Mario Kart: Double Dash
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Mario Kart: Double Dash is the GameCube iteration of this long-running, popular franchise. Starting with 8 go-karts and 16 drivers, you will race as a team to try to earn gold trophies in all of the cups (Mushroom, Flower, Star, Special, All Tour). This is made more challenging by allowing the racers to use items, both personally and maliciously. I have played this to completion with my girlfriend in co-op mode. This will be the basis for this review.
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Mario Kart: Double Dash is the GameCube iteration of this long-running, popular franchise. Starting with 8 go-karts and 16 drivers, you will race as a team to try to earn gold trophies in all of the cups (Mushroom, Flower, Star, Special, All Tour). This is made more challenging by allowing the racers to use items, both personally and maliciously. I have played this to completion with my girlfriend in co-op mode. This will be the basis for this review.
Gameplay
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Playing MK:DD is a blast. There are many characters to choose from, all with their individual stats. There are also a multitude of karts to start with. After a few races, you will start to feel what kind of kart you want to be racing with, and you can go find one that fits. Karts are rated in Top Speed, Acceleration, and Weight. The drivers are classified as Light, Medium, or Heavy. In general, more weight will increase top speed, but lower acceleration. You are also able to bump around smaller karts. Less weight will increase your acceleration, but your top speed suffers. You also may fall victim to the heavier karts bumping you around.
There are 16 tracks to choose from, each designated to a character. Within these tracks are obstacles to get in your way and items to try to help bring you back.
In single-player, you control both characters by switching them between front and back. In co-op mode, the rear player will control the item usage, slide boosts, and slide attacks. They also seem to be more controlling of the starting boost. Overall, the controls are fairly straightforward for a Mario Kart game and they really make the game fun.
My biggest issue with this game is the balancing of the other racers. You can be racing a perfect course, have a great lead and be ready to finish, and you'll get hit with a blue shell, followed by two red shells, and possibly even a bomb or car to finish you off. At this point, everyone else has caught up and you are now in 6th. When this happens towards the end of the All Tour Cup (about 30 minutes in), it can be really frustrating. On top of this, were you already in 6th place, you can pretty much kiss your chances of getting first goodbye. The karts in first and second will likely stay in first and second without you there to mix it up. Eventually, the first place racer gets so far ahead, that even with a lap to go, there just isn't a chance. When you're in first, the computer gets all kinds of blue shells, but when you are in last, you still can't get the items you need to help you out. It really just feels like you can't do anything about it sometimes.
Graphics
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The graphics looks pretty great for a GameCube game. Nintendo seems to generally to a good job on their own games in this regard. The art is stylized, so the realism isn't in the forefront. It looks exactly how I would have expected Mario Kart on the GameCube to look like. The animations are smooth and the game seems to run at a pretty great frame rate. I have not encountered any type of slowdown or glitches as far as graphics go. The only thing I can think of offhand is a little bit of clipping due to the camera being at weird angles sometimes.
Story
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Being a Mario Kart game, there really isn't a story. You just race and race and race. If I had to make one up: All of the citizens of Mushroom Kingdom can now only eat Gold Trophies, so ultimately, this is a race for survival.
Replayability
-------------------
The replayability in this game is great...until you're almost done with it. There are 13 karts and 4 racers to unlock by earning gold in various cups. The downside is that some of these unlockables really aren't that great, compared to what you've already been using. It doesn't really unlock an even amount of goodies. You'll end up with more lightweight karts and heavy racers than you really could ever need. Towards the later courses, getting a gold really requires strong concentration and a good deal of luck. When you finally get it, you are let down by the reward. The coolest thing that we unlocked was a new title screen for getting ALL of the golds. Whee.
Now that we have earned all of the golds, our interest in playing has been shot. It was already getting shot by the fact that All Tour takes 40 minutes and it kept stealing our gold from us. I feel this way about most games, but if they had put a little time and effort into keeping track of a few more stats, I would likely want to keep playing. Lindsey and I were talking about how achievements for a game like this would be perfect. After you have already mastered the tracks, you could be tracked on which levels you completed with using no items, no boosts, all boosts, anything. Just little checkmarks like that would really draw us back into this game. In Baby Park, we have been able to lap 4th. We would like recognition for this, or at least know that we will when we lap 2nd.
This game doesn't do that though, and time trials aren't enough to counter the rage this game has built in us on occasion.
