Mario Kart Tour

Hello fellow epic gamers,

My name is The Noah, and this is my blog.

Specifically, this is my review of Mario Kart Tour.

dada-da-DA-DAA!

I think the game is fine. I mean it looks like a multiplayer mobile game with a minimally laggy online mode and a "race against friends mode" that's coming soon (I'll believe it when I see it). All that is fine, the graphics are better than one might expect for a game that runs on potato phones like mine, and because the tracks don't have to be as intricate they have the ability to make a lot more tracks than they do for their console titles (and potentially recycle "retro" tracks from older games). 

The controls are a bit rough and don't give the player as much freedom as I'd like, but it's a game for casuals, and it still FEELS like a Mario Kart game more so than any other mobile game has. That's what matters. It's Mario Kart for your phone, and that's pretty... fine.

But it's not GREAT. It's not really even good. Once you start thinking about the premise "Mario Kart for your phone" it seems like it should be AMAZING. When people heard that Nintendo made a mobile Mario Kart they got record downloads beating out Pokemon GO, and making headlines... But it's not good. 

I've sunk less than two hours into the game total and I might never play it again and feel fine about it. The game is clearly built around micro-transactions, lootboxes, and $60/year subscriptions just to unlock standard game mechanics like 200cc, which is... scummy. It's scummy to build a mobile game that way. Also having local multiplayer at launch would EASILY have made this game a much bigger cultural phenomenon than it turned out to be. Trading out the scummy money grubbing tactics for simple ADs and an AD removal system would leave everyone talking about Mario Kart again in an infinitely positive light, but as it stands the cultural reaction hasn't been comparable to Pokemon GO in any way.

Some people are outraged about this, but I'm not. It's a free mobile game that didn't live up to it's potential. Nothing to write a whole blog post about.

I feel like there's an analogy in there somewhere about thinking something is kind of okay until you realize how amazing it could have been. Like the Last Jedi, Hunger Games Mocking Jay part 2, and Chick-Fil-A's new Mac and Cheese. Maybe I care about Mario Kart Tour because I want things to be as good as they can be. Maybe I don't really care, and I'm just writing about the first thing that came to my mind because I keep throwing out half-finished posts that I'm not happy with. This post is terrible. If I write a post that knows it's terrible does that make it less terrible. Are my posts living up to their potential?... Am I living up to my potential?

...

Why am I not living up to my potential? I'm trying my hardest, but I feel like I'm driving on ice. My wheels are converting gas into rotational kinetic energy, but I'm not "moving". So physically I'm not doing work. Putting forth effort to get no results isn't working...

    This. 

            isn't. 

                    working.

...

Thanks for reading... I am trying.

~The Noah.