Thursday, May 18, 2006

Mario Kart DS Post-Mortem

[Now Experiencing] [Computer Gaming]

Well, I've had Mario Kart DS for a while now, and I'm reaching the end of my tether on the single player game experience, so I thought I'd post my final impressions of the game.

I'll start with the title. The game's called Mario Kart DS. That's all. The DS does not stand for anything above and beyond the title of the gaming machine. They didn't try to call it Mario Kart: Dust Strikers or Dual Strike or Dawn of Sorrows or Deadly Silence or any other clever or not so clever extension of the letters "D" and "S". So big points for that. Yay Nintendo.

Right, so now that we've established that the name's relatively pretension-free, we can move onto the gameplay. There's essentially three single player modes: a grand prix, a mission mode, and a battle mode.

The "main" single player game is the tried and tested Mario Kart race formula: a series of grand prix style "cups", each featuring four races. You can choose from 12 familiar Mario-style characters (four of whom are unlockable), and then pick one of that character's karts (a choice of two to start with, expanding to some ridiculous amount through unlocking). Each character and each kart has different strengths and weaknesses, including their weight, their speed, their handling, and the average quality of items they find on the track. Bowser, for example, is a high-speed powerhouse, but a little slow to start and awkward on the corners, whereas Toad is annoyingly nippy with a tendency to lose ground on the straights.

There are eight cups of four tracks each (that's 32 tracks in all). Half the tracks, collected in "retro" cups, are re-issues of tracks from the last four iterations of Mario Kart, including favourites like the Mario Circuit from the original SNES game and the Baby Park from the Gamecube. The other half are new tracks, which are a little more hit and miss; some tracks like DK Pass and Delfino Square are a load of fun, whereas some others like the notorious Rainbow Road are just a pain. (Though it's worth mentioning for veterans of the older games that this time round the Road is a walk in the park compared to its last outings - it's not hard now, just dull.)

As always with Mario Kart, the gameplay involves driving the track using very simple controls, and attempting to improve your position by the use of items scatterered around the track, and by controlled drifting and boosting around corners. The items include such things as red koopa shells which function like homing missiles, banana peels which can be dropped to foul races behind you, or mushrooms which give a brief speed boost. The more you're losing by, the better the items you get are, so there's a constant rubberbanding which feels good when you're learning or playing someone a lot better, but can be a bit frustrating when someone you've outperformed all race nips the victory which a cheap Bullet Bill at the last second.

Boosting bears mentioning, though, largely because it very nearly wrecks the game. This isn't the first time this game element's been included in Mario Kart, but it's the first time I've really appreciated how annoying it is. Basically, it works as follows - when you turn through a corner, the best way to do it is to do what's effectively a handbrake turn, allowing you to "drift" through the corner. While drifting, you have the opportunity to waggle the D-Pad left and right very quickly. If done sucecssfully, your wheels spark orange, and when you come out of the drift you gain a quick burst of speed which makes up the speed you lost on the corner and then some. It's so effective, that it's essential for mastering the game - on the top difficulty, you absolutely have to boost at least once on every corner, and sometimes twice.

But it gets worse - the speed boost is so significant that on straights, instead of just accelerating like mad, it's actually more effective to drift back and forth across the track, boosting like crazy. The speed gain makes up for the snaking motion, and will outperform a racer just driving normally. To play at the top level, you spend almost the entire race holding the drift button and waggling your thumb on the D-pad. I've almost ruined my wrists doing this online - I wish there was an option to have a race with boost disabled. Item use and course positioning largely become irrelevant in the face of the mad thumb wiggling; which is a shame, because those are the best bits of Mario Kart.

Boost-snaking aside, the grand prixs are pretty fun. There's more, though. The second gameplay mode is a mission mode, which challenges you to complete certain tasks, such as "collect 5 coins" (which are laid in certain pattern on the track), or "drive through six numbered gates in order". You're ranked on performance factors (usually speed) to get a rating for each mission. Every ten missions culminate in a boss fight with a classic Mario boss rendered in Mario Kart style - for example, you're challenged to race the giant Goomboss from Mario 64 DS around the Baby Park - but the Goomboss cheats by stepping over the median strip! There's no real point to Mission mode as far as I can tell - it doesn't unlock anything or have any plot - but it's kind of fun and the boss battles are truly excellent. There's about 80 missions in all, by the looks of things.

Lastly is the classic Battle mode, featuring the Balloon Battle and Shine Runner modes from the Gamecube. Here you're placed against other karts in an arena-style level and challenged to use items to take out or otherwise frustrate the other karts. This has always been my favourite Mario Kart mode, and so I'm a little disappointed to see only two battle modes and only a handful of courses. Where's Bob-omb Battle? Where's King of the Hill? Where's Capture the Flag? Still, what there is remains solid.

No discussion of Mario Kart DS would be complete without mentioning multiplayer. I have to say I haven't had the chance to try out Multi-Card play against other people who are physically close to me, but I have thoroughly explored the online options, thanks to me DS Wi-Fi USB connector.

Online play is excellent; it's well implemented and almost lag free. But it's not without its disappointments. Firstly, online play is limited to grand prix. That's right - no battle mode. I can't fathom this omission - it strikes me as just plain bizarre, and a little sad. I assume you can play battle mode multi-card, but I would have loved to go global with it. And secondly, of course, everyone else in the world is better than me. I can go nuts breaking my fingers with drift boosting and I still lose an awful lot. At least it's not on the PSP or I would have gone into terminal hand cramps long ago.

