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 »
Prizee.com, fun flash games
By Ravenhawk | January 31, 2007
Now, I know what you’re thinking… “Its name is ‘Prizee’ It must be one of those lame places that says it’ll give you prizes for playing games or something.” And you’re right. For that matter, there’s 20 Wii’s going at the moment. But I really couldn’t care less about the prizes. I just like their games.
Every day you get somewhere between 1 and 3 free plays of their 12 free flash games. (They have more games, but you have to buy a max pack for those, so I don’t particularly care about them.)
I signed up using a friend’s referral and thusly gained double plays on my first day. It was fun. Some of the games, such as food chain, (A game where you have to raise a certain number of adult fish of different types by the time limit. The different types eat types that’re one step smaller) are quite creative.
The only downside I saw was only a couple of the games have any sound. But most of them play fast enough that it doesn’t matter too much. Sound would be nice, but I guess they’re catering to those with low internet speeds.
If anyone wants to try it out, the website is http://en.prizee.com/
If you want to take advantage of the double plays on the first day, you could use me as a Sponsor. My name on there is Ravenhawk
If you’re the type who doesn’t like to use referrals because you don’t like other people profiting for telling you about it, then you could just sign up. You’ll get half plays, though.
Truth be told, I don’t know if I’ll get anything if used as a referrer. Knowing the way these things work, I probably would. If anyone signs up as a referred, I’ll edit this post and say what, if anything, I got.
Edit February 1st 2007, 5:11 PM: So, while no one signed on as a referral, ironically, I got an email from them saying “You should refer people! Here’s what you’ll get!”
Apparrently, if I get referrals, upon their first reward, I’d get either the same, or its bubz value.
I don’t know if that means a reward like the free maxpack I got on my third day, or reward like little radios or something..
Either way, as I said, this is updated so now you know what happens if you give me a referral.
Besides your double games, anyway.
Tags: Uncategorized, Contests, Flash Games, Prizee.com, Wii
Topics: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »