played this out of sheer boredom and curiosity and man oh man this isn't even near as bad as I thought it would be. of course being a mobile game there are some extreme liberties and mechanical gameplay cuts that had to be made. of course it doesn't play like a traditional Mario Kart game, but the sort of auto-drive thing the game has going on gives it its own unique quirks that I liked more than I thought it would.
i for one am really taken aback by the amount of content in this game - it is daunting. the miniature 3-or-so-week long rotating battle pass system gives you plenty of room and time to complete everything they present you. not to mention you are CONSTANTLY unlocking things. unfortunately yes, there is a gacha, and yet it's probably the most lightweight gacha I've ever dealt with. it's not immune to having absurd 0.0001% drop rates like your usual fare but Tour gives you a plethora of ways to unlock things. you have the traditional battle pass, the green coin shop and the regular coin shop, and of course the premium currency gacha, and you generate quite the sizeable income of all these currencies as you play, and at a shockingly faster rate than what I've seen from mobile games of this caliber. even if you don't like gacha like me, the sheer amount of things you unlock within a period of time makes the gacha seem incredibly insignificant.
while the gameplay is in a sense just Mario Kart on autopilot, the points and items system grant it a bit of levity and prevents this from being a truly shallow experience. not just the ability to hold 3 items and even being granted a "frenzy" if you manage to hold 3 of the same (like getting a 777 in a slot machine), but some of the new items are interesting and I hope to see them in future titles, particularly the Warp Rings from SMG. when looking at gameplay i kinda just assumed the point system was a bit arbitrary and pointless but it really becomes this interesting skill check that ticks rapidly and incentivizes you to play a bit more skillfully, as larger point sums grant you battle pass unlocks even faster.
Mario Kart Tour is definitely odd, there's no denying that. it's a weird, slippery controlling Mario Kart that runs on autopilot that somehow grants you a bit more control than you (or at least I) would initially assume at first glance. it presents its own gimmicks as a way of giving it a real identity as a true mobile game, for better or worse. as far as Mario Kart goes, there's no denying it's a weird outlier and you either hate it or think "yeah this is alright." as far as mobile games go, it manages to stand above the huge pile of content-less, gameplay-less, money-leeching schlock you're more prone to seeing.
UPDATE 9/2/2022 : the gacha is being removed next month. the average rating for this better rise
i for one am really taken aback by the amount of content in this game - it is daunting. the miniature 3-or-so-week long rotating battle pass system gives you plenty of room and time to complete everything they present you. not to mention you are CONSTANTLY unlocking things. unfortunately yes, there is a gacha, and yet it's probably the most lightweight gacha I've ever dealt with. it's not immune to having absurd 0.0001% drop rates like your usual fare but Tour gives you a plethora of ways to unlock things. you have the traditional battle pass, the green coin shop and the regular coin shop, and of course the premium currency gacha, and you generate quite the sizeable income of all these currencies as you play, and at a shockingly faster rate than what I've seen from mobile games of this caliber. even if you don't like gacha like me, the sheer amount of things you unlock within a period of time makes the gacha seem incredibly insignificant.
while the gameplay is in a sense just Mario Kart on autopilot, the points and items system grant it a bit of levity and prevents this from being a truly shallow experience. not just the ability to hold 3 items and even being granted a "frenzy" if you manage to hold 3 of the same (like getting a 777 in a slot machine), but some of the new items are interesting and I hope to see them in future titles, particularly the Warp Rings from SMG. when looking at gameplay i kinda just assumed the point system was a bit arbitrary and pointless but it really becomes this interesting skill check that ticks rapidly and incentivizes you to play a bit more skillfully, as larger point sums grant you battle pass unlocks even faster.
Mario Kart Tour is definitely odd, there's no denying that. it's a weird, slippery controlling Mario Kart that runs on autopilot that somehow grants you a bit more control than you (or at least I) would initially assume at first glance. it presents its own gimmicks as a way of giving it a real identity as a true mobile game, for better or worse. as far as Mario Kart goes, there's no denying it's a weird outlier and you either hate it or think "yeah this is alright." as far as mobile games go, it manages to stand above the huge pile of content-less, gameplay-less, money-leeching schlock you're more prone to seeing.
UPDATE 9/2/2022 : the gacha is being removed next month. the average rating for this better rise