A wealth of single player options combined with online multiplayer makes Mario Kart a must have for DS owners.
Though Mario Kart has gone through many incarnations, Mario Kart DS offers the most complete game of Mario racing to date. In addition to the standard mixture of options comes the most significant; online multiplayer for up to 4 people. The execution may leave some disappointed, but the bottom line is that the excitement and intensity have been captured perfectly. The single player is still no slouch compared to the multiplayer, as new additions help hone your skills.
The online multiplayer is the most exciting aspect to the franchise, as it finally gives the opportunity to players all around the world to hash it out with each other. The play is a great deal of fun, finding people will only take about a minute or two, and the play is virtually lag free. There are some difficulties that are noticeable, such as the absence of a means of communicating or obtaining friend id's, which are needed to add people to your buddy list. The roster of online play is also limited to racing, meaning that those wishing to hash it out in the balloon or shine matches are going to be disappointed. Still what the multiplayer is is a ton of fun that anybody can enjoy for 10 minutes or 10 hours.
Single player must be completed to unlock racers and cars, but the good news is it's never a boon to the overall package. The single player has received some new additions as well such as the mission mode. This tasks the player with completing objectives such as racing against time, destroying boxes, fighting bosses, and a multitude of other actions which, though repeated with many permutations, never feel stagnant. Included in multiplayer as well is the ability to play battle modes with bots, which put up a good fight and help mix up the replay value of the game.
In addition to increased roster of racers and new maps, Nintendo has added choice maps from previous Mario Kart games. These include Snes, GBA, N64, as well as GC versions. The choices are excellent, as nobody can say they didn't enjoy Choco Mountain, and the people who did just wanted to be different.
Overall, the only thing that hurts this package is the absences from multiplayer, though these can easily be overlooked once playing the game. The graphics, sound, and gameplay are all top notch, and at about 35 bucks, the value of this game goes above and beyond the expectations for the series.