One of the best racing games ever, and the best kart racer anywhere.
Story:
None. Mission has some bosses to fight, but they're never explained.
Characters:
13 total, 9 to start and 4 unlockables. Mario is obviously in due to having his name on the game, and plays the most all-around off all characters. Luigi, Daisy, and Waluigi finish up medium characters. Bowser figureheads the heavies as the fastest and heaviest, accompanied by Wario, DK, and the most hidden character. Toad and Yoshi are the symbols of the light category, with Dry Bones even lighter, Peach a little heavier, and Shy Guy (Single-card multiplayer only) changing stats with his color.
Gameplay:
You race, toss items, and battle to get to the finish line first. Eight racers are in every race, each with distinctive sounds and stats to make sure you know who is who. For example, Bowser is a heavy brute with impressive speed and weight, but appaling handling and acceration, while Yoshi is a light dino with high acceleration and handling but with a terrible top speed and is easily bumped around. The only stat that seems pointless is the items stat, which seems to only affect you in time trials mode, otherwise you might as well choose the kart with the worst items stats and best of everything else, since everyone has a high items low other stats kart, an low items high other stats kart, and a medium items and other stats Standard type kart for those looking for a retro experience. You can accelerate, steer, brake, drift, and toss items picked up with the various buttons, and mastering all the controls makes the game the easiest. But there's a lot to each aspect of the game, so it will be described in each distinctive section.
Racing modes:
Grand Prix is the first mode and the only one with unlockables, on it you race on four courses in a row from a given cup, and try to get the most points, points being accumulated by placing in a race, place higher out of eight racers to gain more points. At the end you're ranked on points total and speed, higher points gets you better placing (And a better trophy), while faster speed gives you a better ranking. The CPUs aren't too difficult, and after a while it should be easy to beat even the hardest, because you improve your skills the more you play, while the computer does not.
Time Trials mode is simple, race on a chosen course with no items but mushrooms you start with (More or less depending on you item stat) and no enemies to deal with, and your goal is to reach the finish as fast as possible, setting records for best lap and best overall speed, with neither affecting the other (You can set the best lap time even if your overall time stank, and set the best overall time even if your laps were generally unimpressive). If you race hard enough you can unlock staff records, who are dangerous and fast, and are quite a challenge to defeat. The CPU records have a weakness in that they try to use all starter characters three times each and all unlockables twice, so just choosing the best racer can net you many victories. Not that it does you any good, unlocking/beating any number of staff records gains you nothing but pride.
Vs. Mode is the most basic mode, it's you versus seven opponents with your chosen character, vehicle, and course (Must be unlocked first, of course) with any number of rules that determine if you play for points or victories, how many races are needed to win or are raced before the end, or if you just want a free for all, as well as determining which engine class and difficulty you want and whether or not you want to be on a team. This mode is available in multiplayer as well, you can choose all the normal features as well as whether you have computer players or not (Though if you say yes, you get only the number of computers needed to fill up all eight slots, no more or less).
Battle Mode is kart fighting at its finest and is finally available to play in single-player, though it's not the best it could be. Shine Runners is rather lackluster, up to nine shines are scattered around the course and you must race not to have the least shines collected before time runs out. The last one standing wins, and even the hard CPUs don't put up much of a fight. Balloon Battle is where it's at, you get one balloon blown up to start and can blow up up to four more with either the select button (Slow and steady) or the DS microphone (Faster and more awkward at first, though far superior once you get the hang of it), with you dying once you run out of balloons. Hit an opponent with an item and they lose a blown-up balloon, if they run out of blown-up balloons they are out, even if they have some in reserve. You could just blow up all the balloons you can (Up to three available at once), but then you get only the weakest items, less balloons means better items, but more risk as well. Both modes allow you to change whether it's get the set number of wins first or a free for all as well as whether or not team battles are played. Both battle modes can be played in multiplayer. They also allow CPU difficulty selection, and here's where the biggest challenge (And frustration) of single-player Balloon Battles come in.
