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
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Government Forms and the Gaming Guild
By Ravenhawk | December 11, 2007
These days it is finally being seen as important by game developers to allow players to easily form groups. This is something that has been needed since the early online games, and I’m quite glad to see finally becoming a norm. However, I have personally found an issue with the forms of governance allowed by these groups. Most games only have one form of governance: Complete Autocracy.
For many games, this isn’t a problem and it is often the most efficient in order to get a particular action done. However, when a group gets to any reasonable size, a guild leader is going to, at the very least, require delegation of authority. Most of world understands that authocratic governments don’t work. So why is it that game designers feel that it is the only form of government that gamers need?
Now, to be fair, not all games have this great flaw.
Puzzles Pirates has a couple other forms of government, however, the implemented them in such a manner that you’re being sickeningly inefficient to get anything done unless you’re autocratic or have all your members with voting rights on a very regular basis.
Dream of Mirror Online has an interesting system for it’s guilds. In order to create the group you need 5 people over level 20 and like.. 40k. The person who creates the guild is the guild chairman and the others are the elders. Elders have the ability to recruit, etc. So far it’s pretty run-of-the-mill.
However, DOMO also allows you to create smaller, sub-guilds within your main guild. Then, you can set managers for these sub-guilds, which gives them complete control over the sub-guild. This allows not only delegation of power, but the setting up of specialized sub-groups within your guild. For instance, my friend’s guild is called Radical Dreamers. Within this guild he has a subguilds for the following activities: One for teaching new players the ropes of the game, one which runs guild events, one for PVP players, One for merchanting for the guild, and one for resource farming.
While still technically autocratic, the sub-guild system allows for some delegation of power, splitting the hold from the hands of one, to the hands of a small group.
I’m still waiting for a game which finds an efficient way to implement a democratic form of government for the guilds. If I work out exactly how I would see it working, I’ll of course post it here.
Posed Question to the Readers: What do you see as the ideal form of governing a gaming group?
Tags: Game Design, MMORPGS, Autocracy, Clans, Democracy, DOMO, Dream of Mirror Online, Games, Government, Guilds, Politics, Puzzle Pirates, PVP
Topics: Game Design, MMORPGS | 7 Comments »
The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Tabletop Dice Luck
By Ravenhawk | October 3, 2007
I was doing the ol’ “Read random old blog posts in cool sounding blogs” thing today and came upon this post titled, Blessing of the Dice Gods. In it, the author notes the effects upon players when cool dice rolls happen at cool times.
In the tabletop game I’m currently involved in, the GM made an interesting house rule. I’d thought it was a normal house rule for him, but apparrently he just made it up for our campaign. His system is a D100 based system. Obviously, therefore extreme action comes down upon a roll of 1 or 100.
Added to this is the random factor of the 42 roll. When one rolls a 42, crazy stuff happens. What exactly the 42 means can vary greatly. A minor roll ending in a 42 could make the players run across a random villager, running as though for his life, screaming, who suddenly stops and calmly walks away, ignoring the existance of the party.
A dodge roll on the 42 can make you get hit in a dramatic, hardcore fashion, or perhaps the arrow flying at you suddenly turns into a bowl of petunias. (That one actually happened.)
The edition of the random 42 has added a good emotion wrench to our tabletop games. When someone rolls a 42, generally there are groans all around the table, looks of horror on the faces of the players and a grin of sadistic glee spreading across the face of our game master. 42’s aren’t always bad, but they’re not always good either, sometimes they can spell player death or a random large baddie encounter.
When the dice luck happens at good times, it can really bring good emotional effects to your players. By having another number which entails extremes of dice luck, you add one more point which can bring that rush of exhillaration/horror to the group.
If you’re not a Douglas Adams fan, you could substitute 42 for another number. Having it be somewhere in the middle is probably best as it creates a polarized effect for the dice luck. If you like having random effects in your system, it’s a fun rule to add.
