Recently, Mario Kart Tour came out for all phones. Personally, I had pre-ordered the game on the app store because I was excited for it. I had high hopes and faith that it was going to be a strong addition to the mobile gaming scene. 

Going into the game wasn’t bad; the tutorial stage did a nice job of introducing the main concept of the game, and it showed the two styles you’re able to drive your car in. Both styles are easy to manage and the use depends on the personal preference of the player.

Having manual drift on gives you access to an ‘ultra mini turbo boost’, but at the cost of less overall control to the kart. When manual drift is off, it provides racers with greater handling with no access to the ‘ultra mini turbo boost’. 

There aren’t many things that are possible in the game because it is a mobile game, so as expected it’s not going to be super jam-packed with things to do. There are many things Mario Kart Tour did right in my opinion, but at the same time, there are things that could be better. There is one tour about every three weeks with 16 cups, all with three races and one challenge race. Covering races is as you’d expect it’s very similar to Mario Kart but instead of three laps, it’s only two. 

Tour has a good concept but it feels repetitive. Furthermore, the games don’t last that long.

The whole random chance to draw karts, gliders, and racers from the ‘pipe’ is an overused concept. Getting “rubies” to spend for the pipe is difficult because unless you have the Gold Pass, which costs $5 a month, you only get them every five unlockable gifts and by completing challenges you can win two “rubies” per challenge that could last for about 30 minutes. 

It feels like there should be more ways to get gems. There’s also a cap on how many points you can obtain per day to upgrade karts. Don’t even get me started on the 300 coin daily cap during the first tour. 

During the time of its debut, the game had a big hype surrounding the release, but now that it’s out, it’s just there.

Mario Kart tour is a fun game, but it’s just lackluster now. It’s been a couple of months since it has been released and honestly, things have really plateaued. 

There’s a fairly decent amount of variety within the game for characters, karts, and gliders but it’s really all the same if you think about it.