Mario Kart Wii

Mario Kart on the Wii has been something gamers around the world have eagerly awaited. The graphics are smooth and near flawless, the gameplay handles well and tries (with great success) to include the good elements from previous games. The DS version, was in many peoples' opinion, the best Mario Kart released. If you combine the gameplay from DS together with the fast-paced and flowing feel from the GCN version and you have an idea of how Mario Kart Wii plays.

The wheel takes a little to get used to for long time Kart-ers, but non-gamers and newcomers will jump straight into it as it is extremely intuitive and inviting. The controls are well conceived but the main reason people may turn to conventional controls is either because of the extra difficulty in performing precision maneuvers (as required when beating your old saved 'ghost' time trials), or simply the fact that it just feels too different from what we're all used to and love.

Another thing to get used to is the bikes. When I first heard about the bikes I groaned a little.. but since playing I think it's been handled well, they are varied in their control but in general they are more maneuverable and able to get you out of tight spots (like a barrage of scattered bananas and shells left over from a Lightning strike). The power sliding system is different for the bikes than for karts so I'll get into that next.

Power sliding has been changed so you won't get people performing the continuous snaking as we all like to do on the DS version. There are 2 degrees of slide, blue and red sparks, both of which give you a boost. The blue sparks give you a mini boost and this is all the bikes are capable of whereas the red lets our karts reach their full boosting potential.

The new courses (all 16 of them) are breath-taking and there are no complaints from me concerning the selection of courses from the past games (I would've liked Koopa Troopa Beach, but maybe that's just me; I hear some people actually liked Moo Moo Farm being put on the DS). Battle mode seems adequate, although it wouldn't hurt from a couple more game modes than the 2 we are given.

The most joy this game has given me (more than any other game with online support) is the ability for 12 people around the world to come together and race each other. This (as well as online battle) is so much fun and addictive that this alone makes the game worth the purchase.You can immediately post your time trial ghosts to the Mario Kart Wii online gaming community. It's also nice to know you can download the current world champion ghost to see their tricks.

A few additional weapons have been added. The POW block is another 'kill everyone' weapon, with the exception to people invincible or currently in mid flight from a booster jump or otherwise. The lightning cloud is an interesting addition in that it is a 'bad' weapon. You are forced to use it when you get it and you immediately have a cloud on your head which will soon give you your own personal lightning strike. The skill comes in transferring the cloud over to another player by ramming into their tank I feel the lightning cloud in particular fits in nicely into the game and changes the game for the better.

Now onto my gripes with the game.
1. There is no classic versus mode. Versus mode now insists that you play with computer controlled karts, which is a shame because sometimes I get sick of racing with all the weapons. Still, up to 4 human players racing with 8 computer controlled drones is a lot of fun.
2. Ever since N64 when Mario Kart hit a 4-player console I have waited for a 4 player Grand Prix. With N64 it wasn't to be due to system capabilites, with the GCN I was a little bothered by only 2 player. But now, on the Wii you can only play Grand Prix with ONE player. This was very disappointing to me and what makes it all the more painful is the fact that I KNOW the Wii can handle it and DOES! (see my above point). All that would have been needed is the infrastructure to set up a Grand Prix; tally points, force us to do choose a cup, and let's play.
3. The took away the ghost weapon, which was in every Mario Kart until this one and was the perfect "passive defense" weapon. This is a personal complaint and I don't know if others will agree but I feel as though there was no reason to remove this weapon. While I'm on the subject of personal preference.. I would've loved to see the Feather from SNES return, perhaps allowing you to perform a humiliating pin-point precision stomp on a nearby opponent

Those are my two major gripes with the game. And now, as promised, I'm going to list the ways I would've made this game better. You may begin the drum rolling... now.
1. Make it so that Grand Prix is available for any number of human players 1 through to 4, not just ONE.. it's so painful knowing that this could have so easily been realised.
2. Have versus mode with no weapons. We liked it from the previous games, the new addition of enemies is fun but how hard can it be to have an option to turn them off?
3. Allow for the ability to unlock extra weapons (obviously they wouldn't be available for online play). This follows on to my next point..
4. Allow the ability to locally toggle weapons. GCN version sort of had this, they allowed for 2 types of weapons aggressive and.. not so aggressive. I would've loved to see a similar weapon toggling system as employed by Smash Bros. Let's say the probability mechanism that Mario Kart Wii uses has a probability for each item under certain race positions (20% chance of receiving a Blue shell when placed last, for example). It would've been nice to be able to manipulate this percentage to create your own local optimisations. This is a huge step in customisability but after so many Mario Kart releases, I don't think it's asking for too much. This way you could use the default setting, or tweak them to suit your tastes (if you happen to hate blue shells, for instance), or you could create silly scenarios like nothing except mushroom boosts and bananas for DK Jungle Parkway!

Okay, maybe I'm going a little crazy with the 4th point, but seriously, if the first 2 suggestions were realised I wouldn't have felt the need to write this list and I would have been overall a lot happier.

Ending comments: I love this game online so much it just really hurts me to say that only being able to compete in Grand Prix in 1 player mode has ruined Grand Prix for me. I kinda just see it as a way to familiarise myself with the levels and unlock everything, after that I doubt I'll play it much at all.