Good alternative to Mario Kart
User Rating: 7.5 | Diddy Kong Racing DS DS
There are quite a few kart racing games on the DS, usually extremely lame games cashing in on the success of the Mario Kart series. However, this remake of 64 game is a great alternative. Developed by Nintendo's old friends, Rare; you would expect all the Kong team to be here as well as the likes of Conker and friends. Donkey Kong doesn't make an appearance and neither does Conker, so you have to make do with lesser known, weak characters. This game provides a bit of originality in addition to the typical kart formula by featuring a mix of plane, kart, and hover-car races. The races are initially played singularly and are chosen in a hub as a homage to those 3D platform games like Super Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie. Although its quite a cool idea, sometimes you just want to race and not have to drive to the world you want to race in, but on the plus side; the map is small. Once you complete the races and beat the boss, you then can revisit the racing circuit, but travel on a magic carpet with the aim of popping balloons. This plays out like an on-rails FPS where you have to pan the camera using the touch-screen and pop balloons using the stylus. These mini games are actually fun and quite challenging but you probably are playing the game because you wanted to race. After beating the boss for the second time, you can then try beat the boss again at a 'touch challenge'. These challenges are unbearable as you have silly controls, like drawing a line on the touch-screen to turn your kart. In fact, apart from the cool magic carpet game, every DS feature Rare have added just makes the game worse. To get a boost at the start of the race, for the kart you have to spin a wheel on the touch-screen, but you will be holding the DS with your left hand, and spinning the wheel with your right. Even if you get a high power level, you then actually need to press A to accelerate to get the boost, otherwise you will be left standing at the starting line. The plane is similar but you have to rotate the blades. The hovercraft is more doable since you can blow the blades using the microphone. After completing a certain amount of races, you occasionally get set challenges. One challenge is to blow out some lit torches in the tunnels. The problem is you have be in close proximity and blow hard so you will probably crash into the wall and will find it hard to manoeuvre back out again and blow out the remaining torches in the strict time limit. In the races and magic carpet sections, you can collect coins which can be used to upgrade your vehicles. The problem is you only usually pick up 2 or 3 per race and each upgrade costs either 25,50, or 100 coins. You can then choose to upgrade handling, acceleration, or speed on each of the 3 vehicles. However due to the price, you won't get many of the upgrades.
Overall, Diddy Kong racing is a fun kart racer with great graphics. However the DS controls seem tacked on and means the games is occasionally frustrating and annoying.
