Review: Mario Kart Wii
The Mario Kart series has always been a success story for Nintendo. Each game holds fond memories for party gamers. There have been many times when defining my weekend to someone meant simply saying, “Mario Kart 64 with friends.”
After Double Dash became one of the best games for the Gamecube, many wondered what Nintendo could possibly do next for the series. Mario Kart DS managed to bring the retro side back to kart racing, but the Wii version needed to top a this fan-favorite in every gameplay aspect.
I am very happy to say that this game is the best yet. The first time I inserted the disc and slid the remote into the Wii Wheel (more about that later,) I knew there was something special.
Starting out the game meant creating your first license, basically a save file specific to your mii. Conveniently, the mii you use for your file will automatically change based on the changes you make to it in the Mii Channel, and you have the ability to change the mii for each of the four licenses available at any time.
After picking your license, you are greeted with the main menu. The menus in the game have the smooth, “polished” look that Nintendo has maintained with their titles. Small details are widely apparent, each button, border, graphic, bit of text, and background bursts with vivid color, detail and animation. Everything about the game screams quality.
So I picked up my jaw, and started playing the game. Considering the Wii Wheel was a pack-in item that the game was built around, I knew I needed to give it a shot. I’ve always been the type that likes customization, so having a colorful grip on my Wii Remote has been a must. Sadly, the grips must come off for Mario Kart Wii, as the Wheel only fits bare Wii remotes (I know, not even the official Nintendo Remote jackets, weird). Once the remote is snug in the Wheel, you won’t care about any grips anyways.
The Wheel, to some, is just another piece of plastic. However, I’ve found the Wheel, lightweight and smooth, to be a perfect fit with the remote, and the best way to play Mario Kart yet. Besides, since when does all of our plastic have to have electronics inside? The point of Nintendo’s Wii Remote is that, with different plastic housings, it can be anything, always enhancing our gaming experiences beyond the simple joystick. And turning a wireless wheel like this has the best feel out of any racing game I’ve ever played, bar none. I own four Wii Wheels now. I call it a complete set.
All rants aside, the controls work well for the game. The “B” button built into the Wheel is responsive and works perfectly with the drifting controls in the game. The intuitive steering scheme gives new look to the series, and is just plain more enjoyable. After 2-3 races, players will very quickly find that using the Wheel is an easy task to learn.
The duties of certain buttons are flipped around in this control scheme; the d-pad allows for easy control of your items. Up sends items forward, down sends them behind you, and holding the left or right buttons lets you hold your items, if that your karting strategy, of course. “2″ accelerates, “1″ brakes and reverses (if you ever need it), and the plus button pauses the action if you ever need a drink or a bathroom break.
Unlike Super Smash Bros. Brawl, menus can be navigated using the Wii Remote’s pointer. There is a small “groove” built into the Wheel that lets players use this. I find that navigating menus using the d-pad feels more comfortable, but the option is still convenient for those *shudder* Remote/Nunchuk users.
Which brings the next part of options. Also like Brawl, players are given the opportunity to find a control scheme that works for them. Double Dash players don’t need to set their controller down just yet, as Mario Kart Wii will allow racers to play with Gamecube controllers, Classic controllers, the Remote/Nunchuk combo, and a plain Remote (which reads as using the Wheel). Additionally, the game gives racers the option to race in “automatic” or “manual” mode, which is beneficial based on how experienced they may be.
Manual mode allows players to use the “B” button to manually drift those sharp turns and generate mini-turbos. Yes, mini-turbos make a fantastic return, and are easier to get with the Wheel control scheme. By simply drifting and possibly doing a little steering in-and-out of your turns, your wheels will spark up and give you a necessary boost of speed after letting go of the button. As mentioned, beginners can forgo the “B” button altogether and race in Automatic mode, and the game will take over drifting for them.
Based on the character’s weight and vehicle picked, this mode can be beneficial for some, but mini-turbos cannot be attained in Automatic mode, so I prefer Manual. Also new to the game are tricks.
