Mario Kart 7 is a cool game, that much I can say. Something that annoys me: I noticed that most of the "straight line" courses take about as long to complete as a single lap used to take on most of the longer courses back in Mario Kart 64. What's with that? Why are tracks so much shorter in this game? Because it's portable? That's the only real answer I have.

They changed the rules to Battle Mode, now it's not a fight to the finish, it's a contest to see who can cause the most damage. Running out of balloons only nets you a penalty. Of course, I don't remember if it was the same last time a Mario Kart game came around because it's been a while since I played one. But I don't really care for this rule anyway.

For some reason my right thumb hurts a ton when I play this game. I don't understand, I've been playing SFIV on my 3DS for months and this never happened. If I stretch it for a split second everything feels better again but that's really strange, I think it's the first time I've ever experienced anything like this.

I want to come up with something positive here so let me just mention that the brand new tracks in this game are insane. I mean that, somebody must've gone out of their minds designing those things. Check out this game's version of the Rainbow Road to see what I mean. There are also a lot of subtle ways the developers tried to shoehorn 3D effects into the game as well. Check out the giant Toad balloon in Toad Circuit or the confetti that drops after you complete a lap.

Fuck Blue Shells. If you play on 150cc mode (the mode you need to play to unlock any new drivers outside of the Mii), you're going to get hit with up to and maybe more than three of the damn things if you have the gall to stay in first place. This isn't Mario Party, why the Hell does this "random lol" shit keep happening?

It looks like Time Trial is probably going to be my favorite part of the game, again. Those ghosts have a way of making me feel hyper-slow for some reason. I haven't taken this online yet, I bet when I do I'm going to feel even slower.