I may be the first person who actually doesn't find this game to be similar to Mario Kart. Sure you have the racing aspect of it and the "power ups" but really, I've always found it difficult to play Mario Kart for reasons unknown to man and I was able to pick this game up and just play. The controls were very easy to learn even without a tutorial. It just felt really natural in my hand. I noticed that a lot of people liked playing in third person but for me the first person aspect was very natural and just "made sense".
While the gameplay doesn't necessarily "make sense" in a real world aspect I definitely found the controls very easy and the flow of the game was very natural. You can feel the differences each car brings to the gameplay. The strategies in the are easy to pickup and for people who just want to play without thinking too much the game made it easy as well.
The campaign mode allowed the opportunity to enjoy playing the same races because of the different achievements. The star system made me want to try again and again until I hit that number one spot.
The multiplayer is a blast.
