able to collect coins from races, after 300 coins per day. New drivers and karts cost over $2,000, so you’re looking at playing for 7 days to afford any of them based on these coins alone. You could spend rubies, purchased with real money, to get more coins. But by now you’re seeing the problem. You’ll be locked out of leveling up or gaining anything unless you’re willing to pay real-world money.
If you’ve gotten to a point where even winning a race won’t be enough to get the 5 stars you need and move on, you won’t be able to level up to improve your standing for another day. The point is to force you to come back and play every day, making your addiction a regular thing.
Freemium: The Game Destroyer
This game is mostly made up of screens to get you to buy stuff.
Let me be clear about something. The actual races, the games themselves, they’re pretty fun. A little more annoying than your typical Mario Kart race, because the effects against you are unbalanced and you’ve only got two laps to make up time, but still fun. The races are made to feel like a gamble, so you’re more likely to buy the things that will give you an advantage. Still, at the end of the day, the races are fun enough to warrant a 4/5 star rating. I played this game for a while, and the gameplay itself isn’t bad.
But the rest of the game? From the mechanics to the grinding needed to advance because you need to unlock a higher level to win stars? The fact that you can get first place in a race and not get enough “points” to move on? It’s plain absurdity! So much of the game is luck and what items you’ve shelled out real cash for. It spits in the face of the nonsensical fun of Mario Kart.
Nintendo licensed out their games and characters to third parties that specialize in addictive freemium gaming models. As a result, a lot of people are going to get sucked into this game. They’re going to spend real money due to gambling addictions, loot boxes, and dopamine-tricking tactics. This game was made unethically to take advantage of people. Every aspect of it was crafted and tweaked to convince players to spend real money because the game will get boring and repetitive without it. You’ll be able to enjoy it for a few hours, and, after that, find you can never enjoy the game the same way again. It’s exactly like chasing a heroin high, and, much like morally bankrupt drug dealers, the first one’s free.
Final Rating: 2/5 – Fun Canceled
The ONLY way to unlock Mario right now is by dropping $20.
Mario Kart Tour is free to download. But if you’ve found yourself addicted to games like Candy Crush, or spend large sums of money in casinos to gamble, steer clear. Mario Kart Tour has been modified or banned in some countries due to the loot box mechanic, which gives you a chance to win a digital item after spending real-world currency. This is gambling, and these games are targeting children.
Mario Kart Tour was designed for one thing. This game will straight-up rob you, and you’ll have nothing real to show for it. After a few hours of playing, it won’t even be fun anymore, buy you’ll still struggle to delete it. If I’m being honest, I played it a lot for this review. I’ll likely keep it on my device. But that’s because I’ll be able to use it just to have one race and forget about rankings, about unlocking anything, about progression through the circuits, and anything else.
If you’re willing to have a game that you have zero plans of paying for or beating, then, sure, play it on your commute or while waiting in line (but only when you have internet access). Otherwise, avoid this game at all costs. It’s a ripoff with over the top freemium mechanics designed to get every penny out of you. It’s one of the most treacherous and evil freemium games I’ve played. If you can’t resist trying to win, Nintendo’s going to take your whole bank account. Unless you’re willing to completely forget this game after a race, forget progression, forget unlocking, and forget achievements, do not even download this. Otherwise, it’ll become your new drug addiction.