Mario Kart Wii Review

The much anticipated Mario Kart Wii has finally arrived on UK and USA shores, and fans of the series are buying it in droves. The fast-action Mario Kart racing game has taken a new turn with the Wii-Mote capabilities, and is also bundled with the brand new Wii Wheel.

The Wii Wheel itself is literally just a plastic add-on, with an extention of the B Button, which makes it easier to toss bananas out to hinder unsuspecting players. Even though the Wii Wheel itself is really quite pointless, it’s always a laugh to play with friends, manically spinning the Wii Wheel to and fro. The Wheel itself is actually quite stylish, in keeping with the Wii’s smooth white finish, with a couple of defining features in a light blue. As with controlling the Wii Mote and Wii Wheel, it is neither under or over sensitive, and is quite easy to get the hang of. However, on manual doing power slides are virtually impossible, especially in comparison to using the Gamecube or the Classic controller. In addition, you can use the Wii mote without the wheel, but essentially it’s the same thing.

Another method of controlling is via the Wii-mote and Nunchuck, where the Nunchuck is the analogue you use to control your Kart, rather than using motion censors. This is probably the most awkward method of control so it is fairly unusual to see anyone using it.

The last method is the Classic controller or the Gamecube controller, which is probably the easiest and simplest option to use. This is the method I use the most often, as I find it's easier to keep control of your vehicle and if you use manual mode often, this is almost certainly the easiest way to do boosted powerslides and so on. It is probably the best option to use for competative gaming, however you may want to note that if you do not use the Wii Wheel/Mote at any point during competative play online, you will not get the golden Wii Wheel symbol you see alongside peoples names after winning a number of matches using the Wii-mote.

Next up we have the gameplay. The cast of characters this time is much more diverse than previous Mario Kart games, and although we have all the traditional players such as Mario, Luigi and Peach, we now have a larger cast of old and new characters, such as Dry Bones and also Rosalina from Mario's latest adventure - Mario Galaxy. Rosalina is also a welcome introduction to the characters as she is also the first female heavyweight in the Mario Kart series.

We also have a new addition which is the added feature of motorbikes, which isn't much different to a Kart but it is good fun pulling wheelys while riding along Luigi Circuit for example, and this is a good asset when doing Time Trials as it slighty improves your speed. It isn't really a big deal though, and there are quite a few mixed opinion of the bikes in this new game. Also, in 100cc mode, it's bikes only in Tournament mode, which may be a let down for adament car users.

By fair the newest and best asset to Mario Kart Wii is it's online play, and one of the best online games for the Nintendo Wii at the moment, although, lets be honest, it hasn't had a lot to beat in terms of the online play games out already. The really great thing is the ability to either battle or race complete strangers online, in order to gain, and unfortunatly lose ranking. This means that even when you have completed and unlocked everything in Mario Kart, the play factor is still there long after. As well as racing, you can battle which is always good fun, and has both traditonal coin collecting and balloon popping events in a variety of coloured scenes. There is also the ability to look at the top scores and compare the best Time Trials either regionally or globally. However, there was a massive flaw which led to incorrect Time Trials who took advantage of the large glitch in the game, which made the Time Trials unfair and unaccurate - and certainly annoyed the more dedicated and honest players who wanted to be true to the Time Trial system. This glitch occured when a played did one lap of the track and then waited 99 minuts before going over the finish line again, consequently taking a single lap time as a whole track time. This lead to much confusion, but Nintendo have seemed to resolved the problem by removing all glitched times and I can see a Wii update or patch released in the future to solve this glitch completely.

Finally, we are now obliged to discuss the new tracks that are available on the Mario Kart Wii game. The track list includes a number of classics and new additions, and including decent tracks from the SNES, NES, N64 and Nintendo DS versions of Mario Kart was a wise move by Nintendo. The new additions are bright and fun, and also have many secret passageways and things to discover on the way. My personal favourites include Rainbow Road and the all new Bowsers Castle - a true challange to hardcore Mario Kart Wii fans and a welcome addition the the track list. There are some truly diverse and spectacular tracks that require you to swim along rapids, up in the tops of the trees and bomb down busy roads filled with lorries and cars - there is truly something for everyone and they have done a pretty good job overall.

Still, by no means is Mario Kart Wii completely perfect, a lot of people miss the team effort that Double Dash required, however some are glad to see the back of the role of weapon tossing. Although the online play is good, there aren't actually that many options to the Mario Kart Wii game, all it basically consists of is tournaments, rankings and battle modes. There is a competition section on the Mario Kart channel but we are yet to see much become of that. In the next game I would like to see a few new and unexpected features to really top off the Nintendo franchies.

Overall, Mario Kart Wii is a decent game and a good follow-up to the Double Dash version we see on the Gamecube, and it really utilises the online play more than other Wii games have done so far. I give Mario Kart Wii a modest 7 out of 10.