Mario Kart 7

Mario Kart 7 is essentially Mario Kart Wii without the bikes. Which is unfortunate, because I loved the bikes! However, it is a good game. It's not hard to take an already good game and make it portable, but there isn't a lot to offer when the series has already offered so much. This is not the problem though, since it doesn't try very hard to offer anything new.

Single Player

Before we get into what's new, let me rundown the game for you. It is essentially an arcade style racer. It always has been and from what it looks like it always will. The single player takes place on 8 different cups with 4 tracks on each. Half of the tracks are re-mastered tracks from the previous games and the other half is all new. You will race amongst 7 other racers in a competition to place first in each cup. Very simple.

You have access to 3 different speeds that determine difficulty and an additional un-lockable mirror version of the hardest difficulty. The formula is tried and tested, although it may feel a bit dated, there really isn't any successful competition to Mario Kart. It hasn't changed because it does what it does and it does it well.

The game is fun, you can pick it up for a quick 15 minute play and have a blast without investing hours of your time. However, if you are looking for a deep racer then this is not for you.

Gameplay

The gameplay is quite hectic, the way the game is structured is that no matter what position your in, you still have a chance to come first. This is because of the items you are given randomly in the race. The worse your position, the better the items. Again, that's nothing new for MK veterans, and you will find that the new items aren't game changers at all. So lets go over what is really new; gyro controls, fire flower, tanooki tail, gliding sections, underwater sections, coins and vehicle customisation.

The Gyro Controls are a novelty; similar to the Wii, except you use your entire 3DS as a steering wheel and your view switches to first person. It can be entertaining playing in this fashion, but it's more or less for kicks.

The new items being the tanooki tail and fire flower aren't particularly special. The tail allows you to spin attack nearby opponents and deflect items, where else the fire flower allows you to shoot fireballs for a limited amount of time. There is, however, another cool item, known as "7". It gives you seven items at once that will circle your kart, which you can use at your leisure. It's definitely a cool novelty, but that's all it really is.

The gliding and underwater sections don't provide any real change to the core gameplay of the game. I cannot put a finger on why, but the whole concept doesn't feel new at all. It may that it was so seamlessly integrated that the experience is just that fluid, or it's just a gimmick. Nonetheless, it's still a nice feature to have.

Another new feature, for better or worse, is that coins are scattered around the track. Yes, veterans will remember there were coins Super Mario Kart for the SNES, but I can't for the life of me remember what they do. In this game, however, they are used to unlock new vehicle parts and speed up your vehicle. Some may enjoy this, but I don't care much for it. I preferred unlocking my items by achievements; now you are given a new part every time you collect 100+ coins (yes, you can't chose what you unlock) and only characters are unlocked inside the GP. Making the GP kind of redundant as you can earn coins online. However, making you earn 20,000 coins to complete the game is just ridiculous for me.

This brings me to the next new feature, customising your vehicle. As I mentioned earlier, you unlock parts with coins. These parts are separated into 3 categories: the body, wheels and the glider. They all affect multiple stats, which allow you to mix and match to get the stats you want. This is a neat feature, but what it also doesn't explain very well is that your character's weight class also affects your vehicle; there are 17 characters that are separated into different weight classes. You can easily beat the single player section with whatever combination you want, but unfortunately not all stats are equal, so you may and will find yourself unlocking a lot of useless parts that you will never use until you get something you like.

Multiplayer

This is where Mario Kart 7 shines, and where the series always have. You choose between battle or VS, you can play online or locally and you rack up VR points and Coins by playing multiplayer too!

If you ever wanted to know just how good you are at Mario Kart, online is the place to do it, and the replay becomes near endless because of this feature. Although you can't add people you play with randomly, or talk to them (come on this is Nintendo, you should know they won't allow that), it's still fun leaving real people in the dirt, as they act very different to the AI.

If you want to get this game, you won't be getting it for the GP, because online is where it's at, and if you have friends to play with; even better. There's nothing like kicking butt and getting competitive with people you know. There's nothing new here, but there's nothing missing either. If you enjoyed the experience on the Wii, you will enjoy it here too.