Welcome to my fourth Review, on Mario Kart DS. This game is rated E for everyone. This game is being called the Mario Kart fan dream. Does the game live up to that statement? You are about to find out. This game will be rated on a scale of 0-10 because I felt like it. Difficulty is not included in the final score. On with the Review.
Story: N/A
There is basically no story. Mario Kart games aren't supposed to have stories, which is why this catagory gets no score instead of a 0. It's basically just 12 characters from the Mario Universe getting together for a free-for-all race (and battle).
Gameplay: 10
There's nothing wrong here. You basically just choose a character and a kart. These are divided into three weight classes, Heavy, Medium, and Light. The weight effects how well you can push other karts around. Then pick a track and race. There are a few racing techniques in this game you should know. One is drifting, you use this when you go around corners. You hold down R and press left and right until the sparks turn from none to blue and then to orange. When the sparks are orange you let go to get a mini turbo boost. The next one is snaking, which is my personal favorite. It's basically just performing multiple power slides (drifts) on a straight path. This can really help once you master it. Another one is jumping, which returns after the absence of it in Double Dash! You simply press R to jump, which is helpful when driving over water, mud, or grass. The last technique is the rocket start, which can only be used at the beginning of a race. To do it you hold down A in the countdown when the 2 is at its largest to get a good start. However, if you hold down A too long, your kart will explode, leaving your racer in the dust.
Now for modes. The main mode is Grand Prix, where you choose a CC difficulty and cup and then race against seven other racers. What place you finish in is how many points you earn. More points mean you will get a better overall score and place. Get first place in cups to unlock new characters and tracks. The cups are divided into two main series, Retro and Nitro. In Retro you race tracks available from the SNES, N64, GBA, and GCN Mario Karts. In Nitro you race all new tracks. The Nitro series contains the Mushroom, Flower, Star, and Special cups, while Retro contains the Shell, Banana, Leaf, and Lightning cups. The Grand Prix has items that you can obtain while racing, such as Mushrooms, which give you a turbo boost, and shells, which you can use to topple other racers.
Now for Time Trials mode. In this you race a track by yourself for a good time. After that you may go back and race your ghost for a better time. If you do well enough, you can unlock the Staff ghost times to race, which are all very difficult to beat.
They have added a new Mission mode, which has six levels each with eight missions and a boss. Missions ask you to do things such as drive through five rings or collect all fifteen coins. The boss battles are very interesting, one asking you to use Mushrooms to knock Big Bully off a platform and into lava. If you do well enough on all these missions something good might happen...
The last mode besides multiplayer is Battle Mode, which has you choose a racer and an arena. Two of the arenas are Pipe Plaza from Double Dash!! and Block Fort from Mario Kart 64. The rest are brand new. In the arena you either try to collect as many Shines as you can to win or use items to pop people's balloons. In Balloon Battle, you can use the Mic to inflate your balloons at the start.
Multiplayer is, well... you play against other people... duh. Oh, and there is Vs. Mode which is basically choose a track and race once.
Fun Factor!: 10
This game is so much fun!!! Items, shortcuts,
and fantasy tracks make this much more fun than the average racing game.
This game is addictive, you won't want to take your hands off it until
you've unlocked
every kart and racer and explored every
track thoroughly! (I beat the game in three days and unlocked everything
because I couldn't take my hands off it!) These tracks are original, featuring
jumps, loops, and lots of terrain, which makes it very fun.
Music: 8
This is great, happy music. Not something
I would listen to all day. I really liked the Rainbow Road music, although
I think the Rainbow Road music quality has slipped. Rainbow music is supposed
to be loud and
victorious. Not this one. Only the
beginning was victorious, the rest was just nice "colorful" music. And
of course the Retro tracks retain the same music they had 3-13 years ago,
except the GCN courses, which they of course had to tone down a bit.
Sound: 9
The sound is superb, the voices are
very real, and the sound of driving over different textures such as water
are realistic, too. The only thing that could have been better was the
explosions. They sounded kinda
fake just like previous Mario Kart
games. I thought the drifting sound was also good. Not much to say here.
Graphics: 8
Ok, these are great graphics and look perfect, vivid, and colorful. The GCN cources also look very close to the real thing considering that there taking 128-bit graphics and putting them on something that can only handle 64-bit graphics. But take a look at the trees. Gasp! What do we have here... The limbs of the trees look paper thin from the side and look like, well, paper. It's not that they're paper thin but they look the same on all sides because they follow your movements. Why couldn't they make them look REAL 3D like in Super Mario 64 DS? Well you're probably not gonna notice it unless you pay full attention to the courses like me.
Difficulty: 5
Perfect difficulty, not too easy and
not too hard. You can choose your own CC, from 50, 100, 150, and Mirror,
which correspond to easy, medium, hard, and very hard. You can choose the
difficulty of the computer when battling and Vs, but they really should
have made Hard in Vs, well... hard. I always choose hard and guess what?
At the end I'm half a lap ahead of the guy in second! They obviously thought
people would be bad at
Vs. or I'm really good.
Wi-Fi: 7
Mario Kart is the first NDS game to
have Wi-Fi, with which you can play people over the Internet. Basically
you have to set it up and then go to Wi-Fi Connection and search for players.
You can choose to race people in your country, worldwide, people with the
same skills as you, or friends. To battle friends you must first register
their friend code and save them to your friend roster. When racing you
are limited to four players (probably to reduce time waiting for opponents).
You are also limited to 20 tracks instead of the regular 32 (probably to
make chances of two people choosing the same track higher so people aren't
always choosing
different tracks.) You choose a track
and the track with the most votes win. Or it's random if everyone chooses
a different track. Your wins and loses are saved to your records. What's
bad is that if you turn off your DS while in the first race it counts as
four losses because you didn't race all the tracks. It's bad because if
you've got something important to do they're almost forcing you to play
anyway. Unless you don't care about your records. Another con is that if
you don't race friends you can never race that person again unless you
find them again out of a million plus people or you somehow get their friend
code. One more con is that they got rid of some good tracks in Wi-Fi mode,
like Airship Fortress, Waluigi Pinball, and Banshee Boardwalk. What were
they thinking?!
Karts: 6
Ok, these karts are very original, maybe TOO original. One of Yoshi's Kart's is called Cucumber. What does that have to do with Yoshi?! Also they should have had an unlockable kart that was the ultimate kart like the Parade Kart in Double Dash!! I just think they should have had something to do with that character. Each kart has six stats you should pay attention to: Acceleration, Speed, Weight, Drift, Handling, and Items, which affects how good the items you get are.
Characters: 9
They made excellent character choices. You start out with Mario, Luigi, Wario, Bowser, Toad, Yoshi, DK, and Peach. You can then unlock four more.
Overall: 9.5
This game is revoulutionary, perhaps the best in the series, offering a balance between old and new tracks. You can play with people across the world. This really is the Mario Kart fan's dream come true. Get this game today!
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