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System:
Nintendo DS
Genre:
Racing
ESRB Rating:
RP
Release Date:
1- 2005
Racing
ESRB Rating:
RP
Release Date:
1- 2005
Publisher:
Nintendo
Developer:
Nintendo
Nintendo
Developer:
Nintendo
CUBE128
Published:1- 2005
User Views: 5172
User Replies: 0
Accompanying the ravishing graphics and extremely fun level designs is great sound quality. There is not one sound coming through my DS headphones and into my ears that I don’t want to hear while playing this game, everything from Peach’s unforgettable piercing cry when being annihilated by a bob-omb to the lovely music coming from these levels. Playing this game has really made me come to appreciate the Mario franchise even more; pick up a game that has a short, red plumber in it and you can almost always expect to be unconsciously blasting those melodies in your personal radio. This game has helped me realize why most crown Nintendo with the title of establishing the standard for audio content in videogames.
Enough with the graphics, levels, and sound; how good are all those aspects if the game isn’t even fun to play? Mario Kart DS doesn’t catch the short end of the stick here either. This game plays like creamy chocolate milk: drink it up and it always goes down smoothly. At last year's E3, Nintendo offered a Mario Kart DS demo in their DS booth. Most sites that had coverage and were blessed with the opportunity to play the game claimed that the game was plagued with clunky and very awkward controls. Those gamers must have been "blessed" with a very early demo because Mario Kart DS has better controls than any of the past installments. Turning is as smooth as before, easy and comfortable. The power slide has returned yet again for this game, making all those sharp turns a breeze. To supplement the return of the power slide is the return of the hop that was previously excluded from Double Dash!!. The hop allows you to meagerly elevate your kart. Hopping comes in handy in levels with bombs or puddles on the road and allows you to advance in roads infatuated with banana peels, shells, and other undesirables with content. Inspired by Double Dash!!, MKDS also features the power slide boost. Thankfully the DS version of the power slide boost is much easier and a bit stronger then the Double Dash version, the power slide boost allows you to slightly boost while power sliding once your wheels catch fire.
The new level installments create the greatest collection of Mario Kart levels in the series. Every level has something unique ranging from imaganitive surroundings to giant pinballs freely rolling on narrow paths. Imagine racing on shifting cogs while evading that green shell tossed by the tail-trailing driver all while avoiding a swinging pendulum in the racing incarnation of the Super Mario 64 level, Tick Tock Clock. The best part is that there are those challenging levels, the easy levels, and then some that are just downright beautiful, which makes you want to play in them just to look around. When it comes to the levels, Nintendo didn't just make radiant courses but really put in a lot of effort in the detail department; you will see everything from hanging shirts in Delfino Plaza to Luigi blimps in the sky above the racing mayhem. The Balloon battle and Shine Runners levels are also pretty clever, featuring a colossal block city (unlike the poor block plaza in Double Dash!!) and turning an enormous Nintendo DS into a battle field, the other levels follow similar inventive designs.
Along with being able to do all these maneuvers, you can now unlock several karts per character; but since Nintendo has removed the dual characters per kart play, you can't use another racer's kart, alternate karts with weight-identical characters like in Double Dash!!. Aside from appearance and excess blocky-ness, the only thing separating these characters is their weight. Characters range from lightweights to middleweights and heavyweights. Due to this aspect characters like Toad and Yoshi must beware of drivers like Bowser and Wario when racing on narrow paths. Since characters don’t differentiate in more ways than appearance and weight, the various unlockable karts change the corresponding character's attributes. (Between karts attributes like acceleration and off-road speed vary.)
Although the kart you choose affects how you perform on the road, one of the biggest variables in the outcome of your race is the use of items. By popping through colorful item boxes scattered all over courses, you are granted access to ridiculous Mario-themed items you can use to skew the race in your favor by blasting, bumping, stealing, crashing, or just waving as you speed past your enemies. Mario Kart DS sports the quintessential Mario Kart items such as the triple red shells and the star but also brings some clever and destructive new ones to the series. In addition to the previously introduced items, in MKDS you can now use the blooper squid from previous Mario titles to engross all racers on the track screen with black ink causing them to steer off road or crash into obstacles. As well as the blooper squid, Nintendo added an even more catastrophic item, Bullet Bill. When a character obtains Bullet Bill, they can now transform into him and rocket through courses in an auto-piloted bullet disarming karts in his or her path of their items and their place.
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