Mario Kart 7: First Blood: Part II

Mario Kart 7 ($39.96, Amazon) reminds us once again that little has changed in the franchise’s long history. The imaginatively titled sequel eschews the tiniest gimmicks these games have entertained over the years, like the bikes of the Wii version, the team-based mirth of Double Dash!!, or the DS version’s benefit of being the first in the series to have online multiplayer. 7 for whatever reason decides to scale things way, way back to basics. Like as basic as the first three games in the series. For a new game on a new system in the year 2011 that’s kind of pushing the boundaries of indolence.

The few new things in Mario Kart 7 include three new items and kart customization. Customization makes the careful selection of a character and individual kart irrelevant now that it’s possible to swap out the chassis, wheels, and gliders before each race. Stats like speed, weight and acceleration shift ever so slightly with each modification, turning the beginning of each match into busywork for all the impact it has. Maybe this is supposed to grant a great sense of ownership for each customized kart made or a leveling of the playing field between heavyweights like Bowser and lightweights like Toad, but I hardly noticed a difference between each change. Coins return to grant insignificant bursts of speed when collected and the more coins collected, the more kart parts get  unlocked. However, you can’t choose for yourself which parts get unlocked and you’re limited to collecting ten coins per race to ensure you don’t unlock everything too soon. How thoughtful. No, wait! How restrictive.

Flying through the air and driving underwater provides a cheap visual thrill. You would think new flying and swimming sections would play heavily in the course design, like there would be of risk/reward scenarios such as forks in the road — choose the underwater path, the flight path or the straight and narrow. But no, tracks feature little to no deviations from what I could find and  driving underwater just means the screen turns blue and the kart drives a little slower. The inclusion of these segments means nothing major at all. With the exception of the obligatory Rainbow Road,  the 16 new tracks are the least memorable in a Mario Kart game yet. The unlockable tracks from past Kart games aren’t too bad, though I wonder how many out there clamor to play the drab Kalimari Desert from Mario Kart 64 or any of the Wii game’s tracks again. The SNES version of Rainbow Road stages a welcome return, so if you base your Mario Kart opinion entirely on the amount and quality of Rainbow Road tracks available then Mario Kart 7 actually does pretty well.

Wow! Flying through the air! It does absolutely nothing!

The three new items — the Lucky Seven, Tanooki Tail and Fire Flower —  offer mixed results. The Lucky Seven gives players seven already established items at once. It’s cool to go from the invincibility star to the red shell to the lightning bolt in succession, but only way to come across is to be  in 7th or 8th place, or at least very near the end of the pack. Like all previous games, Mario Kart 7 rewards the less able among us with the most powerful items so they can get a leg up on the competition. But even then, the Lucky 7 can screw you. Since the items orbit you, another racer could collide with your star and steal it or detonate your Bob-omb and take you both out. It’s a tense, high-stakes kind of item. The other two don’t fare as well. The Tanooki Tail finally brings a defensive item to the series although it’s a pretty useless one. I deflected a shell maybe once with it. All other times it just hogged my item slot when it randomly appeared. The Fire Flower is a weaker, rapid-fire version of the shells with minuscule stopping power. I hardly saw it get the job done right.

The 3D effect barely affects gameplay. I kept it on only because I got so used to the depth of illusion it caused. When I turned it off I noticed no remarkable difference in the way I played.

I admit I did get invested in the online multiplayer mode. Winning against random players around the world brought some satisfaction my way, especially now that snaking appears to be gone. In case you don’t remember that major annoyance,  players online just chose Toad and “snaked” their way to victory by abusing the drift/boost move as much as possible. Racing became less about skill and maneuvering and more about who can rapidly hit left and right on the D-pad as fast as possible.” It ruined playing Mario Kart DS against strangers online. With snaking kaput I enjoyed the online races much more. Now if only Nintendo made it easier to quit out of the online multiplayer mode. After a certain point the only way to back out of the mode is to restart the 3Ds. Some day, some day, Nintendo will figure out this online gaming thing.

blub blub blub can we just play rainbow road again blub blub blub

And, yeah, all the other basic things are there: ghost races, local multiplayer even for players without the game, a coin running battle mode, and the usual balloon battling mode except it’s no longer possible to blow into the microphone to regain lost balloons. Deleting data isn’t as obvious either. Rather than a simple option in the menu it’s required to hold the A, B, Y and X buttons down as the game logo boots up to get that process started.

