Mario Kart Wii Review

Mario Kart Wii (MK Wii) is the 4th installment of the series for home console systems. So far one version has been released per console starting with Super Nintendo. There have also been a couple versions for Nintendo's handhelds and in arcades, Technically making Mario Kart Wii the 8th installment. Nintendo has found a formula that works and ran with it.

If you are new to the series you may be wondering what all the hoopla is about. The fundamentals is basically a racing game at it's core, but Nintendo has worked in it's magic and made it a game that is fun for both children and adults. Starting off you get to choose a mode in the kind of gameplay you would like. There are choices for racing against other players whether they be friends, online or computer players; time trials which pits you against a clock; or a battle mode. Then you will choose from an array of Nintendo characters, with the list adding more and more as the series continues. The characters come in three sizes going on what you would expect from the previous games that they have been in. Small characters range from toad to baby mario, medium characters may be the title character Mario to the beloved Yoshi (as you can see I don't play favorites), to large characters such as Donkey Kong and Bowser. Each size setting has a different attribute to racing. What you can expect from a small character is someone who is fast, but literally a push over. A character that is larger then one of these tiny little guys can easily bump them off the track. While a large character is slower, but you won't see many characters diverting them from their course. This can only mean that a medium character is somewhere in between.

But what are characters without them being in their element. The racing tracks to select are in the Mario World set of themes. Some courses inspired from an actual game such as Super Mario Sunshine to ones that are inspired by the feel of the realm. Many characters have their own course named after them such as Peach Beach (a classic course from Mario Kart Double Dash that makes it in as a returning course on Mario Kart Wii). The courses have only gotten more intricate and as graphics quality increases the scenes become more beautiful. But what can you expect from starting off with a 16 bit systems. However the old courses are still fun to play even without awesome graphics.

The courses themselves can be played one at a time or in cups which is the main goal of the game. In Mario Kart Wii there are the four main cups: Mushroom, Flower, Star and Special which include 4 courses in each that all brand new. Then there are four other cups: Shell, Banana, Leaf and Lighting with retro tracks from Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart Double Dash, and Mario Kart DS. Each cup has courses harder then the last. Achieving a gold medal on a cup can unlock a new cup at the current difficulty or a new character or kart.

Another standard in the Mario Kart world are the difficulty levels. To stay with the racing theme easy has become 50cc, medium 100cc, and hard being 150cc. If you have mastered all three difficulties on all the cups you can unlock what is called mirror. By choosing this difficulty you can play all the courses as if you were looking into a mirror. So if you normally would turn left, in mirror mode you would turn right. But it's not just all about the turns, the words are all written backwards as well. The computer players are just as hard as if you were on 150cc if not harder making this a whole new challenge.

The one feature that has stayed through all the versions is the option of picking up a question mark box, even though the design has changed throughout the years, and gaining a random item to foil your friends and cpu players. In MK Wii we see a lot of classics such as the banana peel for slipping up a competitor, shells to throll at other players, and a mushroom for a quick boost.

If you are sick of racing for the day (it won't last too long though because this game is really that fun), then you can go into battle modes which pit you against other players in a couple of challenges. For MK Wii you have a choice of "Balloon Battle" or "Coin Runner". In Balloon Battle you start off with three balloons of either red or blue floating above your head. That means there are two teams a red and a blue which is determined before you get on a track. There are a few track choices to choose from that are just open ended areas not like what you race on. From there you get ? boxes and use the items against the other team. There is a time limit and whichever teams destroys the most balloons from the other team wins. What's cool about teams is that an object will be surrounded by a colored glow. If it's from your team it can't hurt you.

In Coin Runners your job as a team is to gather the most coins before the timer runs out. Coins will drop down and you simply run over them to gather them up. However, don't think that they are yours to keep. ? boxes are also present and if you get hit with an object you lose your coins, scattering them around you to be collected by anyone once again.

Though being a sequel a few times over, Nintendo has added some cool new features to the game while taking away a couple of good ideas.

One of my favorite features with MK Wii is the addition of bikes. When you first start off collecting trophies in certain difficulty levels you don't get much of a choice on whether you want a bike or kart. In 50cc you can only use karts, in 100cc it's just the bikes, and in 150cc you can chose between the two. One you have earned a gold trophy in all the cups under one difficulty you can have the option of using either. Now I just use the bikes all the time. It's very easy in this game to choose a favorite character and bike/kart and just use it all the time. I'm guilty of this one myself. But with so many choices of characters and karts and bikes you might not want to limit yourself.

Another feature that I love is the online gameplay. Mario Kart is always more fun with human characters in the mix. Playing with friends is great. There is so much satisfaction in the game when you are trying to knock a friend who is in first place with an unavoidable blue shell rather than a cpu player. A feature that would have been nice for online play is adding the wii speak microphone. The microphone wasn't around when MK Wii was first released, but that doesn't mean we can't see an update.

And let's not forget about the wii wheel. MK Wii uses the motion sensor in the wiimote and paired with the wii wheel lets you feel like you have a real sterring wheel to control in front of you. I personally like using this feature, but not everyone does. For those who would rather not can use the wiimote and nunchuck, which is nice since you only get one wii wheel in the package. But hey it's free.

No matter how fun it is there is still some features that I miss from older installments. In MK Wii up to four people can make a profile and gain their own trophies, which is nice, but I can't help but feeling by putting in this feature they took out another. No longer can you play Grand Prix (which is the mode that pits you against 11 cpu players and you race to be the first and unlock a new item) with another player. In older installments for console versions of the game you could have two players compete in Grand Prix to unlock prizes. This game is really best played with other people, I can't stress that enough.

Another feature they didn't continue with was a couple of things created for Mario Kart Double Dash. In this gamecube installement you could have two characters on your chart for solo or team playing. The character in the front drove and the one in back throw the items. This was very good for holding two objects at once. The other feature I miss is that each character had a special that they could only get from a ? box. For example Mario and Luigi throw fire balls, Yoshi and Birdo through eggs which on impact dropped 3 more random items onto the course, and Baby Mario and Baby Luigi had chain chomp which dragged them through the course at higher speeds, but for only a short time.

So is Mario Kart Wii worth it. I certainly think so for people who played and loved the past installments as well as people new to the series.

I give this game 4 out of 5 stars.