I have been
enjoying Mario Kart on handhelds since 2001 with the release of Mario Kart:
SuperCircuit, but when I was playing Mario Kart 7 on the Nintendo 3DS I found
myself getting quite annoying with the random generator which determines how
much of a douche bag the other 7 NPCs were going to be during the race,
especially when I’m first place on the game. First place doesn’t seem to be an
achievement on this game but more so a target for every NPC to unleash all
their weapons on you and create holy wrath to make you lose all your coins and
drop 5 places just before you are about to cross the finish line on the last
lap. Not only this but when you actually
manage to finish first with all 10 coins in every race on the grand prix, I
still haven’t managed to complete the lighting cup with three stars. So while angrily playing Dead or Alive 4 on
my Xbox to vent my Mario Kart anger I found 7 ways which would make Mario Kart
better, and more of a fair game for the user.
1.
Lose the Blue Shells!
These work for
no one! You either get hit by them when
you are in first place, get knocked over by them when they are going to hit the
person in first place or you get the blue shell… but this happens once in a
blue moon and generally when you are in last place on the final lap. The blue
shell removes the need for skill in this game, bringing it down to the level of
things such as imagine babysitter: A game which needs no skill in the slightest
to play it because of the mind numbing experience you receive from it. Mario Kart 7 became a game of luck and
generally you never get any in this game. Remove the blue shells and you but
the need for skill back into the game, making it a challenging game which is
still enjoyable for the entire family without Dad getting annoyed at his child
for unleashing a blue shell which hit him and made him lose.
2.
Let me collect more than 10 damn coins!
In Mario Kart
7 they introduced a new feature: coins. Each race you get the chance to collect
10 coins which in total over the course of the entire game collectively, unlock
new customisable features for the cars which you drive (and as there are only 3
customisable features for the game, this doesn’t happen often). The fact is,
during the race you can only collect 10 coins, but even the most unskilled
player could collect 10 coins within the first lap. You are left for the rest
of the race driving around, still collecting coins but them not recognising it
because you already have 10 coins. Allowing the player to collect more than 10
coins each race means that it becomes for of a challenge for the user and most
probably a better use of their time on the track. Any other Mario Kart 7 fans
out there would be sitting there saying “But if you get hit by anything you
lose half your coins, if you had 30 coins you’d lose 15” and well I have
thought about that too, creating a coin storage which stores every lot of 10
coins in the race would a) keep track of how many coins you have collected so
far through the race and b) mean that once those coins have been stored they
cannot be taken off you (and here is the exciting bit ) unless you fall off the
track, which is a cost of 10 coins (see! I think of compromises too) this means
that the user has to use their skill to stay on the track and they also get the
chance to collect more coins.
3.
Nintendo: Fix the so-called random generator!
Mario
Kart is known for the fact that the characters can use weapons in the race, in
fact it is a feature which sets it apart from every other stereotypical racing
game released. This generally comes into effect when you drive through a
‘Surprise’ box and the random generator selects a weapon for you. I say ‘random
generator’ but when I drive through these god damn boxes all I seem to get it
green shells and bananas whereas every other Tom, Dick and Harry in the race
gets Lighting, Ink, Bullet Bills, Mushrooms, red shells and of course the
famous blue shell. Not only that, but they seem to enjoy setting all their
weapons off at once, but only if you are in first place with 10 coins. Back in
the day of the Mario Kart: Super Circuit, most races only gave you the chance
to get weapons once a lap, which meant you had to use your weapons
strategically and plan for the worst possible scenario, but even the worst
possible scenario didn’t pause your gameplay for that long whereas in Mario
Kart 7, you get hit by a blue shell and you can drop from 1st to 8th
before your Kart actually moves again. So I say one thing to you Nintendo: MAKE
YOUR RANDOM GENERATOR MORE RANDOM! Because at the moment it isn’t fair on the user
and its making me lose all hope in Nintendo party games.
4. Give the coins significance
Obviously in
one of my last points I was talking about how I wanted to be able to collect
more than 10 coins. But I have another point about those coins; they have no
significance in the game… like none what-so-ever. What is the point of putting
something into the game which does not affect the game play in the slightest! It’s
like releasing a DLC for a first person shooter which contains a new outfit
i.e. there is no point because you don’t see the damn character at all during
the game. By giving the coins some significance you give the game a purpose or
at least make the race more interesting for the user. I thought up two things which could give the
coins in the game purpose and even make the game more interesting. The first
one I thought of was giving the character a special power after collecting 10 coins;
this could be things such as manually flying or having the ability to break
through things such as walls and doors. These special powers could be used to
access hidden routes in the race which can only be accessed if you have chosen
the character with the same power. Another idea would be to make the coins
currency, this way when you collect the coins you can purchase upgrades for the
car, but not the upgrades which are unlocked via races. I mean things such as
paint jobs, suspension packages and shields. This way the user is rewarded for
collecting the coins and receives an upgrade which they can pick for
themselves. This simple thing makes the game more user oriented which, at the
minute, it is lacking very much.
5.
Make the Grand Prix more customisable
Don’t get me
wrong, I love to say that getting hit with numerous shells, lightning and ink
things doesn’t bother me, but it does, it winds me up something rotten. It
actually annoys me quite I lot, I love racing games because of the simplicity
in them but yet skill is required to actually play them, but Mario Kart 7 has
removed this from the equation making it more of a party game which you play
with your family on Christmas day and never play it again. What I’m trying to
say is that Mario Kart 7 is more fun to play with local players because you are
playing for fun, not for the fact that when playing it you can actually achieve
something as when you do try to achieve something in Mario Kart 7 you become a
target for weapons. I say make it a choice on whether to have weapons available
or not and maybe even pick and choose what weapons you can and cannot get,
doing that would make the game different every time you play it.
6.
Allow characters to get Shields
All is good
and well when you throw shells at other characters because they never seem to
be affected by it, however, when the shells are being fired at you, they hit
you and you have no way to defend yourself. My theory is to change the boost that
you get from drifting around corners into a power build up for a shield, the
more you drift, the longer the shield stays up. The best thing about this is
that it makes you think more strategically in how you play the game i.e. I’m in
first place, I should probably do some drifting to build up my shield for when
I get hit with 5 blue shells, Ink and lightning.
7.
Remove the useless characters
Sure this
wouldn’t exactly improve the gameplay but half of the characters in the game
don’t really deserve to be there! Characters like Queen Bee, Wiggler and Metal
Mario have appeared in one Mario game for 5 minutes and suddenly they become a
playable character in Mario Kart 7 beating out Waluigi, Goomba, Birdo and the
baby series of the main Mario Characters. This just isn’t right in my eyes, the
characters should be well established to go on a game such as this one, ones
which are recognisable to even those who haven’t played Mario before (because
let’s face it, everyone knows who Mario is whether they have played a Mario
game before or not). Nintendo need to get their priorities straight on this
one: Introduce new characters which no one is heard of or celebrate the
original and recurring characters of the Mario series.
So there,
that’s my personal opinion on how to make Mario Kart 7 better, to be fair many
people may disagree with me because they will think Mario Kart 7 is fine the
way it is, I just think these points will make it for fair to play and
therefore give a better gaming experience i.e. I won’t want to take the game
out of the console, jump on it many times, throw it off the wall and then out
of my bedroom window because I was in first place on Rainbow Road and someone
set a blue shell off on me and then another character pushed my off the side. Hopefully Nintendo will address these issues in Mario Kart 8 set for release in April 2014.
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