Mario Kart 7 is basically a prettier version of Mario Kart DS with a less interesting course and character selection (Where’s Boo? Where’s Dry Bones?) and no annoying snaking. It isn’t a bad game, I wouldn’t say no to it if it fell in my lap. It’s just a very, very familiar one, something I seem to say that a lot these days. It’s disheartening Nintendo couldn’t out-do themselves this time, especially since we’re on the cusp of 2012 and the formula has barely changed since 1992. They delight in taking huge risks with their hardware — a handheld with two screens, a standard definition machine with motion control, a handheld with two screens and THREE-DEE! — but they rarely take any risk with their software. Maybe, after 20 years of playing it safe, it’s time to back away from safe tradition and try some new ideas.

Games of Summer is a recurring seasonal retrospective highlighting those magical titles that evoke wondrous thoughts of warm weather, carefree days, and discovery. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll reflect on said titles and analyze why they meant so much to us then – – and just as much now.

Fast cars. A hot female companion. The open road. Killer music.

These four elements, ones that tap into the most passionate element of the teenage male psyche, were brought together in most excellent form in Yu Suzuki’s 1986 classic Outrun.  The earliest I remember playing the game was in the summer of ’89, an odd transitional season between junior high school and high school. A transitional period that walked arm in arm with the core of SEGA’s arcade racer.

A half-assed, hole-in-the-wall arcade that opened behind the O’Dwyer Gardens housing project in Coney Island was the location where I first saw the game (looking back, I’m pretty certain it was the home for many illegal activities). I’d seen other kids pop coins into Outrun, but the game never made an impact until I saw my best friend cross the finish line in back to back session using completely different routes. That may not come off as a reflection-worthy moment to contemporary gamers, but back in the late ’80s (a time when gassing and braking in a linear fashion from point A to point B was the norm) this freedom was greatly appreciated.

Outrun, even 25 years later, is all about extreme replayability. After selecting one of three racing tunes (“Magical Sound Shower,” “Passing Breeze,” “Splash Wave”) you speed through a series of four checkpoints, each of which acts as a fork in the road that requires you to select the path. With five different endings, it was a machine that demanded more than a little bit of my cash.

The varied environments played a major role in making this a memorial summer game. I didn’t travel much farther than where the MTA could bring me, so seeing the mountains, fields, and towns lovingly rendered using SEGA’s Super-Scaler technology was the digital equivalent of going on a cross-country road trip. Burning rubber, ironically, proved a relaxing tour of places that I never thought a poor Brooklyn kid would ever see in person.

I truly believe, in retrospect, that Outrun spoke to me on a deeper level. I was heading to high school, a time when young men and women began to plot their futures. We had to make choices–not just about the high school that we wanted to attend, but classes we wanted to take and the new faces that we wanted to date–not to mention college. I spent the last job-free summer break of my life plopping my Mom’s quarters into this machine inbetween stickball sessions, reading comics on the shore, and hunting for rare baseball cards.

Outrun will forever bring me back to a place of total freedom, either on the virtual road or in summer memories.

Anyone who knows anything about knows that I’m a simple man. I like quality beer, dark movies, cutting-edge technology, and Outrun. Beer and film discussion, despite being excellent diversions, aren’t fodder for this site, so I’ll stick with tech and SEGA’s classic racer.

