Mario Kart Wii

This is without question, the ultimate Mario Kart game, this is every Mario Kart fan's dream come true. Anything I could have asked for, has been implemented into this game.

Anyone comes to a Mario Kart game looking for the best graphics around is making a mistake, the series is about game-play, so don't expect any mind blowing visuals. However, I'm not saying Mario Kart is not a good looking game for the Wii. At first glance you won't really notice any difference between this and Double Dash, and any even say they didn't change it at all. Well, trust me when I say that when in motion this game looks way better than Double Dash. This is the result of several small things I noticed that add up to a big difference in my opinion. Firstly, this iteration carries the series tradition of no pop-in and a silky smooth frame rate. The character and vehicle models are much more detailed. Even the weapons are more detailed, you can see genuine grooves in the shells rather than just drawn on lines, the wings on the dreaded blue shell flap now, and more. The textures have been upgraded a little bit, and the lighting is vastly upgraded. Now when you drive by lava, there will be a red glow on you, or multiple colors of glow on Rainbow Road. You can see much farther now, which is a good thing because the backgrounds are much more detailed now, even on the retro tracks. There's a bunch of particle effects now, it may be leaves falling from trees, or snow, either way it looks good and adds to the atmosphere. So, separately these things don't sound like much, but combined it truly makes a difference.

Soundtrack hasn't ever really been a strong point in the Mario Kart series. Its not that they have bad music, but its not amazing either, mostly because this sort of game doesn't call for an epic soundtrack. Having said that, I think some of the music on the new tracks is better than usual, although having your character yell with joy every time they go off a jump can be irritating.

Now we come to the best part, game play. Mario Kart has always been about game play, and MK Wii is no different. We can start off with characters. There's several more characters than there were in Double Dash, some of them are really cool like Dry Bowser, while other like Baby Daisy make you question if listening to her is really worth it to play this game. They all have their own list of karts and bikes of course, which are much more diverse than before in terms of speed, acceleration, toughness, and handling. This brings me to bikes. I thought the newly added bikes would be stupid, but I was wrong, they actually work quite well and are a welcome addition to the series in my opinion. The new tracks are very cool and are the most intricate and imaginative I've seen in the series, while the retro tracks are welcome, they all have received a bit of a face lift, but still look like their original versions. There's also online play, which everyone has been waiting for since the Gamecube came out, unfortunately for you I can't comment on it because I don't play games online, partly its because I'm too lazy to hook it up, and partly because there's a lot of irritating people online. I have play local split screen though and its very fun, as it always is with this series. As for the Wii wheel, well it works pretty well actually. I was very surprised they got the motion controls down. However, I still prefer the Gamecube controller, it is a little bit more accurate, but its probably mostly just because I'm more used to the analog stick than motion control. The wheel works extremely well for those who are new to gaming, even my mother, who is extremely funny to watch try to play games, got the hang of it very quickly and actually won a race in 50cc mode.

I really don't see many faults in this game. It could maybe look a little better, and it could've added more retro tracks I guess. The only thing I could really ask for in a sequel is a track editor. Overall this is an amazing game if you just want to have fun, or want some sweet multi-player. If you own a Wii I'd highly recommend it.