Another Nintendo console and another Mario Kart to rescue its fortunes. Lucky for us and Nintendo then its another good one. If you’ve never played a Mario Kart before then shame on you, but very quickly its a kart racing game staring Mario and a bunch of select friends.
Theres not much to say about the gameplay as it is classic Mario Kart but everything has been tweaked to perfection. Coins litter the track once again but only give you a slight speed boost rather than anything more. The weapons have been tweaked with the blue shell appearing less frequently than normal and also causing havvok to other racers as well as the leader. There is a new weapon, Lucky 7 that gives you 7 weapons spinning around your kart at once, but you better be quick to use them all otherwise someone else will cause you to lose them.
There is tonnes of tracks with 12 new tracks complimented by remakes of 12 tracks from previous games. Sadly these tracks are not the best from past games, with us having got them in the Wii and DS versions but they are a nice extra. The main difference to the game is you can now glide and drive under water. The gliding works wonderfully, allowing you to glide over slow obstacles or onto different routes but driving under water doesn’t feel too different if we are honest.
Like Super Mario 3D Land the 3D and graphics are perfect. There’s a great online mode too with you now able to join friends games, create rooms or join in community rooms. You even have control over the weapons in play.
Whilst the game isn’t a dramatic departure it has taken the classic Mario Kart formula and tuned it to perfection. Yet another reason to own a 3DS.