Project Outrun, an experiment by some fine brains at UC Irvine, deftly combines high technology and video games. Here’s the description straight from the YouTube video description:

Garnet Hertz’s video game concept car combines a car-shaped arcade game cabinet with a real world electric vehicle to produce a video game system that actually drives. OutRun offers a unique mixed reality simulation as one physically drives through an 8-bit video game. The windshield of the system features custom software that transforms the real world into an 8-bit video game, enabling the user to have limitless gameplay opportunities while driving. Hertz has designed OutRun to de-simulate the driving component of a video game: where game simulations strive to be increasingly realistic (usually focused on graphics), this system pursues “real” driving through the game. Additionally, playing off the game-like experience one can have driving with an automobile navigation system, OutRun explores the consequences of using only a computer model of the world as a navigation tool for driving.

Even if you’re some type of Outrun-hating mutant, you have to admit that’s pretty f’n cool.

The iPhone and iPad platforms have a number of racing titles ranging from the realistic (Real Racing 2) to the insane (RoadBlaster), which bring unique driving experiences all their own. You can add fractiv’s Lane Splitter to that mix. The 99-cent universal iPad game eschews the idea of competitively racing toward a finish line or mowing down opponents. Instead, you must avoid traffic as you speed your way toward your wedding. Yes, your wedding. Our blonde, tuxedo-wearing protagonist is running late and its up to you to break several traffic laws to ensure he promptly gets to his love. And it’s remarkably fun.

Lane Splitter adopts a 3/4 bird’s-eye-view and vertical auto-scrolling environment that sees you speeding along a busy strip. You have exactly one chance to complete the journey–ram into a car (or railing) and you’re bounced back to the beginning of the game. This will be a source of frustration for some gamers, but I liked the “all or nothing” nature of the challenge as it kept me coming back for more.

In the upper-right corner is your ever-increasing score, and in the upper-left is a pause button for stopping the game–those are the only on-screen indicators that are constants throughout the game.  Lane Splitter keeps things simple, even down to the control scheme. You don’t have to press a gas button; the motorbike auto-accelerates as long as you don’t go face-first into a bumper. Tilting the iPad left or right causes our speeder to tilt in that direction, which you’ll need to dart between vehicles. This, thankfully, eliminates any flaky virtual D-pad problems.

Visually, Lane Splitter looks very much like a PS1-era title with its rough polygons, but you’ll barely notice them as you burn rubber. There isn’t much in the way of sound, either, as purring engines dominate the soundscape.

Levels transition smoothly from one to another without any breaks; after you complete an area you continue driving straight into another, but with a speed bonus. And on the topic of bonuses, you get  the thumb’s up for buzzing cars, weaving between traffic, and popping wheelies. You can share your score with Facebook friends and check out a global leaderboard to view scores from top racers.

Lane Splitter is an incredibly simple game, but that’s not a knock; that’s the game’s appeal. It’s all about speed and avoidance. Speed freaks will get find this dollar game more than worth the price of admission.

Nexon’s popular kart racer KartRider Rush, launched for free on the Apple App Store today. The cutesy and colorful racer allows up to four players to compete simultaneously in battle and time trial modes. A single player mode lets players race against computer opponents in Item and Speed Mode, and players can compare each other’s scores and times online using Facebook Connect.

The game’s for free, though players can purchase additional items and racetracks to enhance its longevity.

“The release of KartRider Rush on the iOS platform is a significant step forward for Nexon,” said Soo Min Park, Nexon America’s vice president of social game operations. “We aim to offer our games to the widest audience possible, and opening up one of our most popular properties to the mobile platform demonstrates our dedication to providing high quality games with no barrier to entry.”

Nexon will release KartRider Rush for iPad, the Android operating system and for Facebook later this year.

Developer Techland, along with publisher Deep Silver has delivered the complete antithesis to the long-awaited Gran Turismo 5 in a Nail’d,a high octane racer available for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. While the heart of the former is about precision, tweaking, and car-collecting (it’s the gearhead’s ultimate digital  wet dream), the latter is wild take on the ATV/motocross genre that packs enough speed and guitar riffs to leave adrenaline junkies doped on its brazen disregard for science.

