Glen Atwell
Shaun InguanzoMario Kart DS
July 31st 2006 11:44
Category: No Category
Mario Kart DS reacquaints us with the classic game play of the Mario Kart line and it also retains its solid replay-ability and addictiveness value.
The game features many of the same elements that have made Mario kart popular over the years and several new features.
Features that have been kept from the various titles include the ability to jump or hop with your kart and skid and create blue or gold sparks. Item usage remains the same, pickup spinning question mark boxes and a roulette will start at the top of your screen to randomly choose the item you have acquired and using it is as simple as pressing the item button. Speed pads, jumps, various environmental traps and so on all feature in the many tracks available for racing; the chain chomps, cars and trucks and Monty-moles being some of my favourites. One complaint with the item selections is that depending on how you are ranked the roulette is much more likely to give you less useful items if you are ranked highly, this was a feature of the previous games but it seems to happen more frequently. This is not necessarily a bad thing except when you have blue shell after blue shell collide with you; the really good items tend to come up way more frequently for those coming behind than in previous games.
Along with these old features the game sports many new: the ability to gain a small boost when releasing the skid button while making gold sparks; the obvious inclusion of the double screens, the bottom allowing you to watch a map of the race with constant updates on all the other racers; the ability to blow up your balloons in VS battles using the mic; a bunch of new characters and items to use; finally, the new option of completing missions such as collection a certain number of coins within a time limit which, along with completing races and other activities unlock new features, characters and courses.
The game brings courses from the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Nintendo Game Cube and Game Boy Advanced versions of the game all together in nicely rendered graphics, though obviously not as good as those on the NGC. This I think is a great feature (though I guess a bit lazy) as it allows you to revisit old tracks.
Finally a note about the multiplayer functionality, it is brilliant. You can connect locally with DS’s near you, play simple mode with people who don’t have cards and play on the net with Nintendo WiFi. This is where the game really shines as it is a far better game when other people are involved as with Nintendo’s many other “party” games. Find out more here.
Alskreek, out.
The game features many of the same elements that have made Mario kart popular over the years and several new features.
Features that have been kept from the various titles include the ability to jump or hop with your kart and skid and create blue or gold sparks. Item usage remains the same, pickup spinning question mark boxes and a roulette will start at the top of your screen to randomly choose the item you have acquired and using it is as simple as pressing the item button. Speed pads, jumps, various environmental traps and so on all feature in the many tracks available for racing; the chain chomps, cars and trucks and Monty-moles being some of my favourites. One complaint with the item selections is that depending on how you are ranked the roulette is much more likely to give you less useful items if you are ranked highly, this was a feature of the previous games but it seems to happen more frequently. This is not necessarily a bad thing except when you have blue shell after blue shell collide with you; the really good items tend to come up way more frequently for those coming behind than in previous games.
Along with these old features the game sports many new: the ability to gain a small boost when releasing the skid button while making gold sparks; the obvious inclusion of the double screens, the bottom allowing you to watch a map of the race with constant updates on all the other racers; the ability to blow up your balloons in VS battles using the mic; a bunch of new characters and items to use; finally, the new option of completing missions such as collection a certain number of coins within a time limit which, along with completing races and other activities unlock new features, characters and courses.
The game brings courses from the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Nintendo Game Cube and Game Boy Advanced versions of the game all together in nicely rendered graphics, though obviously not as good as those on the NGC. This I think is a great feature (though I guess a bit lazy) as it allows you to revisit old tracks.
Finally a note about the multiplayer functionality, it is brilliant. You can connect locally with DS’s near you, play simple mode with people who don’t have cards and play on the net with Nintendo WiFi. This is where the game really shines as it is a far better game when other people are involved as with Nintendo’s many other “party” games. Find out more here.
Alskreek, out.
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