Kirby Air Ride excels as a party game but primarily played with a set of house rules. Kirby Air Ride is a solid racing game but excels in City Trial, a really fun scavenger hunt game with plenty of possible surprises and outcomes that it can be played back to back without getting repetitive.

Having played very little of Air Ride's single player, there are parts of the game that can be obtuse or difficult to complete. New players may struggle to find their way around City Trial, which gives more experienced players a massive edge. While the game provides a variety of vehicle options (and the option to play as Meta Knight and Dedede), the variation leads to roughly three viable choices depending on the task, or giving the game to whoever has collected the Dragoon or Hydra Stars. Definitely worth picking up it can be found cheap and can be brought to a party.

Man, I feel like I'd enjoy this a lot more if I had played this as a kid with my friends. As it stands I feel like everything in the Air Ride races is kind of slippery, City Trial leaves me wondering what the heck's going on and/or wishing I could just explore as Kirby without having to mess around with vehicles, and I'm not even sure what's going on in that top-down game. I give it a try every time I feel like I want to Understand the hype, but I feel like this is the sort of game that's good but not for me necessarily.

Music's good, though.