When i got my paws on a preview build months ago, I was told that Nail’d “gives the finger to physics”–a statement on which Deep Silver made good.The game is all about break-neck speed as you  careen toward the finish line, jostle for position with other bikers, and catching big, big air.

Going cloud is at the heart Nail’d; in fact, the game keeps track of the amount of time that you’ve spent in the air. Every few feet there’s a ramp that propels you into the air–way, way into the air–and rewards you with huge nitro boost bonuses should you land without exploding. It’s undoubtedly cool and sings a song to all of our inner X-Game dreams, but sometimes it can be a hard to tell where you should touch down to avoid wrecking your ride. It took quite a few high jumps for me to realize that simply clearing chasms isn’t enough; landing in a bush isn’t a safe touch down as you’ll go up in flames (should you wipe out, the game generally respawns you in good location to jump back into the race and tear it up). Some of the crashes are questionable in retrospect–I can land on a rocky cliff from 100 feet up and speed away, but a bush makes things go boom? Still, the sheer number of twists and turns combined with the lack of straightaways makes it feel that you’re blazing trails on rollercoaster tracks.

Boosting is powered by accumulated nitro. The juice fills slowly, but you can fill it far faster with Boost Feats. Boost Feasts are nitro bonuses given out for meeting certain in-game criteria. These include “Jumper” (for making longer than average jumps), and “Sniper” (for driving or flying through a narrow window or gap). It encourages you to drive recklessly, which I’m all about.

The single player game features nearly 5o tournament races (which consist of Simple Race, Stunt Challenge, Detonator, and Boost Madness modes) that you can jump into to unlock vehicle parts and rider costumes. Don’t fret, it’s no where as weighty as other racers’, making the addition just a portion of the overall gameplay, not something in which you become lost.

Thankfully, you don’t have to unlock levels, which is often  an artificial way of extending gameplay; all 14 Nail’d tracks (18 with the free DLC–thanks Deep Silver!) are unlocked from the jump, meaning you can zip around roads loosely based on areas in Arizona, Greece, Yosemite Park, and Andes Mountains. Up to 12 players can get in on the local and multiplayer vs. action, and a rather choice leaderboard system that ranks you based on location (when I signed up, I selected United States>East Coast>New York City so that I was pitted against racers in my region). There’s also an optional, short tutorial that you’re presented with when you first pop in the game disc that serves to introduce you to the game’s simple, intuitive control scheme.

Graphics aren’t as breathtaking as the speed (the rider models look a bit wonky), but they do capture the speed of the game–the insanity of the track design, too. As you race along, you’ll drive through aqueducts, avoid incoming trains, and marvel at the remains of a downed plane that’s scattered across the landscape. The soundtrack consists of loud, noisy bands that I’d normally have nothing to do with, but the grinding guitars from Slipknot, Queens of the Stone Age, and others adds to the blood-pumping action.

Arcade racing fans will find a lot to like in Nail’d; it’s fast, fun, and frantic. The rider models are “meh” and there are some questionable wrecks, but Nail’d is an immensely satisfying title.

Nail’d‘s latest trailer can be wrapped up in two words: Mo’ speed. This ATV racer gives physics the finger by encouraging you to break the sound barrier and make vehicle jumps that no human begin would survive without massive injury to the groin and other cherished body parts.

Developer Techland has indeed created a racer that moves at a blistering pace, one that contains multiple pathways and other goodies that racing fans desire. Hands-on time with the game during a NYC showcase, Nail’d left me craving more–a feeling I hadn’t had with a racer since fist discovering the original Outrun.

Check out the video for this insane ATV racer that zooms onto PS3, Xbox 360, and PC this Tuesday. Hope your Thanksgiving meals are well-digested by then.

“Everytime I play this game, the better it feels.”

