During the April 2012 podcast I reviewed Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS. Here it is in text form if you don't want to listen to my beautiful voice. Hit the jump to sample this fine piece of literature.
Gameplay
Controls
The controls in Mario Kart 7, unlike some other 3DS titles, are very user-friendly and allow you to use items as well as execute other actions while maintaining your acceleration. Most Mario Kart games are like this, but this one especially fits the hand very well and allows you to become very immersed without control problems getting in the way. Overall, the controls work, plain and simple.
Level Design
As for level design, I found the courses to be both unique and entertaining. With the addition of the hang glider and underwater segments, old stages have had a complete re-haul, while new stages allow for very long periods of underwater racing as well as flight. These segments break up the normally tedious flow of gameplay in Mario Kart games, and make this game that much more fun and entertaining. Much like the previous two Mario Kart games, this game features eight cups each, with four separate levels. Four of these cups contain levels from previous games, while the other four contain completely new levels.
A perfect example of the amazing level design in this game is the new rainbow road, which unlike previous Mario Kart games, takes place near actual planets in space. I found myself in awe as I drove on the planets themselves and experienced reduced gravity. In addition to this, the difficulty was enough to break up my awe with rage as I fell off the course and was put in dead last.
Kart Customization
A new feature of this game, different from previous games, is the ability to swap parts of your kart and unlock new parts. You have three separate classes of parts you can unlock: the body, the wheels, and the hang glider. Although this feature was unique and very helpful in the actual game, I felt like it could use some balance work since in the end I just used one combination near the beginning of the game, unable to adjust to any of the others. Still, it's a nice feature that should be included in future games with a little bit more polishing.
I was disappointed, as I was with Mario Kart Wii, in the lack of importance placed on the characters themselves. I greatly miss the days when the characters would decide what karts you got, and nothing else. Another thing that disappointed me was the relatively small amount of playable characters, although that is an extremely minor complaint.
Items and Balance
The new items in this title include the leaf, the fire flower, and the lucky seven. The leaf is by far my favorite item added to the series yet, and gives you a tail which you can use to hit people all around you.The fire flower allows you to shoot fire in quick succession, much like a green shell, but much faster and much more dangerous. Then there's the lucky 7, which gives you a random assortment of items to use as they spin around you. All around, these items make the game much more competitive and fun.
The balancing in this game is better than in Mario Kart Wii, but could still use work. I can tell you from experience that sometimes, you'd prefer it if the blue shell was just plain thrown out of the entire series. This is a common complaint among semi-professional Mario Kart players, and one that I've defended for years among friends and family. Other than the blue shell, though, the new items add a lot of balance to the game that we just plain haven't seen in a while. The fire flower allows you to take out multiple people ahead of you at once, while the super leaf lets you defend your position by taking out red and green shells and knocking out people behind you. All around, this is one of the most balanced Mario Kart games out there right now.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer in this game is probably the best we've seen in the Mario Kart franchise thus far. There is little to no lag, the current community is great, and as of now, it is active enough to be enjoyable for long periods of time. I've spent many hours just simply playing online with random people, not to mention the time I spent playing with other Nintendo Castle staff members, who are very good at the game and beat me quite often. Bigflyingpotato excluded. ^_^
However, it won't be this way for long since most Nintendo games end up losing their online communities soon after launch and replacing them with very few elites that you will /always/ lose to, no matter the case. So if you want Mario Kart 7 for the online play I recommend getting it soon, since your time may be drawing to a close in a couple of months or even weeks.
Graphics
As for the graphics, I personally feel like they lived up to and even exceeded my expectations while playing through the game. As mentioned earlier in the review, stages such as Rainbow road or Maka Wuhu were simply stunning and just goes to show that no matter how much Nintendo focuses on gameplay, it definitely does not skimp on aesthetics.
Music
And finally, the music. The music in Mario Kart 7 was very well done, to say the least, and allows you to immerse yourself even more into the game than previous titles. Overall, the music is not only catchy, but also atmospheric, complimenting each specific stage extremely well.
So far in the review, I have pretty much only given positive comments, but there is one last thing I want to point out before we close. No matter how much you may dress it up, this was still just another Mario Kart and suffered from many of the same problems of the previous titles. Your enjoyment of this game will be dependent entirely on whether or not you liked previous games of the serious and/or the Mario Kart formula as a whole. If you hated previous games, you will not enjoy this one, plain and simple.
Overall, Mario Kart 7 implemented some new and exciting features to create a unique experience. The controls were great, the graphics were stunning, and the music was expertly composed, but there was still one thing missing. That one thing was what people have looked for since the first Mario Kart, that being differences that set it aside from other games. Since the beginning of the franchise, the games have relied on a single formula, and unfortunately, that formula did not change in the slightest for this game. It is still just another Mario Kart game. So despite all my extremely positive comments throughout the review, I'm going to have to give Mario Kart 7 an 8/10.
See you guys next time!
- Fused
About the Author:
Rial Johnson
Rial Johnson founded Nintendo Castle in 2011 with hopes to build the largest collection of Nintendo walkthroughs, guides, and content on the web. He is an avid gamer with a special place in his heart for Nintendo, but often finds himself writing about games more than actually playing them. You'll likely see him around Nintendo Castle and on social media, mostly managing the front-end content of the site.
