You can Run out of Things to do in Mario Kart Tour

I am sure
you all know what I think of Mario Kart Tour, but I am afraid it only gets
worse for any loyal fans of Nintendo’s latest mobile creation.

Mario
Kart Tour – What’s Wrong Now?

Besides
the many problems I stated in my review, the more I play Mario Kart Tour the
more problems throw themselves at my feet. The latest being that once you
complete the 10 cups available, you can use your tickets to skip the wait
timers for the next six. After these six, you’ll end up exactly where I am, and
that’s doing nothing.

They released Mario Kart Tour without multiplayer or an arcade mode where you can choose your own tracks, cars and characters. Instead, you are forced down a trophy road system which has no new content coming for at least the next 7 days. So before anyone leaps to the defence of Mario Kart Tour, what am I supposed to do for the next seven days?

Every
game has teething problems when it is launched, but Mario Kart is no ordinary
game. It has a budget bigger than most mobile games, it has an audience larger
than most mobile games and more importantly it’s had years of experience
making good Mario Kart games. To release a title, with 16 cups (with only three
tracks per cup) just screams lazy.

Most players will binge through content, not knowing that they will have nothing to do for the immediate future. It’s not like they released Mario Kart Tour with multiplayer, which would be too much of course!

If you would have told me they would release any Mario Kart game without multiplayer, I would have laughed. I remember playing multiplayer Mario Kart of my Gameboy Advance, yes you needed a special wire, but they included it from launch!

What Else
is Wrong?

Besides
the worst controls of any mobile driving game ever, there are several other
features that have jumped out at me since the review. I am sure that because
there is no multiplayer yet, that the single-player campaign is full of bots.
This doesn’t sound like a problem until you realise it randomly generates the
names to make you think you are playing other people.

I mean, why do I need to be tricked into facing other people? For years I have raced against Bowser and Luigi (Luigi not included in MKT) and have had no problem in doing so. The more I think about it, the more I am sure that I am racing robots with human names. Why else would there be the traditional 50, 100 and 150cc speeds if it also didn’t include difficulty?

Another feature I noticed is they make it damn near impossible to get five stars in certain levels. If you have certain characters and cars, you earn more XP on several tracks. Which means you will have to pay to collect more vehicles because otherwise, you won’t be able to get five stars on every level.

What
Needs to Change?

A player
enjoying a game is a subjective experience. You will have some people loving
the one-touch controls and landscape mode, others will want full control and
portrait. All that matters is “is there enough content to keep the players
playing?” The answer to this question is a big fat no!

There is
not enough to do in Mario Kart Tour to keep me entertained. Not only
content-wise with such a bare-bones approach to the Mario Kart series. But also
gameplay, I have never had a driving game rely so little on my skill that I
don’t even try and I win.

There
needs to be more involvement from the user to make driving in MKT enjoyable.
There also needs to be more things to do, like multiplayer, arcade mode and
things to unlock which can’t just be bought.

Mario
Kart Tour needs to become just like every other Mario Kart game to become a
success, but I am sure that won’t happen. I am sure that Nintendo will wash
their hands with this game and spend as little money as possible bringing
it to an acceptable level.