By flicking and shaking the remote while taking any of the myriads of jumps in the game, your character will do a trick in the air and be rewarded with a big boost of speed upon landing. So courses like Mushroom Gorge call out for players to use the motion-sensing controls to their benefit, and lend to the increasing racing strategies in the game.
Aside from control options, the in-game options are fairly pleasing. Players can race online with a guest, 4-player offline karting is still around, and battling is as well. However, the battling options are limited to balloon battle and coin runners. Although these modes are available to play online as well, there is more to be desired. Why not a destruction derby mode, or a tag/freeze tag mode that uses the dreaded lightning cloud item?
Also added to each racing mode is the option to play solo or in teams. Racing in teams can especially be a pleasing affair online, but can quickly lead to frustration when your team isn’t performing well in collecting coins, or constantly losing balloons. The battle stages are completely different from the versus mode courses, as to be expected.
In terms of the courses offered in the game, this version of Mario Kart delivers the best set of courses in the franchise’s history yet. Yes, Rainbow Road is still a pain, but this version offers levels of difficulty that are still accessible to beginners. Dry Dry Ruins, Maple Leaf Treeway, and Koopa Cape provide a level of difficulty that can be expected from a Star or Special-ranked race, but with a degree of care that lets beginners have a shot at winning, especially in Automatic mode.
The Wii-centric courses are gorgeous, and take their cues from various, often non-specific spots in the Mario universe. The work done on the courses speaks volumes on the careful attention of detail in the game. In Koopa Cape you may spot the large eels from Galaxy, some courses have Goombas that slowly trot across the road, Chain Chomps threaten your very existence, and so on. But aside from in-game references, the framerate of the game and how well crafted the courses are is a step up from Double Dash. Bowser’s Castle (the best one yet,) has twisting and turning hallways and you’ll find excellent half-pipes with Shy-Guy snowboarders in DK Summit, both providing great opportunities for speed boosts when performing tricks.
In total, there are 32 courses in the game, not including the unlockable mirror mode, which allows you to ride the courses backwards. Of the 32 courses, 16 (four cups worth) are retro courses; taken from previous versions of Mario Kart and updated to suit the new version. Graphics in retro races are a sort of “middle ground.” Though they are updated for the Wii version, they also keep the classic feel from when they first appeared. Super Nintendo favorites like Bowser Castle 3 show their true pixel-by-pixel selves, but are as smooth as Moonview Highway.
And even though the Double Dash capability isn’t included in the game, the amount of vehicles, items, and characters makes up for it. In total, there are 28 characters available to choose from, and you start out with 12. Aside from standard karts, the option of using motorcycles is new to the series as well. Bikes allow for quicker turning and players can flick the remote to pull speed-boosting wheelies. The disadvantage is that wheelies are tougher to control, and more unstable. As well, bikes can only get the first “degree” of mini-turbo, leaving karts as my primary choice.
Items from previous games, including Bullet Bill and Blooper from the DS version, are brought back to the Wii version for more chaos. New to the Wii version are three new items: the lightning cloud, super mushroom, and POW block. The lightning cloud, while giving the owner a generous boost in their speed, also comes with a curse. After some time, the cloud will shoot a bolt of lighting at the owner and leave him small and slower than he began. The lighting cloud can also turn the race into a game of “hot-potato,” as bumping into another racer causes the cloud to get passed to that unlucky racer. And although they get the boost of speed, they also get the curse.. of the cloud (cue suspenseful music).
The super mushroom, taken from New Super Mario Bros., makes your racer big and immune to many items, including red shells. Being an extra-large racer gives you a small boost in your speed, and lets you flatten other racers. The POW block item, however, rivals the lighting bolt and blue shell as one of the most devastating. By sending out this item, a classic Mario Bros. POW block appears on every racer’s screen and does a three-count pow, the last one spinning every racer to a stop and making them lose their items.
Conveniently, the game allows you to pick your handicap in multiplayer offline races. You have options in terms of the difficulty of opponents, whether they are restricted to karts or bikes, and how balanced the items are in their odds of appearing.
