Review: Mario Kart Wii
By Ravenhawk | May 5, 2008
It’s been a week since Mario Kart arrived and it has been making it’s home in the Wii almost constantly since. I’ve always been a fan of Mario Kart and overall this game was no exception.
Given it’s lack of “Massive Multiplayer” this review falls under the jurisdiction of my single player review criteria.
Gameplay: The largest difference between this Mario Kart and previous ones obviously is the control. While the option to use the “classic controller” is there, the game comes with a wheel to insert your Wiimote inside. The controls with the wheel are mostly intuitive, the D-pad deals with items, the 1 and 2 buttons are break and acceleration respectively, and the B button if you so choose can be used to drift.
The Bikes handle differently than the karts, although for all the complaints lobbied by those who’ve played the game, the only real difference is that they turn differently, have a minor boost ability and don’t drift as well.
The game runs par usual; You and your foes are an epic contest… To see who can go around in a circle three times the fastest. Epic Indeed. They added more racers as well as you can now have twelve people in a race at a time. This makes the competition a lot more fierce and grouping on the tracks is a lot tighter.
The difficulty of the game has improved; That is to say that it has become harder in all three modes from the previous games. Whereas in the previous Mario Kart games the three difficulty levels had very little variation, 100CC and 150cc both take good sized upward hikes in difficulty from their predecessors.
Graphics: Everything in the game looks smooth, clear, and sticks with the usual Mario “cartoonish” theme, meaning everything is bright, colorful, and drops you right onto the various points of The Mushroom Kingdom Infrastructure that they sell permits to race on.
Sound: The background music is perky, happy, and generally guaranteed to get stuck in your head. The sound effects for explosions, etc are pretty normal. The voices of the characters are amusing; the range from baby mario’s cute (but much more vocal than he ever was in yoshi’s island) lines, to Bowser’s growling.
Fun: I preface this section with the following disclaimer: The game being reviewed is MARIO KART. Now returning to your normally scheduled program:
Like it’s predecessors, Mario Kart Wii has the ability to summon forth hours of entertainment. Playing alone, there are three levels of 32 tracks (plus mirrored tracks) to burn your way through.
The real fun, however, comes from it’s Multi-player. With up to four people on a single television or up to 12 on wifi (w/ up to 2 on the same console). There can be a lot of man-made chaos to fight your way through. The human element makes a large difference in gameplay and unspoken rivalries can quickly form between players.
While at first I lamented the inability to speak to your fellow players, as I believe gaming communities greatly increase the enjoyment of the games, after spending a few days straight playing the game with my room mate something occurred to me that I’d forgotten from the days of the N64: Mario Kart induces swearing better than any other game known to man. Therefore it might have been wise to not include voice-chat as could easily have reduced the family-friendly-ness of an otherwise perfect party game. However, it might have been nice at the very least to be able to send messages to one another asides from the ones on your friends list.
Replay value of the game on single player, like most things, has it’s limit. However, with the addition of a world-wide Wifi network, the ability to download other peoples best speeds on your favorite track and battle in two different modes, the multiplayer replay value is almost endless.
Overall: By and Large Mario Kart Wii is an excellent game. I would even go so far as to say it is a must-have for all Wii owners. Unless of course you’re violently opposed to racing games. Or were a victim in the past of Tramatic Blue Shell Shock Syndrome.
On a related topic: I have created a website tonight (Currently just an under construction page, basically) that will soon be home to the Mario Kart clan that Blanks and I are creating, the Blue Shell Socialist Undercurrent.
Edit: For the potentially interested, my friend code is 2621-3027-2402
Tags: Review, Games, Blue Shell Socialist Undercurrent, Mario Kart, Tramatic Blue Shell Shock Syndrome, Video Games, Wii
Topics: Review, Games | No Comments »
Single Player Review Criteria Updated
By Ravenhawk | March 29, 2008
I have (finally) updated the review criteria for single player games. I didn’t mean for it to take so horrendously long, but I sort of forgot I was setting it up and it fell past the back burner.
I do have a particular game in mind for my first review which should, at the latest, be up within the week.
Apologies for the super-short and vaguely pointless update. See you later this week.
Tags: Video Games, Review, Games
Topics: Video Games, Review, Games | 1 Comment »
Roleplaying Character Journals
By Ravenhawk | March 9, 2008
One of the tabletop games I’m currently involved in is an air pirate campaign that has us sailing about, pillaging what we like, and generally being good little privateers. The GM knows a good bit about actual pirate history, so he likes to keep us acting a (relatively) realistic fashion. As such, being captain, I keep a log book in which I keep track of our food stock and other supplies as well as what we take from our various plunders.
Awhile after each session the GM posts a session review on the google group which he made for the group. He asked that the captain and one other person post character journals of what went down. While they are occassionally a bit of a hassle since I’m not always in the writing mood, I do think that, as a whole, the character journals are a good thing.
Not only do they serve as a useful reminder for what has happened in the past, but they help players to get to know their characters. They also serve as a good place for between play character development. Having your character reflect on the exploits that they have so far endured is a good way to figure out exact how your character thinks or to alter that thinking. Especially when you have longer term character development plans for a character that would take them a good way from their starting mental state.