There are several online match finding options. "Friends" allows you to match against people whose friend codes you have. There is no way to trade friend codes in game (this is deliberate to protect minors from online predators, apparently) and as far as I can tell no way to tell when your friends are online short of trying to start a game with them, so I haven't had any joy from that mode yet. "Regional" matches you against players from your region (which I assume for me is Australia). I've yet to find anyone else actually using that mode, so I've never had a regionial match. And "Worldwide" effectively dumps you into a match against the first three players it finds, out of everyone looking for a game in the world. It might just be that I'm playing at Australian hours, but considering I'm searching "everyone", it takes me a damn long time to find players. Often I'm forced to go with only one or two opponents as we can't find a fourth.

That's worth noting, by the way - although you can race eight players in single player or multi-card play, it's limited to four online. I don't know whether that's a technical limitation or just a wierd design decision, but it's another small frustration. I suppose given my luck to date in even finding four players, I'd never find eight in any case, but still. Also, in passing, it's worth saying that Mario Kart doesn't have the voice chat support that Metroid Prime Hunters has implemented. In fact, Mario Kart doesn't support chat of any kind - not even a "good game" button for when someone hands your butt to you. Sometimes it feels a little like I'm not playing other people, just a spotty AI. The only sort of communication you can engage in comes in the form of your "icon", which is a little picture that you can draw yourself in an included pixel-paint application. Your icon appears over your head in multiplayer games.

I know I'm picking a lot of holes in the game, so it's worth saying that despite all its niggles, Mario Kart DS is far and away the best multiplayer handheld title I have ever played, Liberty City Stories notwithstanding. Its online implementation is a great first step into the obvious future of handhelds, and it's a ton of fun no matter what mode you're in. It picks up everything that's always made Mario Kart great and is probably the best ever released in the series.

Now, it's almost certain there's a Wii version of Mario Kart in development right now, so can I just shout out a message to any designers out there that stumble across this - forget about drift boosting. Just take it out, and get back to the item-focused, skill-light gameplay that we know and love. And for Jeebers' sake, give us more support for battle mode!

Once more, my Friend Code is: 210523 733451

7 comments:

W4Jt34G40e9407o said...

You know, I think the same way.

I was actually a little disappointed after playing Double Dash, I fell they corrupted the spirit of Mario Kart 64 with this weird cars and by making the gameplay less Mario Kartishhh (like SNES, probably the best version of them all). I did enjoy Mario Kart DS because it is closer to the roots, but I just feel it could be closer.

Greg Tannahill said...

Thanks for posting a comment! Yeah, I played Double Dash, because when you're starving and all you have is slops, you damn well eat the slops, but it's nice to see they've abandoned all that "doubling up" rubbish and gotten back to classic Karting. But boy howdy, I still remember how the original SNES one blew me away and the endless hours I could spend with that game and a couple of friends.

Jessica said...

I disagree with your opinion about the Mario Kart DS name. I prefer it simple, unlike the cheesy and unoriginal names you suggest. Lame.

In your description of karts being "awkward on the corners," I think you're referring to handling, but I'll ignore your overly descriptive writing there (and throughout your little post). Toad described as nippy? I hope you're female.

I'll stop now and say I disagree with all of your criticisms and rather than carefully going through them all, I'll just say to anyone reading this: this person is completely wrong, and disregard their flawed and atypical arguments.

Greg Tannahill said...

Mr Parker - The simple name was the one that I liked, and my criticisms largely amount to drift boosting being broken and the multiplayer modes being shortchanged, so I'm not really sure exactly what you're talking about, but nevertheless thanks for taking the time to comment. Stop by again.

Jessica said...

Funny, your first paragraph struck me as totally sarcastic, when you actually liked the name. How's it post mortem if the game is actively being played and bought worldwide? I'm pretty sure it's the highest selling game on the DS!

What's broken with drift boosting? You can do turbo boosts fine and they're even mentioned in the manual. Is it just that you don't get quite the same boost as with MK double dash or the SNES versions? I have noticed that Star invincibility and mushroom boosts don't get you quite as far ahead in this one. I have also noticed that some people who play on the Nintendo WIFI network are highly competitive (but then, I try to compete, since my skills with the game are seasoned).

I've played all versions of MK and think this one is pretty great (especially since it's on the DS too). Nicer graphics than most of the games I've seen on DS, but maybe I just haven't seen all the good ones.

Greg Tannahill said...

Hey, am I talking to Mr John Parker who I know in RL, or some other person?

My sarcasm sometimes can be confusing. I use it against the weak willed like a kind of text-based Jedi mind trick.

As mentioned in my post-mortem, the problem with drift boosting is that it is far away the dominant strategy. If you're not prepared to boost several timese on every corner, and then swing back and forth across the straights to constantly boost even when not cornering, then you have no place playing this game multiplayer. And while I CAN do that, it's not even remotely fun to do.

Don't get me wrong - MarioKart DS is the best entry in the franchise since the original SNES version; it's just soiled by some problems that would have been fairly easy to fix.

Jessica said...

No, I'm pretty sure I haven't met you in real life. Fair enough, on drift boosting. Since I posted last I've had the opportunity to play MKDS WIFI a lot more and sometimes it definitely is ridiculous to try and keep up with people who use boosting at every possible opportunity.

Sometimes with games, I think at the end of the day, the people winning are those who have no life whatsoever and just sit and play for hour after hour, using every ounce of free time they have to play (and get better) at whatever game they're playing. It's ridiculous. So then, when you get online with those people who have like 9,000 wins and 12,000 losses, you don't stand a chance. It takes the whole feel of competing against people in the same room, and changes it to something tense and ridiculous. Of course, people can still get plenty pissed off when playing against friends in their living rooms.

Anyway, respect for writing such a detailed review of Mario Kart.

P.S. The fact that you can now be playing against some 11-year-old in the game--unknowingly--is also kind of lame.