Here's the trailer, it's really cool, if I say so myself
And there's some box art for but now let's get down to the review.
First of all, it delivers most of what people would want with a new Mario Kart game, as a Mario Kart game. Gameplay is just as you would want it to be, so there is really nothing much I can say about it. But Nintendo has introduced some new features to this game, some of this includes new underwater tracks you can access and air tracks. Some of these features are shown in the trailer if you check it out yourself. The problem here is, it seems more like a gimmick than something that Nintendo could have used to bring the player into their world more and show them more of what world can offer, sure the game is supposed to be a racing game but I'd like to highlight the last track in the Rainbow Cup, Rainbow Road. This track utilizes the underwater scenes and the air tracks very well and I'm surprised only this track managed to get this luxury.
The way you move through the track simply gave you a breathtaking experience especially when you take flight and land on Saturn's rings and then enter the underwater part where you were on an asteroid and the gravity would be low and on the race to the last track you would fly and try to navigate through each star ring to remain in the air. This added a whole new dynamic to this track I didn't really see in any other track they had in the game.
When comparing Mario Kart to the New Super Mario Bros DS, super mario bros had underwater specific levels where the player would be just swimming and that entire level was JUST underwater. AND it looked nice as well, the fishes both made the track unique and more believable but at the same time posed as both an obstacle and a object that would keep you from your goal. But when you look at the underwater scenes in Mario Kart 7, they seemed to be just shortcuts or sections of the track you could go through but the entire track remained mainly on land (And I am specifying the new tracks they've added to the game and not the ones from other consoles).
The same can be said about when you take to the skies, it seems to be just a part of the track but is not highlighted as something more like for example make a whole track where you are just simply in air and I would have liked to see the same for the underwater tracks. Nintendo's approach to this made these features seemed more like gimmicks and nothing more. =(
They have changed a few mechanics like you don't turbo drift anymore but rapidly tapping left and right but how much have you drifted throughout the turn or bend, when you take a sharper curve, the sparks appear faster. This change doesn't really bother me nor does it make the game anymore exciting. Speaking of which, there is one mechanic I simply applaud Nintendo for introducing. The turbo jumps, whenever you make a jump, by pressing hop at just the right moment, your character will perform some sort of stunt and then you gain a short boost when you land much like when you perform a turbo drift. This just adds to the pleasure you would have when playing the game yet at the same time give you a way to gain an advantage when racing.
Other things I didn't like were that some of the menus when browsing through the kart and character selection were flat and uninteresting. Another thing was the fact you had to select the character to know its stats, this led to me repeatedly selecting and unselecting a character just to know the right one. They've even simplified the game only giving you the option of Grand Prix, Time Racing, Balloon Battle and Coin Runners. There's also online multiplayer but I'm missing the missions you had in Mario Kart DS. It feels as though this Mario Kart had less features than its predecessor when it should have been more of an upgrade. This also made the game fairly easy to finish and you would be easily left looking for other games to play.
In conclusion, Nintendo had gotten a lot of things right and a lot of the things I liked in that game still remained but there was a lot of room for improvement and there were a lot of things that Nintendo had overlooked that would have made this game much MUCH BETTER. I would still recommend this game as something you would buy to play with friends, but as something for a more single player experience, it definitely falls short. That is all~
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