The Mario Kart series is undeniably the most popular and successful kart-racing experience the genre has to offer. Attacking your enemies with shells as you race through imaginative tracks, dodging banana peels before flying off a ramp and knocking unsuspecting opponents into traps – what’s not to love?

Mario Kart 7 shows that the franchise has come to a state of equilibrium – a point where fans know what to expect. You still race around an intricate and colourful track while picking up items to chuck at your opponents. That’s not to say that the latest instalment is predictable, in fact, Mario Kart 7 offers a great array of new features.

Karting the course

The essence of the game is the Grand Prix mode in which players compete in 8 different cups that consist of 4 tracks each. There are three simple goals to live by in every race: stay on the track, collect power-ups and maintain the lead.

The first goal seems fairly obvious but you’ll soon realize that the creative (or crazy) track designs will often be one of your greatest obstacles. There’s plenty of leaping over giant mushrooms, navigating narrow pathways and dodging the occasional piranha plant. Lose focus for a moment and you’ll plummet into the abyss.

There are two brand new kart mechanics in Mario Kart 7: a hang-glider attachment and a propeller for underwater racing. These new accessories allow for more diverse racing that extends into the sky and the depths of the sea. They are deployed automatically when needed and the creators put a fair amount of thought into it.

Gliding is a particularly enjoyable experience and the optimal use of the glider can be the difference between first and last place. As for the underwater experience – well let’s say that it’s fairly uneventful for the most part.

There are 16 new tracks in Mario Kart 7 and 16 revamped classics from previous games. While most of the new tracks have clear Mario influences there are a few tracks with noticeable themes. These include a new Donkey Kong track, a trip around Wuhu Island and even a Wii Music inspired raceway. The returning tracks are tweaked slightly to accommodate the new-found glider and underwater mechanics and this gives these well-known tracks a new flair of excitement.

Powered up

The second crucial part to Mario Kart is the power-ups. Racers collect power-ups by driving into rainbow-coloured boxes. The game then dishes out a random power-up – ranging from a simple nitro-mushroom or banana peel to one of the more flamboyant boosts like splashing ink blots all over your rival’s screen.

All the power-ups we know and love reappear in Mario Kart 7, as well as a few new ones. The game draws some inspiration from Super Mario 3D Land and can grant you a Tanooki tail – a fluffy tail that grows out of your kart (what will the Japanese think of next?). The Tanooki tail is a defensive power that can be used to deflect incoming shells. It’s a very welcome addition to the game in terms of balancing the items but it serves little use if there’s no blitzkrieg of shells fired at your vehicle.

Coins are scattered across the racetracks and collecting them will unlock new content to use when customizing your vehicle – another new feature in Mario Kart 7. You can pimp your kart with a new set of wheels or turn your glider into a giant flower if it tickles your fancy.

Kart customization is non-trivial and unlocking new parts does a great deal toward improving your kart’s performance.

Keeping it going

Mario Kart 7 is a great single player experience with three AI difficulty settings. The easiest setting is the 50cc cup that’s pretty easy to beat. Then there’s the intermediate 100cc cup and finally the brutal 150cc. The final difficulty will have you screaming words of profanity at your console.

The game has a way of making you believe that you have the lead until the last stretch to the finish line. It’s as if your rivals keep all their power-ups in anticipation for this moment and will assault you with a barrage of green, red and blue shells. By the time you recover from the onslaught you’ll be lucky to get 5th place.

Once you’ve completed a cup the game will give you a rating based on your overall driving performance and there’s nothing more personally satisfying than a three star rating in all the cups!

Racing with friends

While Mario Kart 7 offers a great single player challenge, it’s the multiplayer modes that are of great interest. Mario Kart 7 offers local multiplayer using a single game-cartridge between 8 consoles and an online mode. Local multiplayer offers loads of entertainment and will get your heart racing everytime you take the lead.

Unfortunately it’s the online mode that’s still lacking.

I can’t understand why Nintendo has such a grudge against online communication. Perhaps one of their senior CEO’s had a bad childhood experience and takes revenge by putting thousands of online players on permanent mute. Setting up a lobby in Mario Kart 7 is an overwhelming challenge because there’s no way to coordinate and communicate with your friend list.

The only form of in-game communication is conversing through predefined sentences such as “Welcome” and “Take it easy on me”. These blurts of speech are only visible to members currently in your lobby so there’s no way of inviting or letting other friends know about your party.

Once you’ve managed to gather players in your lobby (via smoke signals or pigeons) the races are smooth and pretty lag free. You can set up a ‘community’ which is sort of like a clan but anybody can join in. Players who join and play inside the ‘community’ will receive points for winning and move up on the community leaderboard.

Unfortunately there’s no way to compete against other communities which has me wondering why we have the communities in the first place.

Final words

Mario Kart 7 is one of the best games in the series and will become an instant hit on the 3DS. The singleplayer mode offers hours of fun with plenty of unlockable characters and kart customization options. The online multiplayer mode is an improvement over the experience offered by Mario Kart DS but it’s still not quite where we want it to be.

Other than that there’s very little to criticize about this game – it’s a great successor to the previous instalments.

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