DK Media Productions

I didn’t think I would be buying Mario Kart Wii at all, but Mrs. DarkKnight expressed interest when she found out we could play some of our friends on the WFC and have another game that people could enjoy when they come over too. So I went down to the local Best Buy and bought one of the several copies on the shelf.  I was surprised by the number of copies they had, but maybe the hype wasn’t as big as I thought it would be.

I’ll mention here that I am a Mario Kart fan since the SNES days and have only missed out on the Gamecube version so I have very fond memories of what Mario Kart was and know how it’s changed throughout the years. I’m also going to go with the assumption that the readers out there know what’s available to you when you play MKW and just give some of my thoughts on the various modes and gameplay.

The fact there’s multiple control options is very nice. Especially for those of use that are used to a controller. The wheel sucks. Plain and simple I cannot use it and I can’t get the feel for it. I use the wiimote and nunchuck, although I have used the GC controller in a pinch. The controls for these are nice, especially if you’ve played MK before. Although using a GC controller is hard when you want to do tricks, however.

Let’s start off with the one player mode. This is the only way to play the Mario Kart GP and I believe the only way to unlock karts, players, and tracks. I don’t like how you cannot play this with two people since this is how you unlock things in the game. This game is all about multiplayer gaming, so why can’t I play the main mode multiplayer? That being said, it’s exactly what it’s been throughout the MK games I’ve played. Pick a cup, get 1st place, unlock something, repeat. It’s fun, but I don’t like how I need to play this in order to unlock things and use them in the multiplayer modes.

The rest of the single player modes are, in my opinion, ho-hum. There’s nothing special here really unless you want to do the ghost races and compare against others using your Wii as well.

Items. Perhaps the most important addition to MK. Since Super Mario Kart you’ve been able to shoot red shells, lay banana peals, and  get bursts of speed. The items in MKW have included ones from every version I believe and take the DS way of handling them. Only the ones in fourth or lower seem to get the good speed bursts and the ones in the bottom few can get the blue spike shell that goes after the 1st place person. Of course, you still have to pass the other 11 karts in front of you for this to be worthwhile but hey, you shouldn’t be in last place anyways right? The items have pissed me off more and more with each version of MK. The ring of shells were a nice addition to the SNES list of weapons, but other than that, there’s not much that I see as necessary. Sure the golden mushroom is nice, but you could do the same thing with a ring of red shells and some skillful driving.

And speaking of skillful driving, the CPU is as cheap as ever. Nintendo claims this is what makes Mario Kart, but I think that after I zoom ahead with my mushroom, the next person behind me should still be on my rear bumper. The one good thing is that the snaking issue with the DS has been taken out.

Moving onto the multiplayer (not WFC), we have the vs mode and battle modes. VS mode can be done singly or with two teams. VS mode is a lot of fun and the more the merrier. I like how there are computer controlled karts as well as the human ones as it adds a lot to the races. Team mode has been improved over the DS version as your items do not effect your teammates. The battle mode however, has lost it’s vision. Remember the SNES when you had three baloons and that was it? Not anymore! That’s right, who cares how much you get hit, as long as your team hits the other team’s karts more often. Oh, and that’s another thing, why are we forced into teams? Why can’t I just play with a friend? Yes, you can do that on WFC with friends, but if I have others over at my house, I want to play them. Not them and eight other CPUs that I don’t want on my team anyways because chances are they are useless. The coin collecting mode (can’t remember the name right now) I haven’t really bothered with. It’s just like the shine collection mode on the DS and it’s pretty boring compared to the other mode.

The WFC makes another appearance here as well. You or you and a friend can play others online. I like that they added the option to include another person sitting next to you as well. I would really enjoy if you could have four people, but that may be too much of a lag issue and I’m not holding it against Nintendo. Random races are fun and you get to see about where the people live in the world. The lack of chatting really doesn’t effect me except when I am racing friends. The friends code system is extremely annoying since your MK number and your Wii number are different and they don’t go across licenses. For example, Mrs. DarkKnight has all our friends listed under her license, but my license doesn’t have them. So I have to use hers in order to play my friends over WFC. She doesn’t have as much unlocked, so I can’t use some of my favorite karts. I didn’t realize how much I would miss voice chat either until I played a couple of friends and had them on the telephone over speaker as well. It really adds to the fun that a few pre-existing phrases can’t do justice.

I haven’t played much with the Mario Kart Channel, so I can’t say much other than it’s neat to pit yourself against real people in a tournament or time trials.

Overall, I’m happy we have this game so I have something else to play with my friends on my Wii. Would I buy it for just myself? No.  Would I buy it if only one or two friends would be interested? Probably not. I would probably be better off getting the SNES MK off the VC in that situation.  Mario Kart has gone far from it’s roots, some good and some bad. The battle mode needs to go back to the way it was and the Mario Kart GP needs multiplayer. Especially if it’s the only way to unlock things in the game. The items have gotten out of hand and really are the only way to win the GP races now. Overall, this is a fun game for my situation at the moment, but as I’m finishing the one player stuff, I’m starting to wonder if I’ll be playing this in a year or two.