Mario Kart DS

Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null

For Nintendo DS

My page about Mario Kart Double Dash (no dual exclamation marks for you!) is still far below brief in length and content, but I did play the game quite a bit and still do play it every now and then. But if it hasn't happened already I'm sure that Mario Kart DS will soon and without slowing down surpass Double Dash (nope, still no exclamation marks!) in play time.

Mario Kart DS doesn't do all that much different from Double Dash (look, we've gone through this already), but everything it does it does better. More courses, more cups, slight control tweaks, more multiplayer. And playing against real people while lying in bed is really cosy as well.

It is a great little game, and it works really well on the DS, but for being a first party game it really does very little with all the "innovative" features of the DS. The lower screen displays a very nice map with all the details you need that I never remember to use, and you can tap the screen to switch between zoomed-in and whole-course display. The other thing it does is let you inflate balloons in balloon battle mode by blowing in the microphone.

Yes, you can move around in the menus by tapping the screen of course, but listing that is like mentioning "interactive menus" as a feature on a DVD ...

That said, I don't hold this agains the game at all. There are probably other games that would do well not tacking on control options just because they can. The things Mario Kart does with the options are fun and worthwhile and add to the game. Imagine being forced to steer with the stylus, sliding by blowing in the microphone or something ... *Shudder*.

Multiplayer!

Two-player split-screen racing and/or battling is the full extent of my multiplayer experience with Double Dash ([standard disclaimer]). While I'm sure larger matches were great, network adapters and other Gamecube owners with the game and adapter weren't exactly common. The DS version makes everything a lot easier. Not only can you play against people within wifi radius who also have the game, you can play a limited selection of tracks against people who don't have the game as well. The DS has builtin features to temporarily download and run games, and it's both a great idea and seems to be supported in quite a lot of games.

That's it, plain and simple. To add someone to your friend list you need to enter their friend code into your DS. This is probably the thing I find most odd about online gaming with Mario Kart, there's no way to add someone you've just had some great races with as a friend without somehow getting hold of them outside the game. Without any communication features in-game that's rather hard to arrange. I understand and appreciate keeping the online experience as simple as humanly possible to get everyone playing, and no communication also means no abuse, swearing and so on. But a system for friend code exchange would have been nice. And a pictochat-like (or voice-based for that matter, the DS has a microphone after all) lobby or pre/post-game chat function would have been pretty cool, if they're worried about abuse they could have limited it to work only between friends. Maybe they want to save something for Mario Kart Revolution ...

As for how the actual gaming online works it seems pretty normal. I haven't played that many online games yet, but I've had both great-flowing races and some pretty laggy ones where karts jumped around a bit and people disconnected. I still haven't got to be in a four-player game yet, and I have no idea why that is. Maybe the average Swedish/European player just doesn't play at the same times I do. I'm not letting it deter me, that's for sure.