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The following impressions are based on the beta version of Mario Kart Tour. At the request of Nintendo, no image or video content of our time with the game will be shared.
In the last two years or so, I have become a kind of gacha monster. After being weaned in the concept via Fire Emblem Heroes, I launched into a series of mobile titles using skinnerist monetization practices, from Granblue Fantasy to BanG Dream (that one, uh, not what it looks like, I swear). It's hard to explain the lure of the gacha for a stranger – is not this a predator model designed to break the house instead of providing reasonable and fair content? Which is … at a certain level. However, besides being a deliciously pleasant vice, there are some calls to the genre: gacha games are quick to play, have consistent updates, can have very free user-friendly templates (depending on the title) , and I'd be lying if the little dopamine I get by pulling another Hector (in Fire Emblem Heroes) is not rewarding on some level.
When Mario Kart Tour was announced, whatever the reason, I thought that everything we could get would not fall in the gacha of the game. But after starting the closed beta and realized I was playing again dice with RNG gods, I felt almost stupid to think otherwise. Of course, they would do that. And, if the product was solid, I would not let go, if gacha systems were well implemented. Anyway…
As a title for mobile, Mario Kart Tour is exactly what you could imagine when the concept of Mario Kart Mobile is presented to them: simplified, simple and diluted. The acceleration is automatic and asks the player to turn / derive the kart and throw objects if necessary. The races are reduced to two rounds to take only a few bites of your day. There is a standard reserve but heavy characters of the series to go. As a game, it is remarkable for its remarkable appearance: a company renowned for its audacity and daring offers a beautiful experience of the cookie-cutter.
But while Super Mario Run was able to tinker with the home series and mobile formatting to create something new, and Fire Emblem Heroes had managed to distill the central mechanisms into a simplified microcosm of basic games, Mario Kart Tour did not really do not either. The kart racing looks like a pale imitation of the real deal, without reiterating or innovating the ideas that the series has built to date. In fact, all the thought and nuances seem to be made to the monetization system, which … well, let's move on to that in a second. We need to talk about how the game is played first.
The handling of the Karts in the game is pretty good – the level of flipping needed to slip in a drift is sometimes a little blurry, and there have been several occasions where I shot an object without wanting it, but hey, it's a beta. The game works pretty well and at a good resolution, with a clear user interface and services – if nothing else, Nintendo has clearly determined the production value for games like these. Yet the races themselves feel … boring. Mario Kart has always resided at this comfortable crossroads between skill and luck, being both more entertaining than chaotic in a series of Smash Bros. and more technically manageable than a part of Mario Party. But here, we feel more superficial, less demanding. Maybe it's just because I won almost every race without trying. (At first I thought I was against other people, but they turned out to be an AI using other people's configurations – also weird.) But I did not felt the usual tense thrills of a Mario Kart track – it was much more like a sunday. drive, just a little plain and winding.
Almost everything – characters, objects, karts, etc. – is extracted from Mario Kart 8 or other wholesale games, with basically nothing new added. It is unusual for Nintendo to draw such an asset so brazenly, considering that they tend to put at least a little more effort into their mobile titles. Not to mention that the characters feel pretty interchangeable – the only discernable difference (apart from the scarcity and, therefore, probably the aptitude) is that some characters, go-karts and gliders give better results on some tracks. Luigi will tear up the dust in his mansion, for example. Other times, the boost is more arbitrary. But why these strange increases (parallel to a somewhat strange system) instead of really different karts with improved statistics and clear advantages / disadvantages?
The answer to this question brings us back to the gacha. You shoot for the three things mentioned above (characters, karts, gliders) of "The Pipe", a really worrying name for a gacha merchandise delivery system, if any. Even at a glance, The Pipe stands out from other Gacha systems by what is known as a drawbox – a fixed lottery where you are guaranteed to have a number of different numbers. items in the complete stock of the box (in this case, 100). As a general rule, Drawboxes in gacha games are reserved for events, where they distribute a limited number of limited items as part of a larger pool of common but useful drops. As a general rule, you can reset the contents of the draw box (usually after extracting all the limited rare items) in order to use them again. So that's the case here, where you can reset the pipe at any time after you've pulled it once. Theoretically, if you manage to accumulate enough premium currency (Emeralds), you are guaranteed to get the falls described in the 100 rolls.
This is the first time I've seen such a strange mix of gacha and drawbox in a game, and corroborated by a gacha aficionado friend who has never heard of such a ploy. The problem comes from the fact that, as she pointed out, you can very easily be encouraged to spend money to burn the chests and get your items secured, thus reinforcing the spirit of "pay-to-win" on free wallets. Combined with an endurance system that only gives you a few races to play at a time, the game seems to want you to get stung a little later – even if it's the beta and you can not even spend it money for the moment.
The unusual gacha might be more excusable if the items you were shooting were more interesting and rewarding, but they do not really feel like that. I managed very early to shoot Yoshi (my favorite Mario character) and his cart, and although I certainly enjoy using it with those that I had acquired, that does not matter to me. seemed not really tangible, especially since, again. , all artistic assets are reused. It filled me with a strange sense of uselessness: the races are not particularly fun, pulling the characters is not appealing, and we still do not know what kind of content the content that the game will receive in the future. For me, at least, there is not much to offer here.
All this is exacerbated by the fact that you can not ignore that you can play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on your Switch if you're really looking forward to a Mario Kart show of hands, and that's about all of the best way imaginable. Controls, options, personalization and respect for your wallet: everything is to his advantage, and in comparison, Tour does not feel up to it. Until now, all other versions of Nintendo on mobile have seemed interesting, but it's the first time I feel really disengaged with any of their titles.
Also, when you try to start the game and re-check some items for impressions, the process will not start. But you know. Beta.
Obviously, we are not yet at full release, and we still do not know how the current models will fit into the full game. But I feel that effective implementation of monetization will not make things much better. As a mobile title, Mario Kart Tour is the quintessence of what gacha critics have been accusing the genre for years: a discreet imitator of reality that allows you more to put coins in a slot than to actually have fun on the circuit.
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