Tags: Tabletop Games, Game Design, 42, D038D, D100, Dice Luck, Dungeons and Dragons, Games, House Rules, Role Playing Games, RPG
Topics: Tabletop Games, Game Design | No Comments »
Cellular Phone Games
By Ravenhawk | August 7, 2007
Having joined the mobile age not too long ago, one of the first things I did when I got my phone to check out the games on it. Of course they were just demos, but among them was Zuma. Those unfamiliar with Zuma can do a google search and find it all over the place. I personally liked to play it on MSN games even though you have to use internet explorer.
Zuma has always been one of my favorite little flash games. Because of this, I was very disappointed after playing it on my phone. I’m sure they could have done a better port of it. The game play, which on the PC is fast paced as your control is with your mouse, was very slow and choppy. The graphics, which aren’t all that complicated, had become horrendous. I know the cell phone could do the better graphics as the other demos were 3D racing games.
Overall it was a sad experience. The problem is that people making the cell phone games assume that just because you’re playing on something that isn’t necessarily a gaming platform, you’ll settle for subpar gaming. This should be true, to a point, but as cell phones get more advance and definitely are no longer just for making phone calls, I think they should put a bit more thought into their cell phone games. With just the four “arrow” buttons and my center enter button, one could easily have enough control buttons for an old school RPG, for instance.
I probably won’t look too much into the games as I see my phone as a communication device, not a gaming tool (and the games cost too much) but if I ever find time to learn flash, I’d totally make a game which could be played on ze cell phone and didn’t suck….
Tags: Games, Cell phone games, Cell phones, Flash Games
Topics: Games | No Comments »
The real world can be inspiring
By Ravenhawk | June 18, 2007
A lot of gamers dream of being in game development. Or at least think of an idea or two that they think would be an awesome game, book, or D&D campaign.
But how many of them really would make a great game? At least a great game that isn’t a clone of something else they’ve played. If you really want to come up with ideas that are truly unique, you need to be getting your inspiration from places other than the medium you’re going to be working from.
You want to make a great RPG? Don’t just play RPGs. Play FPS, Fighting Games, Racing Games, Adventure Games. Then get out of your house. Look for inspiration in strange places. Go to the mall. Watch the people, watch the way they interact, what they do. Walk down random isles that you’d never normally go down in the store. Look at all the weird stuff and just think to yourself other uses that shape could go to, strange things the item could be used for…
There are a million ways to gain inspiration, but the best way is to go out and do things that you don’t normally do. Putting yourself out of your element forces your brain to work. Sure, you can come up with the best new clone of FF3 ever made just by playing all the RPGs out there.
Or you could play other types of games, and come up with something truly original…
What interesting places have you found inspiration?
Tags: Game Design, Games, Inspiration
Topics: Game Design, Games | 1 Comment »
MMO Fighting Game: Rumble Fighter
By Ravenhawk | June 5, 2007
I apologize for missing my weekend post, I went to work, came home, passed out, and spaced it. In other news, a friend dropped me a link yesterday to Rumble Fighter, a new game currently in its second phase of beta testing. He’s been taking part in the beta from the start and says it is generally an awesome game.
It’s a side-scrolling fighting game like Street Fighter. You choose one of four classes, who all have distinct stats and abilities. There are different modes of play, including FFA brawls, King of the Hill, and a couple other interesting sounding things.
You can customize the look of your fighter with items like cool hair, different clothes, flags, etc. Fighters are ranked on a variety of statics and when you get in the top fighters, you get different flags and things to equip to show off your awesome peak rankings.
Controls are done with the keyboard, but I know my friend used his controlpad to play so, you could map the buttons to whatever device you feel like fighting with.
After reading all the stuff about it, I personally was totally pumped to play. Sadly, I don’t know how long it will be until the game is open for play, I think it has at least a couple more phases of beta to go through. I’ll be prodding my friend to keep me updated on awesomeness as he goes through the beta, and if there is any news, you’ll get it here.
Tags: Beta tests, MMORPGS, Games, Fighting Games, Rumble Fighter
Topics: Beta tests, MMORPGS, Games | No Comments »