Also new to the game, and to the Wii altogether, is the Mario Kart Channel. This channel is a gateway to the game’s online aspect, containing tournament information, global and regional rankings, friends, and a means to race the ghosts of others. So far, if you’ve been playing, we’ve come across a few tournaments. Tournaments are usually special stages or variations of courses that challenge players to undergo special circumstances like using only the Wii Wheel, to compete for the best time.
Competing in tournaments is a way of Nintendo giving us something “new” to do, even when we’ve unlocked every kart, character, and bike. For instance, the most recent tournament challenges players to race through Mushroom Gorge backwards, with modifications. Nintendo changed the course’s mushrooms around, thus creating a new experience (I call it Mushroom Gorge 2). The best part is that these kinds of changes are unlimited, until they stop making new tournaments.
Racing ghosts is kind of exhilarating, especially when it involves beating your head editor (sorry Bucky). By submitting best times in the time trials mode, players are able to try besting others. Though the races aren’t live like other online races, this mode is sure to attract all of the “hardcore” racing fans, leaving out the chaos typical of kart racing. Friends can challenge others with their best times, and winners can send their best times back.
Online multiplayer in general is new to the series, and Mario Kart Wii is the best game to offer the feature yet for the Wii entirely. Racing others online is a breeze, and is as close to error-free as any Wii game has come yet. Each license has a rating based on your wins and losses in the versus (VR) and battle (BR) modes, each starting at a rating of 5,000. You are allowed to vote on what course will be the next to come up, or you can pick “random” as your vote. After the poll is taken, each racer’s vote is shown, and the winning vote is picked randomly. The makes half the online fun just cheering for the course you want.
Racing friends, if you have any (I know, harsh), allows you to create a “room” for friends to join up, chat a bit using 96 pre-configured messages, and of course, race and battle. Most of the messages are comprised of the course and stage names, so room-joiners can give input on what to play next. Of course, friend codes are back. So it isn’t a perfect online setup, but the best we’ve seen yet, and strides forward from Nintendo’s other attempts.
So what’s bad about the game? Even though it does the fans great service, it doesn’t offer nearly enough to appease any gamer’s appetite after Brawl. To Nintendo’s credit, not many games will offer that caliber of fan service, of course. But after seeing the vast amount of Nintendo (and even non-Nintendo characters) in Brawl, it is a tough pill to swallow when Mario Kart Wii doesn’t have nearly the amount of characters any gamer would love to see. Of course, the Mario Kart series is rooted in the Mario universe, and the Smash Bros. is in the Nintendo universe. Maybe we’ll see a Nintendo Kart in our future, if we’re lucky enough.
As previously mentioned, the online component leaves much to be desired. If all goes well with E3, I’m hoping that we’ll see some DLC for this game down the line. The fact is, the Mario Kart Channel shows potential in the direction that Nintendo can go with the title, and with online gaming entirely.
My biggest gripe with the game are the unlockables. This game is tough. Unlocking every character in Brawl was a cinch if you used the infamous “plan B” method. In Mario Kart Wii, there isn’t a second way to unlock your characters. Playing through the Grand Prix modes tests your patience, but isn’t the hardest part. Certain characters, karts, and bikes must be unlocked by beating some of Nintendo’s best kart players in each course’s time trial mode. And some of them are near impossible.
As I’m sure, it is entirely possible to beat these staff ghosts, but it takes hours to learn every trick, shortcut, and best route of each course, and requires the patience of a thousand virtuous men. Virtuous men. This is the kind of challenge meant for both kart racing pros and masochists. It’ll take time, but I’m hoping to become the first.
Overall, this is one Nintendo’s best offerings yet. It should be in any party gamer’s collection. It isn’t the easiest game for beginners to master, but the Wheel provides excellent, forgiving control to all Kart enthusiasts. All things considered, this title ranks 9.5/10
Have you raced me online yet? Do you want to? My friend code is 5284-2043-4604. Feel free to add me, and find other racers in our forum topic devoted to friend codes.
Most of the above images are courtesy of IGN.
Uncategorized | 
Mike Suszek | June 22, 2008
