Positives:
- The tracks are fun to race on.
- Controls well.
- Despite me not liking the look of the karts, there is a good amount of customization.
Negatives:
- Campaign is inconsistent in pacing with cup length.
- Big item pool with too many items that lacked impact or that overlapped with each other.
- Online is dead. Not the game's fault, but it does remove one core aspect of replayability.
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All-Star Fruit Racing has a pretty clever mechanic of combing fruits like a juicer for specific power-ups. 1 colour of fruit is specialized in one department like boosting- or attacking, and combining them with each other will also combine the effects. In theory this sounds really fun! ...But a lot of power-ups tend to either be insignificant or overlap with each other. There are a lot of power-ups that just home in on the person in front of you, so I didn't even use the majority since I felt it was pointless. What makes this even worse is that every racer has a unique all-star move, but they too overlap with regular power-ups--specifically the ones that home in on enemies. And this is probably just me, but I also felt they didn't really make much of an impact. It is a shame because it definitely is the main selling point of the game, and it wasn't as good as I hoped it to be.
But aside from that, it was actually a pretty fun kart racer! The tracks all look and play fun, all being very colourful and different from each other. While it took me some time, the drifting eventually clicked with me and was a major aspect of getting the fastest times in the Time Trial mode, since it functions almost identical to snaking in Mario Kart DS specifically. Time Trial mode was also where I spent most of my time and where I had most of my enjoyment. I would love to say that the career mode entertained me as much too, but it sometimes has pacing issues where a cup would be around 6 different courses or have a specific long course take 5 laps. Racing on a single course for 9 minutes while in a cup simply isn't fun. All of this took me around 6 hours, and that was unfortunately also when I was mostly done with the game. I hate to be this person, but online multiplayer... unless you have friends, it simply won't happen in the current day and age. And that's definitely something to take into consideration when thinking about buying this game, since the enjoyment gained out of the main game is entirely based on what you desire from a game like this.
- The tracks are fun to race on.
- Controls well.
- Despite me not liking the look of the karts, there is a good amount of customization.
Negatives:
- Campaign is inconsistent in pacing with cup length.
- Big item pool with too many items that lacked impact or that overlapped with each other.
- Online is dead. Not the game's fault, but it does remove one core aspect of replayability.
-----------------------------------
All-Star Fruit Racing has a pretty clever mechanic of combing fruits like a juicer for specific power-ups. 1 colour of fruit is specialized in one department like boosting- or attacking, and combining them with each other will also combine the effects. In theory this sounds really fun! ...But a lot of power-ups tend to either be insignificant or overlap with each other. There are a lot of power-ups that just home in on the person in front of you, so I didn't even use the majority since I felt it was pointless. What makes this even worse is that every racer has a unique all-star move, but they too overlap with regular power-ups--specifically the ones that home in on enemies. And this is probably just me, but I also felt they didn't really make much of an impact. It is a shame because it definitely is the main selling point of the game, and it wasn't as good as I hoped it to be.
But aside from that, it was actually a pretty fun kart racer! The tracks all look and play fun, all being very colourful and different from each other. While it took me some time, the drifting eventually clicked with me and was a major aspect of getting the fastest times in the Time Trial mode, since it functions almost identical to snaking in Mario Kart DS specifically. Time Trial mode was also where I spent most of my time and where I had most of my enjoyment. I would love to say that the career mode entertained me as much too, but it sometimes has pacing issues where a cup would be around 6 different courses or have a specific long course take 5 laps. Racing on a single course for 9 minutes while in a cup simply isn't fun. All of this took me around 6 hours, and that was unfortunately also when I was mostly done with the game. I hate to be this person, but online multiplayer... unless you have friends, it simply won't happen in the current day and age. And that's definitely something to take into consideration when thinking about buying this game, since the enjoyment gained out of the main game is entirely based on what you desire from a game like this.