Those were the words that Terry Lewis of  The Other View agreed with as I played through Sonic 4. I had gotten significant hands-on time with it at E3 2010, but aggravating nerds, crowds, and noise prevented me from diving fully into what the game has to offer; that didn’t occur this time around at a TriplePoint PR gaming event in Manhattan. Nestled in an intimate setting with good colleagues–and a darkened room with a 100+ inch television–I was able to get a true feel of Sonic 4.

Judging strictly by the same Splash Hill Zone that was on display out west in Los Angeles, Sonic 4 is going to be the game that makes the speedster relevant to gamers over 12 who grew up with the hedgehog during the 2D, 16-bit years. Everything about the new Sonic screams old Sonic; there’s the wonderfully videogamey music, bright quirky landscapes, spikes, spin attacks, and a multitude of gold rings. There’s even that odd sluggishness that accompanies Sonic whenever he isn’t speeding along. Sonic 4 , at least from what I can tell from this opening level, takes the best of Sonic 1, Sonic 2, and Sonic 3, and slaps on a slick HD coating to bring it into modern times.’Twas rad.

TriplePoint PR also presented Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi, the first two Dreamcast games that will be available for digital download this fall. The public relations representative we spoke with drove home the fact that these are the original, unaltered games–the only thing that has been changed is that the games have been upscaled to run at 720p (and they looked damned good, I must say). They even keep their original 4:3 aspect ratios. Crazy Taxi has one additional change: The Offspring’s music isn’t in the game. I consider that a positive.

All in all, SEGA looks to have a strong turn out this fall, which compliments the other fine releases we’ve seen this year such as AfterBurner: Climax, and Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing. Still no sign of a Dreamcast 2. Regardless, it looks like SEGA has finally realized that giving their fans want they want–quality games that are either from or throwbacks to the company’s heyday.

Note: Portions of this review is snatched from our initial hands-on with Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing.

When it comes to racing games, I like mine of the arcade variety. I don’t want to tinker with gears, I don’t want to worry about acquiring licenses; I simply want roaring engines, insane jumps, crazy power slides, wacky characters, and, if possible, inane weapons that you can use to take out cocky foes that think they have their positions on lock.

Nintendo’s Mario Kart pioneered this genre on the SNES , which led to the eventual cavalcade of cute racers that rode the gamut from “inspired” to “damn, they didn’t even try to hide the rip off.” But occasionally a “kart racer” comes along with copious amounts of unadulterated fun and a compelling universe of its own, that it stands on its on four wheels and shines bright. Such is Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing.

Consider Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing a kart rider that could’ve graced the late, great Dreamcast (or, in a perfect world, one of the launch titles of the Dreamcast 2). And that character roster is deep. SEGA wrangled up familiar and obscure race contestants from the company’s rich history including Sonic the Hedgehog, Amigo (from Samba de Amigo), Beat (from Jet Grind Radio), Ryo (from Shenmue), Ulala (from Space Channel 5), Jacky Bryant and Akira Yuki (from Virtua Fighter), Chuih, ChuBei, ChuPea and ChuBach (from Chu Chu Rocket!), and several others.

Each character rides in an appropriately themed vehicle (the fact that Sonic isn’t on foot in this game is beyond the scope of this reviewer) that each has its own strengths and weakness. On top of that, each character has his or her own super special “All-Star Move” that is activated when they are lagging behind in the race (it allows them to bowl through opponents toward the front of the pack).

Whatever screenshots that you’ve seen online or in print absolutely pale in comparison to seeing Sonic & SEGA All-Stars in motion. Blame it on shots of early builds, blame it on downscaling the images to fit publication pages, but playing the game on a HDTV made the environments and characters (both are pulled from a wide range of SEGA properties) absolutely pop. The colors are brilliant and there are lots of small character touches (such as taunt moves) that give each a distinctive personality.

