I too have been playing quite a few mobile games as of late, and regularly play Mario Kart Tour. As in pretty much daily.
I genuinely think that the points and combo system is one of the greatest additions to Mario Kart gameplay in recent times. It's very satisfying to end up 1st with a Nonstop Combo, especially now that the game clearly tells you that. Reverse tracks were long overdue and I liked the return of Mission Mode through Bonus Challenges, many of them are well designed and fun. I don't even mind the amount of clones in the roster, I totally dig Yoshi (Egg Hunt) and if anything we had the return of Birdo and Diddy Kong, plus Hammer Bro and his other Bros are finally playable along with Pauline and... the Roving Racers (lolcheapness, they chose the easiest to implement original characters from Odyssey).
With that being said, apart from the disunctional controls and multiplayer, there is a huge, terrible issue: the monetization system. The Gold Pass is obviously the only one players are supposed to get, as is the only one with "sane" pricing, and that sanity is the price of Mario Kart 8 every year. It also paywalls 200cc, even in multiplayer lol.
The driver/kart/glider packs are a cruel joke, with Gold Dry Bones being paywalled behind a pack that costs as much as Mario Kart 7...
And then we have yet another gacha system. Granted, we can argue how Trading Card Games are gacha before gacha was cool, but at least the cards are tangible, this one is literally paying for a chance to get an immaterial object that can be enjoyed exclusively in this game. And you have to pay a lot, too: three digits of $ to empty a 100 items pipe, which is needed if one of the spotlight items you want is at the end of the pipe. And if you want a noncommon item that is in the pipes but is not a spotlight item? Good luck, you'll need it. And you'll likely need a lot of $$$ too. Granted, with a Gold Pass you get a lot of rubies to empty the pipe just by playing the game, and I got my Egg Hunt Yoshi without spending a dime, not even for the Gold Pass, but nonetheless those d/k/g packs and ruby packs are there to squeeze every dollar out of the whales, and it's risky, as even people who definitely can't afford being whales might spend a fortune there. And gacha is still eerily close to gambling.
If anything, Mario Kart Tour made me rediscover and reevaluate Super Mario Run, a little mobile game from Nintendo that sadly was review bombed by the players courtesy of its clear-as-petroleum premium pricing model (it rather looked like a fully free to play game instead of a fully paywalled game) with a price that was also pretty much double that of most premium mobile games. At the time it looked like a horrible deal, and it probably was. And still it's basically half the price of the cheapest of those weekly D/K/G packs in Mario Kart Tour lol. And Super Mario Run is a lot of fun too
although maybe I'm praising just because I love Yoshi and in that sense the game is pure bliss
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So long story short: yes, I like some aspects of Mario Kart Tour and still play it, but I don't want to ignore how the monetization model is disgusting at best to the point of being grotesque in some aspects, I'd love for there to finally be a general regulation against this gambling-like gacha at least.