Nintendo - Mario Kart Wii Review

Dating back to the SNES days, Mario Kart is one of Nintendo's longest running franchises, and every new generation of Nintendo's consoles brings with it a new Mario Kart. Coming after the absolute masterpiece that was Mario Kart Double Dash for the Gamecube and a solid portable showing for the Nintendo DS, the Wii incarnation of Mario Kart has some pretty big shoes to fill. In most ways, it fills them very well.

Mario Kart Wii is built around the use of the Wii Wheel, which is a small plastic shell that fits around the Wii Remote and acts as a steering wheel, allowing the player to control the action by tilting the controller back and forth, much like in the earlier Wii racing title Excite Truck. I have to admit that I was skeptical about the wheel at first - it just seemed very gimmicky. Much to my surprise, however, it offers such a tight control scheme that I've yet to put much time into any of the other control options that the game offers. (If you don't want to use the wheel you have numerous other configurations to choose from, including the classic Gamecube controller.) The sensitivity on the wheel is extremely high, however, with a 15 degree twist of the wheel being all it takes to turn your kart as far as it can turn without going into a slide. At first it's VERY easy to over-steer, but after a few races it becomes second nature. Far from being the gimmicky nightmare I'd feared, the wheel actually adds to the game experience and makes it all the more fun.

There are several new additions to the game, such as drafting (following closely behind another player to get a speed boost due to decreased wind resistance), pulling aerial tricks during jumps to net speed boosts, and, most obviously, the addition of motorcycles. The motorcycles integrate nicely into the game, and their superior maneuvering, acceleration, and the ability to get a brief speed boost at will by popping a wheelie are balanced well by reducing their ability to make use of "mini-turbo" boosts from drifting around turns and the ease with which they are physically muscled around by the actual karts. None of the new additions are earth-shattering in their scope, but all of the add just a little bit to the game without changing any of the essentials. In short, they're just enough to keep things fresh without making a marked departure from the previous installments. Also, in an attempt to make the game more accessible, drifting around corners is now accomplished with less effort than before - by merely holding down the B button and turning rather than holding the button and repeatedly jerking the nose of your kart into and out of your turn like in previous incarnations. If even that is too much effort, you can also set the game to simply put your kart into a drift automatically every time you make a sharp turn, but by doing so you lose the brief turbo boost you're otherwise afforded by navigating a drift manually.

Notably missing from the game, however, is the Double Dash gimmick of having another character riding shotgun with the driver to throw items. The cooperative 2-player options that this configuration offered will be missed by some players, myself included, but it's certainly not a deal-breaker. Also absent are the individual super-items from Double Dash, but this seems to be "balanced out" by the addition of a few powerful new items such as the Super Mushroom (which turns you into a giant and allows you to roll over other karts, squashing them flat), and the Bullet Bill (which changes your kart into a bullet and cause you to surge ahead past the other racers). The individualized karts are gone from the last game as well, though there's no paucity of vehicles to choose from. You begin the game with 3 karts and 3 bikes in each of the three weight classes and will unlock others as you progress. The character you choose will also modify the abilities of the vehicle they're driving, so it isn't as if everyone on the road is a carbon copy.

While Double Dash supported 8 vehicles per race, Mario Kart Wii ups the number to an impressive 12. This means, among other things, that there are more items flying around than before and that the "pack" is much tighter throughout the race. This can create a few frustrating moments when the player is bombarded with several items in a row and quickly loses position in the race, but it's honestly not as distracting as some reviewers have complained. One thing of note is that the character models seem somewhat smaller than before relative to their surroundings, so sometimes it feels as if you're a minuscule character driving through an enormous world.

Graphically the character models are only marginally better than they were in the Gamecube incarnation, but the actual tracks (There are 32 in all, 16 new and 16 returning from previous games.) have superior lighting and shading effects and the graphics have a pleasing, cartoony look to them. The game doesn't look as gorgeous as, say, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, but it certainly doesn't look bad either. The game zips along with no apparent slowdown and looks quite nice even on a large TV.

Much has been made about the WiFi connectivity of Mario Kart Wii, and I have to say that it surpasses expectations. You don't spend much time waiting around in lobbies looking for players, and the game itself has very little (if any) lag while playing online. A lot of folks are complaining that there's no voice chat, but this is (in part) a kid's game - 9 year-olds across the country don't need to hear me cussing like a sailor whenever I fall off the track. You can play with random people from around the world (A spinning globe shows you where each of your opponents is from before your first race together) or with your buddies by way of swapping "friend codes". I don't normally care much about playing games online, but Mario Kart Wii makes the experience very accessible and fun.

Overall, Mario Kart Wii is an extremely fun racing game for the Wii that makes excellent and intuitive use of the Wii's motion sensing capabilities and provides the absolute best online gameplay yet on the console. The game is all-age appropriate, even when playing online and is accessible enough that it can be played competently after just a few races. This is easily the Wii's best racing game thus far and is surely destined to become one of the console's must-own titles.