Well, it’s February, and you know what this means… The highly-anticipated release of Elden Ri-NOPE! I'm not discussing this yet! I need to sink a good hundred hours into Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin’s collaborative masterpiece before penning my thoughts. Instead, I’m going to drag your attention away from the Lands Between in favour of all things kawaii and button bashy!
Let’s start with Chocobo GP, the brand new racing game based on the adorable beasts and characters from the Final Fantasy series. If the thought of dashing along as a yellow Chocobo wearing rollerblades doesn’t tug the corners of your mouth into a massive smile, then I’m not sure what will! This kart game looks simply adorable. I’m hoping the novelty of racing through classic Final Fantasy locations such as Gold Saucer (from FF VII) and Alexandria (from FF IX) will be enough to distract from my love / hate relationship with kart games.
You see, by their very nature, kart games are not meritocratic. You can rehearse every course to perfection on time trial, only for your seven-year-old cousin (who is in 11th position) to obtain a Bullet Bill and beat you over the finish line at the last second. Many would argue this chaos is, in fact, the best thing about kart games – Mario Kart actively evens the playing field by equipping those in low race positions with better weapons. In this respect, it is the Communist Manifesto of gaming because players receive loot according to their ability.
I wonder how Chocobo GP will strike the balance between fairness to experts and beginner's bedlam in this sequel to 1999’s Chocobo Racing. Either way, with online bracket style tournament sessions allowing up to a whopping 64 players, the game is set to offer a hugely competitive experience.
And the best thing about this? Square Enix are releasing a free to play version called Chocobo GP Lite, and those with the Lite version can still enter the online tournaments (you will just have a limited number of characters and options). This easy accessibility means there are always going to be loads of people online available to play – a fantastic move by Square Enix in my opinion, for when it comes to kart games the more players, the merrier. Or the more, the madder!