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(He/Him/His)
So I blacked out earlier and when I came to I had spent entirely too much money buying two Mario Kart Live sets to Kart Marios in my living room. For those who don't know, Mario Kart Live is an AR game where you spend $100 to get a lil' RC car to play actual Mario Kart in your actual house/apartment. Like, real Mario Kart on your Switch, with red shells and mushroom boosts and everything. Here's us playing it (CW: My feet):
This shiz is wild.
My brain kind of couldn't deal with it at first. It feels so similar to a regular Mario Kart that I kept forgetting I was playing in a physical space. I almost barreled straight into my husband's foot until I reminded myself that it was not a video game foot. There's also amazing trickery going on, where the actual RC car is puttering along kind of slowly, but the audiovisual experience makes you think you're going a lot faster. It's by far the most impressive AR game ever made.
It's also not perfect. I got really excited when the Karts were able to drive under our couch (they can drive under any space that's 4" or higher), but the connection got really finicky under there, and unplayably laggy at times. It took us a while to find a good balance between a track that was compelling to play while maintaining decent latency. We probably spent more time building than racing. Though figuring out how to make a good track within our limitations got real compelling after a while. I feel like I learned a lot about how to lead a player around a track (the video above is an early draft, so it's not our best work). If you like level design you'll like this game.
Still, the buy-in is huge. It's a really good purchase for me, specifically, because we have two Switches and tend to host a lot of get-togethers. As you'd expect, multiplayer is exponentially more exciting than single player. I imagine most folks who can only get one Kart will probably end up shuffling it off to the closet after a fun weekend.
This shiz is wild.
My brain kind of couldn't deal with it at first. It feels so similar to a regular Mario Kart that I kept forgetting I was playing in a physical space. I almost barreled straight into my husband's foot until I reminded myself that it was not a video game foot. There's also amazing trickery going on, where the actual RC car is puttering along kind of slowly, but the audiovisual experience makes you think you're going a lot faster. It's by far the most impressive AR game ever made.
It's also not perfect. I got really excited when the Karts were able to drive under our couch (they can drive under any space that's 4" or higher), but the connection got really finicky under there, and unplayably laggy at times. It took us a while to find a good balance between a track that was compelling to play while maintaining decent latency. We probably spent more time building than racing. Though figuring out how to make a good track within our limitations got real compelling after a while. I feel like I learned a lot about how to lead a player around a track (the video above is an early draft, so it's not our best work). If you like level design you'll like this game.
Still, the buy-in is huge. It's a really good purchase for me, specifically, because we have two Switches and tend to host a lot of get-togethers. As you'd expect, multiplayer is exponentially more exciting than single player. I imagine most folks who can only get one Kart will probably end up shuffling it off to the closet after a fun weekend.