Mario Kart DS seriously tested my patience at times. I think it's leagues better than the first three entries, but it is not a kind nor forgiving experience. DS is like a parent you can never please, unhappy with your performance in spite of you trying your best. Some days it'll let you get away with a sloppy corner or two, but most of the time it will stare down its nose, scoffing, "You call that a drift boost?" If you can ignore its harsh grading, Mario Kart DS is a fun little package with good ideas. However, if your heart's desire is the hallowed three stars, prepare for that dream to be laughed at and spat on.
Mario Kart DS is the last game in the series to use the classic drift boost system, and I'm not sad to see it go. You activate it by alternating left and right while drifting, but it's never been something I could consistently pull off in any of the titles. Its problem is less that the maneuver is difficult to perform and more that it's unclear what separates a successful boost from a failed one. Even when I'm confident in a corner, boosting is always a gamble; take too long to perform the action and you'll find yourself off course, careening towards a wall. And though I appreciate the dexterity required to pull it off, boosting every race can physically wear on the thumb—especially if you're using the 3DS's jagged d-pad.
Inconsistent boosting wasn't a huge deal for the earlier titles—64's rubberbanding is a bigger bur—but the difference between those games and Mario Kart DS is the punishing ranking system. To be as efficient as the game thinks you should be, you'll not only have to get accustomed to drift boosting but also come to terms with the fact that you're going to lose. A lot. To succeed you'll have to stay within the bounds of the course, bump as few walls as possible, and keep a hold of 1st place for the majority of the race—and even then might only qualify for two stars. On top of that, blue shells will show up on every race (with 4-6 of them in the worst scenario) and DS's red shells have developed a nasty tendency to curve into your side, bypassing whatever defensive item you're holding. Now matter how many hits you suffer—and trust me, you'll suffer a payload—you still have to place first or you can kiss those three stars goodbye.
In theory, I don't think there's anything wrong with including a system that ranks you based on how well you did. But the ranking in Mario Kart DS is a pile of garbage straight-up crapshoot. It's fickle, punitive, and apathetic to your excuses, even if you get bumped off the road or sent spiraling into a pit by a lightning bolt. The ranking system won't acknowledge that you got blue shelled on Baby Park of all things (seriously, that track is 50 second long!), or that you kept getting fake item boxes so you had no way to avoid four red shells in a row—you perform up to the game's expectations, or run the entire cup over again. But the worst part about all of this—the thing I absolutely cannot stand—is that you are given no feedback as to what you did wrong. There's no score, time tally, or track-by-track rundown—just a simple grade, devoid of context. Was it that thwomp you ran into? The mud you slid across in Wario Stadium? Should you have drift boosted more? Mario Kart DS cares not for your cries; you will receive that two star rating and stew in solitude, left to ponder where it all went wrong.
Most of the time though, you know where it all went wrong—you were blue shelled (then red shelled) right before the finish line. Or you tried to cut a corner and ran into a chain chomp. Or you bumped into two walls over the course of an entire cup. But what's frustrating is that, akin to the drifting, the ranking feels unclear and arbitrary in its stringency. Sometimes you can slip into a pit, crash into a snowball, and rarely boost all lap... and nevertheless clinch a three star victory. It feels great when you succeed, but it makes your defeats all the more crushing, since you can rarely identify a mistake that wasn't present in your other victories. You don't learn how to play the game better as much as you just randomly manage to achieve three stars, which will happen more often should the blue shell forget to show its ugly face.
On one hand, Mario Kart DS's ranking system gives the game more longevity, providing a suitable challenge that will even give experts a run for their money. But on the other hand, it completely forgets that Mario Kart isn't about perfection—it's about fun, chaos, and a keeping sharp eye on the road ahead. Once you apply a rigorous formula that makes no exceptions or excuses, it turns Mario Kart into an RNG-heavy pain-in-the-ass with the odds feel stacked against you, given that you have to run not one but four flawless races in a row. You can gloat about being good at the game until you're red in the face, but that won't change the fact that some some victories will unequivocally be stolen from you. And that sucks. You might still snag a gold trophy in the end of course, but if you set your eyes any higher, prepare for the game to fight back with a dispassionate cruelty.
There is some good news though: the new courses are pretty good! Every cup has two tracks that can compete at the top of the Mario Kart echelon, balanced with a good amount of turns and fair stage hazards. Not only that, but quite a few tracks have some fantastic, fresh themes that are worthy of praise all on their own—Waluigi Pinball, Tick-Tock Clock, and Luigi's Mansion are what I'd deem the most memorable. Mario Kart DS is also the first (sorta second) appearance of retro courses, a much-needed inclusion that bulks up the game. Sadly, the retro line-up here is largely unimpressive; tracks from Super Mario Kart and Super Circuit are flat as a sheet of paper, dominated by boring straightaways and peppered with corners that have been neutered of their danger (due to DS having better controls). Plus the track selection is exceedingly dull: the Shell cup features not one but three intro tracks, and there's nothing exciting or noteworthy in the final retro cup.
Last but not least, Mario Kart DS's most notable feature is probably its Mission Mode: solo challenges that place you in a variety of wacky events, ranging from "race against the clock" and "collect coins" to "drive backwards" and "shoot baddies with shells". I think these are mostly... fine, I suppose. Every now and then there's a cool alteration or mechanic (like the boss fights) but some missions really don't work well within the Mario Kart framework, requiring too much precision or relying on luck. Yet the bigger sticking point for me is—you guessed it!—the ranking system. Some missions will gladly hand over three stars on a first or second completion, while others will see you running the course over and over, cutting off tenths of a second in the hopes of appeasing the go-kart gods. And similar to the ranking system in the grand prix, you're never given a threshold to hit nor told what you're doing wrong; you either do well, or run it again and again and again and again.
For casual play, it's hard to beat Mario Kart DS. It has a good selection of original tracks, a sizeable mission mode, and single-cart multiplayer to keep amateur drivers entertained. But beneath the exterior is a condescending ranking system that blends F-Zero GX's perfectionism with Mario Party's adoration for RNG-determined winners. It creates a foul mixture, the video game equivalent of dousing ice cream in ketchup. For some people that might work (or even sound appetizing), but it's undeniably a hard form of entertainment to stomach. Even when you finally net three stars in everything, you won't be relieved—you'll be angry and tired, sapped of your adoration for the franchise. Who knew that including a harsh grading system in a series that's all about enforcing equitable treatment would be about as fun as professionally speedrunning Candy Land.
---------------------
Images obtained from: nintendolife.com, gamereactor.com, eurogamer.net, twitter.com
No comments:
Post a Comment