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 »
Censorship Hypocrisy; Games vs Movies
By Ravenhawk | October 29, 2007
In a recent gamesindustry.biz editorial Johnny Minkley discussed the grand hypocrisy and controversy surrounding the British Board of Film Classification presently. A rather commonly known story by now; The BBFC refused to give a rating to Manhunt 2, even after the game was revised and reapplied for rating. Effectively this means that the game, which recieved a M rating from the ESRB, is banned in the UK.
Despite their excuses, this is rather obvious censorship, not merely on the grounds of it being disgustingly violent. At a time when the argument between games censorship vs other forms of media is at it’s peak, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that it wasn’t banned because it was violent but because it was a violent game. The BBFC also recently rated the film Eastern Promises, which is worse in content than event Manhunt. The game was given an Adult rating on the grounds that, it ‘isn’t the BBFC’s duty to censor, merely to rate and adults can make up their own minds about what they watch’ (Paraphrase, the GI.biz article has the actual quote in it)
But alas, apparently, being an adult doesn’t mean that you can make up your own mind about what you play.
There have been no studies that weren’t already out on a vendetta that have actually come to the conclusion that games have any effect on violent behavior, let alone having a larger one than movies. Their claim is the protection of children, but isn’t that what an adult rating is for? An adult rating already says that children shouldn’t be playing it. If children get their hands on it, that isn’t the fault of the people making the games; it is the fault of the irresponsible parents who buy the game for them, or of the corporations for not having their wage-slaves check IDs.
We put our trust in ratings groups so that they can tell us what the content of games are before they’re purchased, not so that they can censor our access to content…
Tags: Video Games, Politics, Games, BBFC, Censorship, Manhunt 2, Movies
Topics: Video Games, Politics, Games | 3 Comments »
Single Player Review Criteria
By Ravenhawk | September 22, 2007
Returning from my Hiatus, that was quite frankly, equatable almost equally to my PS2 than it was to school, I decided I should at least be somewhat productive and write up reviews for some of the games I was playing. However, my review criteria written up previously were crafted specifically for the MMORPG genre so I had to write up some new ones.
Gameplay: How the game plays, including control, mechanics, difficulty.
Graphics: How the game looks. This doesn’t necessarily mean things have to have the most “intense” 3D stuff, it’s more how well the visuals are pulled together and fit with the overall game.
Sound: I haven’t played many good games that didn’t have sound. From ambient background noise to intense battle music, sound helps set the environment and bring your game to life.
Fun: How fun is the game? This really balances together a lot of the other elements. How entertaining is the game overall? How much replay value does it have?
Overall: This score is an average of all the others. Here will be a few comments on how all the other elements were pulled together.
Tags: Video Games, Review
Topics: Video Games, Review | 2 Comments »
Censorship of Videogames
By Ravenhawk | April 27, 2007
Earlier today I attended a Xfire debate on censorship of videogames. As usual, they had an interesting cast of guests at the debate.
They were:
California State Senator Leland Yee
Hal Malpin from the ECA
Dennis McCauley from Gamepolitics.com
Russ Pitts from Escapist Magazine
Dan Isett from the Parents Television Council
And Henry Lowood from Stanford University.
A prettty “reputable” group of people who first had a debate amongst themselves with Lowood acting as moderator and providing questions. Then the floor was opened up for the gamers to ask questions. Typically, None of my questions got answered. But it was still an interesting debate. At least the part I partook in. I had a math test smack in the middle of the debate.
A large number of people were focusing on the ESRB, as though it was their duty to more thoroughly censor games. In my opinion the responsibility of censoring children’s access to adult games falls on two people: The parents of the children and the stores which sell the games. The ESRB gives the most thorough rating system of any form of media. However once they’ve marked the games, its up to the parents to pay attention to what type of games their children are trying to play.
And its up to the store owners to make sure the people buying the game can actually buy it. If a twelve year old asks to buy a M rated game, the answer should be “No.” It should be like the movies. You want to get in to the grownup show, you get carded. It should be the same with Mature games.
Sure, some teenagers will complain about this. But you know what? If they’re going to try to censor the games, they could at least do it right.
Until next time, comrades.
Tags: Video Games, Censorship, ESRB, Xfire
Topics: Video Games | No Comments »
EA Teams with TV People to Make Virtual Me
By Ravenhawk | April 18, 2007
EA and reality TV show maker Endemol have made an announcement that they’re going to be working together to make a hybrid videogame/TV show program called Virtual Me. It will allow users to create and customize little virtual avatars of themselves and then besides the usual chitchat with whoever random people you find, you can also take part in virtual versions of Endemol’s TV shows. (Shows such as Big Brother and Fear Factor)
Now, some people might say “Hey cool!” at hearing this. Those type of people tend to be the ones who watch TV. Of which, I am not one. I find reality shows to be a little mind numbing. Why, I ask, would you want to watch someone sit in a bucket of spiders for $100 bucks? Or.. something.
I’ve never actually watched fear factor.
I guess it could appeal to some people, but its definitely not a game made for gamers. It’s a game made for the people who say you’re wasting your time playing video games and then watch an average of 4 hours of TV per day.
At this point I wait for you to be able to play along with all the random sitcoms on TV. Or heck, they could reair Seinfeld so I could chill with Jerry at the Diner.
Maybe, I’d play that one.
Until next time, Comrades.
Tags: Video Games, EA, Endemol, TV, Virtual Me
Topics: Video Games | No Comments »