How exciting. Not only do I finally get to review a game that isn’t a remake of an old Amiga giblet, but I’ve also got my mitts on the latest entry in one of the coolest racing game series ever in the world ever – Mario Kart! Let’s sit down and have a chat about it, shall we? There’s some leftover Domino’s and half a Twix with your name on it if you do.
You know what’s great about Mario Kart Wii? It comes in a big box. Big boxes are gamer crack. And what’s in this big box? You mean you haven’t heard? It’s a f**k-off wheel accessory!
...Woah!
Nintendo put a whole load of effort into this piece of plastic, going through 30 prototypes before they settled on the perfect version. I guess the wheel is a hard shape. Still, they did well, and the wheel does add to the quality of play, making you feel like you’re in a real piranha-shaped go-kart. It is still a piece of plastic though, so it’s perfectly comfortable and socially acceptable for you to play Kart without it. In case you can only get your hands on a dodgy bootleg version of the game without the wheel. Pirates Fund Terrorism!
Alright, let’s not get carried away with freebies and giant boxes that piss off Gamestation managers, I’m here to review the game. Which is what I’m going to do. Right... now.
Mario Kart Wii adds a few massive elements to the series, including bikes (which can do wheelies!) and Excite Truck-style tricks (which make you fast!). Also you can race with your Mii, eventually. Remember Miis? Those are the things you were really excited about making when you got your Wii.
First up is the Single Player mode, which is broken down into the usual suspects: - Grand Prix, Time Trial, Versus and the ever-popular (groan) Battle Mode. I feel a list coming on!
Grand Prix – For the uninitiated karters, this is the lasagne and chips of the game. There are eight sets of four tracks – four of the sets are brand-new for the Wii, so they’re the most visually pleasing and physically demanding, while the other sets are fancy reconstructions of classic SNES, N64, Gamecube and DS tracks, which vary in quality. The rules of the Grand Prix are so simple, if you look at them long enough, they will make your eyes say “We’re wasting our time, man”. Get a good position in a race, you get good points. Get loads of points, get trophy. Get trophy, unlock courses, karts and characters. Oh, did I mention the bikes? Good.
Time Trial – Race against the clock or recorded images (‘ghosts’) of other racers in order to crush Father Time’s dreams. Nintendo have fought against the natural tedium of time trials by piling on the unlockables for good work and allowing you to battle against two types of staff ghosts, plus the downloaded ‘ghosts’ of your friends. Don’t worry, they’re not really dead.
Versus – Have a race! Just for fun!
Battle Mode – Look, seriously, why? Why do we have these? Does anyone enjoy them? We get some nice battle arenas for these, but all you get to do is drive around, trying to pop other racers’ balloons or collect more coins than them. Boring, unrewarding and tough like frozen turkey drummers – if Mario was Michael Jackson, this would be Stranger In Moscow.
Also, Nintendo would be weird.
With all of its secrets and replay value, the single player mode is a cracker, but I’m a games reviewer so I have to say things like “Of course, the heart of the game is in the multiplayer mode.” Which it is.
Kinda.
Splendidly, you can play with three of your mates WITH ONE TV!!! The good part of this is that you don’t need Wii Remotes for all of them, they can dig out their old Gamecube control pads (if they can tolerate the restriction that wired gaming brings!). The bad part of this is that you’re going to need a twenty foot television to see what’s going on, as four-way split screen is as confusing as trigonometry covered in jam.
“Who put jam on the trigonometry? Damn, that’s confusing.”
See?
If you’re a screen hog, you can always play online. Throw yourself straight into the online community, you can race against 11 randomly picked opponents from around the world. Your performance against them will be rewarded or punished with the allocation of points to your rating. My rating at the moment is about 5800, which I like to think means “I’m awesome at the game, but I’m not a dweeb or nothing.”
You can also race against your friends. In typical Nintendo fashion, you have to swap codes outside of the game to do this, proving that you actually know your ‘friend’ for real. Sure, it cuts down on the risks of online communication, but even when this security test has passed, I still can’t swear at my friends. All you get to use are stock phrases, like “Good luck!”, “Let’s race again!” or “Koopa Cape!”. I want to swear, damn it.
No, we’re not finished with the options yet. There’s also the Mario Kart Channel, which adds a whole feast of online competitions and ghost challenges to the mix. It’s kind of like an online forum, just without any element of human interaction.
That's a lot of gameplay going on there. Not that I'm complaining. The important thing though, as I’m sure I should have mentioned about four hundred words up there, is how the game plays.
Compared to previous Mario Kart games, there is a lot going on. With 12 racers instead of the usual 8, it might get a bit crowded at times. This can lead to a lot of frustration, as one is constantly hit by a stream of incoming weapons – many of them unavoidable. The cheap-o blue shells are still here, and the new weapons – the Lightning and POW Block – are so cheap this game should be in the bargain bin. The problem is, a lot of the time you will be in first place, only to be ambushed by a million things at once, and when you’ve wiped the dust out of your eyes, you’re ninth and you’re falling off a cliff. Not fair.
The new elements do help balance out that weakness. One of the new power-ups, the Mega Mushroom, is a welcome addition, and the new tracks are exciting. Trick jumps and wheelies, plus a revamped turbo system, make the experience more tactical and intense. While some of the older tracks are just plain empty and boring now, it’s great to see the DS highlights blown up to the big screen. Plus, rarely for a racing game, there is more and more joy to be uncovered the more you play. There is a massive roster of playable characters (sadly, still no Tatanga) and vehicles to unlock. Both of these are generally for novelty value more than actual gameplay enhancement, but, hey, don’t play a Mario game and complain about novelty.
So, what really is Mario Kart Wii all about? It’s one of the best Mario Kart games ever, just a Goomba’s toenail underneath the DS iteration, and serves as one of the most electrifying and repeatable experiences you can get on your standy-uppy white box of Nintendo. Sadly, it does its best to wind you up something chronic, throwing bastard blue shells and Chomp-Chomps at you until you’re lying on the floor, Wiimote perched between thumbs and forefingers, screaming into the abyss while your foot twitches sporadically and your dog licks the A button.
To be fair though, if a game frustrated you that much, you would just turn it off. But I’ve been playing this constantly since it came out. Heck, why do you think the review took so long?