Overall
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Overall, this game is great. Co-op is great fun, and there are a lot of karts, racers, and tracks to mess around with. It does have its downsides, but they aren't really that much to try to overcome, and when you do, you feel pretty good about it. There are just a few things that I would tweak to make it even better. They wouldn't even be that hard to implement. That though, is usually my biggest problem with Nintendo games in general, so I guess I'm not really surprised.
8.5/10
---------------
Playing MK:DD is a blast. There are many characters to choose from, all with their individual stats. There are also a multitude of karts to start with. After a few races, you will start to feel what kind of kart you want to be racing with, and you can go find one that fits. Karts are rated in Top Speed, Acceleration, and Weight. The drivers are classified as Light, Medium, or Heavy. In general, more weight will increase top speed, but lower acceleration. You are also able to bump around smaller karts. Less weight will increase your acceleration, but your top speed suffers. You also may fall victim to the heavier karts bumping you around.
There are 16 tracks to choose from, each designated to a character. Within these tracks are obstacles to get in your way and items to try to help bring you back.
In single-player, you control both characters by switching them between front and back. In co-op mode, the rear player will control the item usage, slide boosts, and slide attacks. They also seem to be more controlling of the starting boost. Overall, the controls are fairly straightforward for a Mario Kart game and they really make the game fun.
My biggest issue with this game is the balancing of the other racers. You can be racing a perfect course, have a great lead and be ready to finish, and you'll get hit with a blue shell, followed by two red shells, and possibly even a bomb or car to finish you off. At this point, everyone else has caught up and you are now in 6th. When this happens towards the end of the All Tour Cup (about 30 minutes in), it can be really frustrating. On top of this, were you already in 6th place, you can pretty much kiss your chances of getting first goodbye. The karts in first and second will likely stay in first and second without you there to mix it up. Eventually, the first place racer gets so far ahead, that even with a lap to go, there just isn't a chance. When you're in first, the computer gets all kinds of blue shells, but when you are in last, you still can't get the items you need to help you out. It really just feels like you can't do anything about it sometimes.
Graphics
-------------
The graphics looks pretty great for a GameCube game. Nintendo seems to generally to a good job on their own games in this regard. The art is stylized, so the realism isn't in the forefront. It looks exactly how I would have expected Mario Kart on the GameCube to look like. The animations are smooth and the game seems to run at a pretty great frame rate. I have not encountered any type of slowdown or glitches as far as graphics go. The only thing I can think of offhand is a little bit of clipping due to the camera being at weird angles sometimes.
Story
--------
Being a Mario Kart game, there really isn't a story. You just race and race and race. If I had to make one up: All of the citizens of Mushroom Kingdom can now only eat Gold Trophies, so ultimately, this is a race for survival.
Replayability
-------------------
The replayability in this game is great...until you're almost done with it. There are 13 karts and 4 racers to unlock by earning gold in various cups. The downside is that some of these unlockables really aren't that great, compared to what you've already been using. It doesn't really unlock an even amount of goodies. You'll end up with more lightweight karts and heavy racers than you really could ever need. Towards the later courses, getting a gold really requires strong concentration and a good deal of luck. When you finally get it, you are let down by the reward. The coolest thing that we unlocked was a new title screen for getting ALL of the golds. Whee.
Now that we have earned all of the golds, our interest in playing has been shot. It was already getting shot by the fact that All Tour takes 40 minutes and it kept stealing our gold from us. I feel this way about most games, but if they had put a little time and effort into keeping track of a few more stats, I would likely want to keep playing. Lindsey and I were talking about how achievements for a game like this would be perfect. After you have already mastered the tracks, you could be tracked on which levels you completed with using no items, no boosts, all boosts, anything. Just little checkmarks like that would really draw us back into this game. In Baby Park, we have been able to lap 4th. We would like recognition for this, or at least know that we will when we lap 2nd.
This game doesn't do that though, and time trials aren't enough to counter the rage this game has built in us on occasion.
Overall
----------
Overall, this game is great. Co-op is great fun, and there are a lot of karts, racers, and tracks to mess around with. It does have its downsides, but they aren't really that much to try to overcome, and when you do, you feel pretty good about it. There are just a few things that I would tweak to make it even better. They wouldn't even be that hard to implement. That though, is usually my biggest problem with Nintendo games in general, so I guess I'm not really surprised.
8.5/10
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