The two dozen tracks, like the racers themselves, are plucked from various SEGA franchises. They’re wonderfully designed, too, as the roadways reflect the nature of the games in which they originated. Amigo’s levels are Crayola-colored psychedelia; Sonic’s levels are twisty loops. Each track has shortcuts so there’s also some variety. Scattered across the tracks are boxes that you run over that grant power ups that either grant offensive or defensive weaponry.

The soundtrack is comprised of remixed music lifted from past SEGA games, which explains why it contains the late ’90s/early 2000′s fun, arcadey style (not the “I’m a wannabe John Williams” tracks you hear in many contemporary titles).

The controls are tight, and quite simple to use. Right button gasses, and left button power drifted. Developer Sumo Digital did an excellent job of controlling the speed and handling. You can really start blazing across the various tracks, but you never feel as though you’re losing control of the vehicle (which is essential when jockeying for position or power-sliding through turns which gives you Boost). Various game modes keep the replayability high.

My only real beef with the game happened randomly: while powersliding during a speed boost, the game froze. I had to power off the Xbox 360 and fire it up again. Although it was a one-time event, in the back of my mind, I wonder if it will happen again if the action gets fast and furious either in the split-screen local multiplayer or online.

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is a must-have title for kart racing fans,  those looking for something different from the Burnouts and Gran Turismos, or SEGA diehards who simply live and breathe on the classic quirky and cool characters. Racing just became fun again.

When it comes to racing games, I like mine of the arcade variety. I don’t want to tinker with gears, I don’t want to worry about acquiring licenses;  I simply want roaring engines, insane jumps, crazy power slides, wacky characters, and, if possible, inane weapons that you can use to take out cocky foes that think they have their positions on lock.

Nintendo’s Mario Kart pioneered this genre on the SNES , which led to the eventual cavalcade of cute racers that rode the gamut from “inspired” to “damn, they didn’t even try to hide the rip off.” But occasionally a “kart racer” comes along with copious amounts of unadulterated fun and a compelling universe of its own, that it stands on its on four wheels and shines bright. Such is Sonic & SEGA All-Stars.

SEGA held a pretty righteous gaming showcase today in New York City where I got to game up and chat it up with Torrence Davis (the head honcho of the The Bitbag), the gents behind DualShockers, HipHopGamer, Jay Michaels (one of the men behind Counterpoint), and Valkor (the man behind The Other View). There were plenty of great titles to tackle ranging from Iron Man 2 to Yakuza 3, but for the scope of 2D-X, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars left the biggest impression.

First of all, let me say this: whatever screenshots that you’ve seen online or in print absolutely pale in comparison to seeing Sonic & SEGA All-Stars in motion. Blame it on shots of early builds, blame it on downscaling the images to fit publication pages, but playing the game on a HDTV made the environments and characters (both are pulled from a wide range of SEGA properties) absolutely pop. The colors are brilliant and there are lots of small character touches (such as taunt moves) that give each a distinctive personality.

And that character roster is deep. SEGA wrangled up familiar and obscure race contestants from the company’s rich history including Alex Kidd (!!!), Amigo (from Samba de Amigo), Beat (from Jet Grind Radio), Sonic, and over a dozen others. I went the totally wacky route and selected Billy Hatcher (from Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg) – - you know, the boy in the chicken suit. Oh, Japan.

The controls are tight, and quite simple to use. Right button gassed, left button power drifted, and “A” unleashed a special attack (which in Billy’s case was his giant egg that lets him get a huge speed burst ). Developer Sumo Digital did an excellent job of controlling the speed and handling. You can really start blazing across the various tracks, but you never feel as though you’re losing control of the vehicle (which is essential when jockeying for position).

All in all the hands-on time with Sonic & SEGA All-Stars elevated the title from one of mere consideration to one that I’m thoroughly looking forward to playing when it arrives on February 23rd. If you love wacky racing, or simply looking for something different from the Burnouts and Gran Turismos, this title deserves a strong consideration.