Mario Kart Wii
The latest installment in Nintendo’s tried and true brand of racer with a little Wii-flare thrown into the mix. Announced not even a year ago, it’s just behind Smash Bros. in making fanboys wet themselves with anticipation every few years. The Mario Kart series has seen titles on every Nintendo platform since the SNES, and has been a blockbuster success every time. Now, with hype reaching its peak a few days before launch, it looks like the Wii won’t be the console to break the streak.

Synopsis
Not a game with a particularly stirring narrative, the Mario Kart series sees all the characters from the Marioverse putting their differences aside for some violent kart-racing along insane and precarious tracks built around extreme danger.

Pros:

The gameplay is what it’s all about in Mario Kart, right? That tradition of quality doesn’t abandon the franchise here, as the controls are functional and well thought-out. The new Wii-wheel Nintendo’s been plugging like there’s no tomorrow isn’t as bad as we all feared it might be. It’s surprisingly accurate, and though you’ll find yourself overcompensating an awful lot the first few races, most people get used to it pretty quick, and hey, it is engaging and fun, loath as some of the hardcore may be to admit it. Shaking the Wii-remote to do tricks in mid-air is very rewarding; the only downside comes from using the wheel control scheme, as moving it around so much can skew your trajectory, often creating messy (and unbelievably frustrating) results. The experts said it, and now I believe them: Nunchuck-Wiimote is the way to go if you want to succeed.

As usual, the perk of having 4-player split-screen multiplayer is a huge plus, and now that Nintendo’s reluctantly added in some online capacity to its big titles, you’ve always got someone to play with (assuming you’ve got some 14-digit friend codes handy). You also have an option to play online against random opponents, though the connection can be shaky, and lag is certainly no stranger.

Cons:

By now, all the hardcore Wii owners out there have come to terms with the fact that their games just can’t stack up to the high-def beauties we see come pumping out of Microsoft and Sony studios. That being said, with titles like Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy Nintendo has shown that their little platform can look damn good in spite of its graphical inferiority on paper. Considering it comes from the same publishers as these other pretty titles, it’s really a shame that Mario Kart Wii is just plain ugly. The characters were all built with coloured triangles! I understand that it had to be tuned down a bit to compensate for framerate and online play’s sake, but gross. No change from Double-Dash is tragic, considering that this title is supposed to be an evolution of the series. Psst, Mario Kart! I can see your polygons!

Double-Dash changed the franchise, and at the time it was a desperately needed shift. Was anyone out there truly not sick of the same game four times over? Two people in a kart! Changes! Fun!! Turns out that’s not the way Nintendo wanted to take the franchise, as we’re back to one-per-kart fun. Yes, there are bikes, (faster karts) and yes you can do “tricks” in mid-air by having a waggle-fest, but this is the exact same game I’ve been playing for ten years. With one item that isn’t recycled from other Mario Karts, (the annoying lightning-cloud) and less than half the available tracks being new to this title, where’s my incentive to buy this game?

Sure, there’s online play, but personally I don’t know my friend-code, and I don’t care to learn my friend-code, much less my friends’ friend-codes. Assuming we all got into a game at the same time, I can guarantee you it would be significantly less fun than four people playing in the same room. Nintendo makes these things seem like such a hassle, the usual consensus of the players is “why bother.”

Final Thoughts

The wheel is fun for a little while, but when it comes down to it, I want to feel in control of my racer, The Nunchuck-Wiimote combo is definitely the right choice in that respect. This game offers what Double-Dash did, without the dynamic two-character combinations. Double-Dash had special character-only items, giving the game a feel of some strategy regarding the combinations of driver and item-user. Mario Kart Wii has not taken one step forward in play options nor presentation. Mario Kart is always well put-together, always accessible to a wide audience, and always fun. This game is all of these things, but has nothing to make it better than any other installment in the series. $50 to play Mario Kart with wireless controllers, that’s what this is.