In an easy battle or normal battle the CPUs are terribly stupid, often blowing up three balloons at start and never blowing up and any more, and attacking randomly. NOt that terrible, they can be wiped out easily, especially in a team battle. In hard mode, you have trouble. Team battles are easy, as long as you're better then a single hard CPU player you're fine and can win easily. Outside of teams you have to deal with the battle mode mindset: The human is the enemy. Bowser gets a red shell, he doesn't just toss it at Luigi, he waits until he can toss it at Mario (The human). Peach gets a Mushroom? She waits to use it until she can use it on Mario instead of Wario, especially if someone just hit him with a Koopa Shell so she can take advantage of the Mushroom's ability to damage someone even if they're still recovering from a wipeout, allowing her to kill Mario almost instantly half the time, and zap two balloons the other half of the time. It's not a free for all, it's seven racers versus you, and they're no pushover in difficulty when ganging up on you. It's at its worst when you're a light character, they ram into you so they can throw you off the cliff for easy kills. Not a good thing, but it makes for the biggest challenge in the game.
Mission Mode is a new addition to Mario Kart. You're given a set character on a set course (Or portion of a course) and told to complete an objective. It might be collect 20 coins, it might be head through all ten gates (Sometime in order, sometimes not), it might be complete seven power slides and complete a lap, it might be beating the clock or a CPU racer, it might be driving backwards through a portion of a course, it might be beating a boss, or it might be wiping out enough of an enemy with a given item. One of the most fun modes, and one with enough variety that you'll easily find something you enjoy and look forward to, as well as something you don't like and hope to avoid. There are six normal levels and one secret, each with eight missions and one boss mission that features a big enemy from Super Mario 64 DS that you must beat in some way. Completing the eight normal missions in a level unlocks the boss mission, beating the boss gets you the next level until you reach level 6. After level six's boss you have to go back and beat all 54 missions (Boss missions included) with at least a star rank (Ranks are determined by how fast you completed the mission) in order to unlock level 7. After level 7's boss, you get nothing. Getting two or even three stars in every missions gives you nothing at all, the only special thing about mission mode is that it's the only place that keeps the original credits after you beat the final Grand Prixs.
There's also a records room, where you can view your best times in Time Trials and Grand Prix modes as well as view your friends roster and online status. And finally, there's a customization room where you can change your username and icon (Which can be drawn with the sylus or by using the D-Pad and A button), as well as examine all the karts you've unlocked.
Courses:
The are 32 courses, 16 starter and 16 unlockable, or 16 Nitro and 16 Retro, or 8 starter Nitro, 8 unlockable Nitro, 8 starter Retro, and 8 unlockable Retro, take your pick. The Nitro courses are well-balanced, ranging from the easy Figure-8 Circuit and Luigi's Mansion to harder courses like Waluigi Pinball and Airship Fortress, and ending with classic hard courses like Bowser Castle and Rainbow Road. Nothing to complain about here, they're not that hard to unlock and look very nice and detailed. Then there are the Retro courses, another new feature in Mario Kart DS. All of them are taken from the previous four Mario Karts, but they lack in the ability to stand out. At least four normal "Circuits", two of which are Luigi Circuits, a haunted house, a desert, a snow land, a farm, a beach, an island. mostly rather unoriginal courses. And the 2-D courses from Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart Super Circuit are terribly unappealing, since the short, 2-D walls half been modified to be short, 3-D walls as thick as they are tall. They look more 3-D then they used to, but are dull in comparison with the other courses. The Gamecube courses look nice, but it seems they went out of their way to choose the easiest and most dull courses they could. Yoshi Circuit is cool, but Baby Park was far too short, Mushroom Bridge a bit bland, and Luigi Circuit uninspired. Where's the spectacular Rainbow Road from Double Dash? The N64 courses are the best of the lot, featuring Choco Mountain, Frappe Snowland and Banshee Boardwalk, but nothing truly interesting like the famous Bowser Castle or the detailed Penguin course. At least they hold up graphically, though they're not the best you could hope for, they're not boring either.
Items:
Very typical Mario Kart, which isn't very typical. The Banana Peel acts as an oil slick and makes your opponent slip out, the Green Shell is a missile flips them out, the Red Shell a homing missile, the Bob-Omb to blow opponents up, the Invincibility Star to make you invulnerable to opponents, weapons, and terrain, the Mushroom for a temporary speed boost, and the new Blooper to blind their vision. A few items are terribly cheap though. The Blue Shell is launched back from about fifth place, and homes in unstoppably on first place. It doesn't benefit fifth place because he never gains anything from it, but in harder difficulties it makes it far too easy for second to catch up and pass you, and makes gaining low times and high ranks a harder chore then it should be. The lightning cloud is gained by about eighth place, and shrinks everyone, making long jumps much harder to achieve and cutting your speed down to next to nothing, making low times much harder then they should be. It's also unblockable, unless you're far enough back in the pack to have an Invincibility Star handy.
Unlockables:
Four new characters, 16 courses, six levels in Mission Mode, and 32 Time Trial Staff records (Or "ghosts"). A little sparse on the characters, especially when you can eventually unlock the ability to race everyone in everyone else's karts, you are led to think it's a cop-out for more characters. And when the only way to unlock characters and courses is Grand Prix mode, it makes your Time Trials and Mission Mode achievements near pointless. But that's never been the point of Mario Kart, the point has been fun racing.
Difficulty:
Increasing and decreasing as you go on, the more you play the better you get and more you learn, until eventually the opponents seem too easy at the hardest difficulties. Pretty even all-around.
Technical Details:
The graphics for characters and Nitro courses are bright and detailed, and are quite pleasing to look at. The Retro courses, despite being updated, are still out of date for a DS game's capabilities. The sound effects for characters are short and to the point, nothing special or not special about them. The music is bouncy, and demands that you listen to it.
Multiplayer:
Multi-card play, download play, and Wi-Fi. All multiplayer discussed above was multi-card, and I'll add that it is almost free of loading times and hassle. Download play is much the same, except you're quite limited. All players with a card can be anyone they've unlocked, all those without one are forced to be a Shy Guy of a random color, and you're limited in Vs. Mode to selecting one of the eight lowest level courses, and in battle mode to three courses, randomly switched. It's okay, but nothing special, and load times can last quite a bit when you first start, though shorten considerably once you reach mode selection. Wi-Fi is yet another new addition to Mario Kart, allowing you to play online against up to three other people on one of 20 courses (Anything with large moving objects or screen animations like rain was removed, that means no Bowser's Castle) in a four race battle for supremacy. Unfortunately it's not terribly populated any more, and the high amount of hackers cheating to guarantee wins is appalling. A note to the wise: Don't race anyone who has a record of something like 80 wins and no losses, unless you know who they are. You can also use the ever-popular friend code system, which means once both you and a friend enter each other's friend code, you are registered as (What else?) friends, and can look for each other specifically at any time. It allows you to know just who you're racing, but it also means you can't just friend the good rival that doesn't hack whom you somehow ran into while playing.
Replay Value:
Racing and battling until you drop. It's really that fun. And with so few unlockables, you have a ton available from the start, which isn't a terrible thing.
Final score breakdown:
Gameplay: 10/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sounds and Music: 9/10
Fun: 10/10
Replay Value: 9/10
Pros
Plenty of modes to play.
A ton of new experiences.
Multi-card play is expansive and fun.
Just the right difficulty in racing modes.
Music can be listened to over and over.
Online play is great with friends.
Nitro courses are brilliant and often original.
Cons
The Blue Shell.
Sparse character selection.
Lacking Retro courses.
Download Play is rather lacking.
Hackers dominate online.
Overall: 9.4/10
A racing game not to be missed, unless you're above "Kiddy racing games." Even if you are, you should still play it, you might have to eat your words. There's no small amount of minor complaints, but the overall amount of major experiences override it by far, and make for a satisfying game overall.