I'm looking forward to Mario Kart 7, but I doubt I'll like that one as much as Mario Land 3D. Mario Kart always makes a few new tweeks and improvements, but is always the same racing experiance. I always have fun, and enjoy racing online though.
I'm liking how, at long, long, last, the Mario Kart series is catching up with something that was done in Mega Man Battle & Chase back in 1997 (Japan)/1998 (PAL regions), with regard to being able to obtain parts and put together a custom vehicle.
I just hope that Mario Kart 7 handles it even half as well as Battle & Chase did, as that game allowed me to make a car that suited the particular way I play.
With Diddy Kong apparently absent (
), I'm now left with deciding who I should be using as my main character, too...
Also, unrelatedly, my copy of Cave Story 3D arrived with me today! I'd like to share some quick thoughts, while I'm here.
It plays like it should. It handles like it should. It's very, very nicely polished.
The polygonal visuals are a lot like Klonoa - Door To Phantomile on the PSX, even down to the way the camera behaves and moves, and that's brilliant. As for the 3D effect, yes, it is entirely a visual effect for this game, but it is a nice one.
It also features some minor usage of "out of the screen" effects when you're at ground-level, which is something that you don't see so often on the 3DS (usually it's like looking into a box, and whilst that's so with Cave Story 3D, too, at ground-level the ground/floor/water/etc. appears to be flowing out towards you).
There's always something to see, too, and it makes it feel like you're watching some real events unfold from a distance, as well as taking part in them by playing, which is pretty neat. It really has this feeling of being a part of a real adventure (as well as looking in on it), somehow, as a result of this.
The world seems very alive, though it seems this way in a different fashion to the original release (and the WiiWare and DSiWare ones). If you see the original Cave Story as aiming at older gamers who grew up with a certain style of games, in its visuals, then I'd say that Cave Story 3D is aiming its visuals at the generation after ours, who grew up with the likes of Klonoa - Door To Phantomile. It fits equally well, and if you like both styles, you'll definitely love this.
The remixed music is (mostly) great, and it sounds suitably "big" to go with the new visuals and their depth. The item-get jingle feels a bit flat and doesn't feel like it has as much impact, unfortunately, and the Game Over tune is difficult to recognise (and thus also doesn't have the same impact as before), but these are my only gripes with it. The sound effects are all good.
It seems a bit less generous with the power-up triangles than before! This was notable for me, because my Polar Star was still on Level 1 by the time I got to the Egg Corridor. I remember it being at at least Level 2 originally, or at least reaching Level 2 very soon into the corridor. I quite like this apparent alteration, as it's making it a bit more challenging, and encouraging greater care in tackling enemies (I found in the original release that I could be more careless with this, because you got so many power-up items that even if you got hit a lot and dropped a power-level, it wasn't a big problem).
So, all in all, it's Cave Story but with a very nice coat of paint, and if you want a physical copy of Cave Story, this is probably a good one to get. The fact that they chose to delay it to ensure its quality really shows - it's all very well-put-together, and thankfully it's nothing like the disaster that the WiiWare release was (after huge delays, the WiiWare version had a number of problems, and had to have updates later to fix them, and even then I'm not entirely sure that they got all of them). Of course, if you've already played any of the other releases to death, you may not find this to be such good value for what's essentially a presentation upgrade.
Also, if you like Mega Man and stuff in that vein, do give this a look - for now, along with the soon-to-be-released Mighty Switch Force, it's one of our best options.