As a whole, I thought that the character journals were a good idea. Even though I was the only one who didn’t have them as “optional” I’ve still enjoyed writing them. I’d be somewhat curious to find out if other people have used similar tools for development of their characters. So, drop a comment or email if you feel like telling a story.
Tags: Tabletop Games, Games, Character Development, Rixses, Role Playing Games, RPG
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Revisionism Watch 2008: Progress Report
By Ravenhawk | February 12, 2008
For those missing the purpose of the Revisionism Watch, check the Intro. With Super Tuesday and a majority of the state’s primaries already held, many are looking ahead to November, unsure who will be on the ballot. While it has indeed been a cut-throat battle, the main-stream media wants to paint a picture of an epic tie between two equals.
It has been somewhat hard, through all the battle over-hype to track down the actual numbers behind the potential nominees. The best play-by-play I’ve found so far is The Blog From Another Dimension. They have a good overview of the way things have been playing out so far.
Overall the media has like to portray Obama as being the underdog, who is barely fighting against Clinton’s experienced hand. In reality, his charisma and strong call for a change in the corrupt government as it stands has brought quite the uprising since his campaign began. While at the beginning he was an underdog, for sure, since then his campaign has battered and surpassed that of the Clinton camp. Now, with Obama ahead in states and delegates, Clinton is panicking. She’s fired her campaign manager, trying new blood to revitalize her campaign.
I applaud the turn-over. The idea of Clinton is the white house I find a rather disturbing one. A democrat though she may be, no one who would actually compare themselves to Harry Truman is someone I would ever want to see in the white house. She represents staying with the same old political ambiguousness that we’ve been dealing with for years. There is no difference between people like her in the democrats and many of the same in the republicans.
I’ve heard far too much political doublespeak from Clinton to ever cast my vote towards her. Add to this her strong anti-gaming stance over the years and no politically-minded gamer could support her in good conscience.
Tags: Politics, 2008 Elections, Clinton, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Obama, Primaries, Revisionism, Revisionism Watch 2008
Topics: Politics | 1 Comment »
A Last Minute Political Plea
By Ravenhawk | February 5, 2008
The title “A Second-hand last minute political plea” may have been somewhat more appropriate but whatever. As the large masses flood out today to cast their votes all over the country for various primaries, I find a great tension hanging. This day could likely determine the future of this country, at least for the next four years; Will we act responsibly on the world fronts? Will government clean it’s act up? Can this country possibly move to become something I personally could hold respect for again?
Alas, I’m feeling ineloquent and time is short, as pollsters are already moving out in parts of the country to cast our future. And so, rather than using this soap-box to stand up and give my own, long-winded and potentially un-grandiose plea for those of you voting later today to cast in favor of Obama, I instead send you forth to this link. It is a blog post written by the creator of xkcd, a web comic which I personally enjoy. It does not try to argue some sharp point, berate too many of the failings of the other candidates or any of those usual politics. It is just a short, quiet plea for a better future.
Tags: Politics, Democracy, Obama, primaries, voting, xkcd
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Pirate Bay, Bittorrent and the Copyright Battle
By Ravenhawk | February 1, 2008
Recently the owners of Pirate Bay, one of the internet’s most popular bittorrent sites were charged with “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws.” In a brilliant strategic move, plotted to prevent their website from being shut down, the men handed off their servers to trusted friends who took them off to various countries, renting space and setting them back up there. The genius of the plan lies in the fact that, not only do the men not know where their servers are, those holding them apparently do not know what they’re hosting. This quite effectively protects the website itself from being shut down by the Swedish authorities.
While the worst the men are going to be getting personally is a fine, theirs in a story which is just one brilliant military manuever in the fight over copyright laws and bittorrent. Bittorrent has been soaring in popularity as one of the most popular ways of sharing files, due to the difficulty involved in tracking those who use it, and the grey legal standards surrounding whether hosts of tracker files can be charged, because they technically hold no control over what their users host.
I personally am a large fan of torrents. They allow me to download things in a relatively easy fashion, usually at pretty good speed, although that all depends on what other people are connected. I’m also not a large fan of copyright laws. I’m not saying that one should be able to frolic about, taking things that other people made willy-nilly, but the way they’re implemented and enforced is often flawed. In this case it’s utterly rediculous. Yes, it’s true that the Pirate Bay is used by a lot of people for the sharing of various illegal copies of games, videos, whatever. But to be charged with “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws.”?
All they did is to allow people to connect, communicate, and share files with eachother. Any time you allow people to share information between eachother, there will be information that someone doesn’t want passed. This doesn’t mean that you can take down anything that enables people to communicate data purely on the grounds that it enables them to share data. While I hate to summon forth the stereotype “1984″ sign, that’s basically what it leads to.
The sharing of information should not be infringed unless it is a matter of extreme security. You don’t need every schmuck on the street knowing how to make a nuclear bomb from things they can buy at the grocery store, but downloading a musician’s discography? Problem? I think not.
Source Article: Pirate Bay Says It Can’t Be Sunk, Servers Scattered Worldwide
Tags: Uncategorized, Bittorrent, Communication, Copyright, Information, Internet, Pirate Bay
Topics: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »