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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
