The latest installment of
Nintendo's glorious franchise Mario Kart. Packed with challenging, addicting, and frantic gameplay for the Nintendo Wii. Returning to the classic one seater racing play compared to the previous experimental Double Dash. This new series is packed with a large array of carts and motorbikes. All your favorite characters plus a number of unlockable characters return to the tracks to duke it out Mario Kart style.
PROS:
- It's Mario Kart dude, it's supposed to be a frantic, wild affair
- The characters, Mario, Luigi, Peach need I say more?
- Multiplayer, suit up 2, 3, or
4 of your friends and battle for first place
- Online gameplay, Fighting players from around the world for the best lap times, first place and bragging rights.
- Large selection of carts and motorbikes. Although most of the available vehicles are gimmicky and extremely weak on the courses. It's best to stick with the carts or motorbikes with a good amount of top speed, quick acceleration, moderate amount of weight, and good handling.
Carts are best for race course like tracks where speed and acceleration are crucial. (i.e Luigi's Circuit, Peach Beach) Their secondary drift boost and
extra weight is important when jockeying for position and breakaway speed. Go for a motorbike when you're facing hairpin turns and 90 degree corners. (i.e Rainbow Road, DK Mountain, Wario's Mine).
CONS:
- Overly
random and luck based gameplay. It's frustrating and quite
annoying to claw your way into 1st place only to be knocked back to 10th place with a
random assault of items on the last lap. Watching your competition blow past you while you tumble off course from a blue shell, red shell and then getting slammed by a Bullet
Bill is maddening.
One can compare Mario Kart Wii to NASCAR where restrictor plates and various restrictive measures are implemented to prevent a series wide margin victories. Everybody deserves a chance to win right? You might not be the best racer to
grace the Wii Wheel but even you might land in 1st place given the right amount of chances.
Mario Kart Wii's narrow margins of victory ensure tight, competitive racing but it seemingly penalizes and curtails better racers for the ineptitude and inabilities of poor racers.
-Items, the bread and butter of the Mario Kart franchise. Everybody loves and loathes the items. Whether it was a mushroom that allotted you enough speed to rocket into 1st place or the despised blue shell that divebombed on top of you.
In Mario Kart Wii, items play an unfairly disproportionate role in the gameplay. Compared to previous installments, items played a much smaller role in the game. However, in Mario Kart Wii it's safe to say that items determine whether your going to win or lose. Now add on the fact that lower placed racers usually at or below 5th place are more likely to get powerful weapons that can affect everyone such as the Blooper, POW block, thunderbolt, multiple, mega or super turbo mushrooms,
blue shells, and Bullet Bills. Whereas, higher placed racers usually at or above 4th place are less likely to get powerful items and are usually stuck with green shells, red shells, the occasional mushroom, fake item
box and bananas.
Compounded onto this is the fact that items such as the POW block, Lightning, Blooper, and Bullet
Bill occur at an annoyingly high frequency due to lower placed
AI or human racers. Every Mario Kart Wii racer shares a tale of being screwed on the last lap by onslaught after onslaught of POW blocks, thunderbolts, and
blue shells.
RATING: Given it's many design drawbacks, Mario Kart is an addictive game suitable for a group of friends or online play.
Single play is frustrating given the luck based and randomness of
AI gameplay. But overall it's worth the minor irritations of losing due to AI item onslaughts.
Mike: Dude I freakin hate Mario Kart Wii, the stupid
AI always get POW Blocks and Bloopers. I can'
t race with such stupid AI programming. How is it possible for me to have such a great lead and fall back to 12th place on the last lap!!! It's like
Nintendo doesn'
t want you to win or be the single
victor. Freaking communist Japanese game developers.
Hank: That's just a part of the game Mike, you have to accept the fact the Mario Kart Wii isn'
t your run of the mill racing game. Yeah, it's built on goofy scales of luck and chances and the fact that I got screwed on the last lap by a blue shell is what keeps me playing.
Mike: Screw you, I'm going to play Burnout
