But what a hit... I can honestly say that this is the most fun I've had on the Wii so far. Of course the game is fun, it's Mario Kart - they could have repackaged Mario Kart 64 with some updated graphics and I'd have been happy. And to some extent, that's what they did - there's really not a whole lot of new content here. But the overall package is so enjoyable, that I can't complain.
Well, okay, I can complain. There are a few major flaws that would absolutely cripple it, if it were a non-Nintendo title.
For one thing, I hate the way you lose your items whenever you crash, get hit, spin out, get electrocuted, fall, burn, blink, sneeze, or think about cabbage. In the older Mario Kart games, it was a good strategy to hoarde the best items when you get them, and use them at just the right moment. For example, if you fell off the course but you happened to have a mushroom boost on you, then you could get going again in a flash. In MKW, falling off the course makes you lose that mushroom. It's so easy to lose your items in MKW, that the best strategy is to try to use your items as soon as you get them, before somebody hits you with their items.
And you will get hit often. Which brings me to my next complaint - the newest items are just too powerful. And since it's now 12 racers instead of 8, items are getting used constantly. The way MKW is programmed, the player in the lead gets the worst items, and those bringing up the rear get unblockable psycho-uber WMDs. In theory this is a good idea. In the older MK games, if you found yourself in 8th place in the third lap, then there wasn't much chance you'd place above 7th. With MKW, there's always hope. Now you can go from last to first in the final stretch of the last lap, just by getting the right powerup. And everybody targets the guy in front. So now, when you're the kart in first place, you spend most of your time flattened and shrunk, with a storm cloud over your head, a shell on your ass, and a squid in your face. You're almost better off staying in second for most of the race until the finish line is in sight.
Sometimes it bothers me that I'm not feeling the speed. Often I don't feel like I'm moving any faster than you can run in any given Mario game. And with some of the game's gimmicks (the one where you bounce off mushrooms comes to mind), I almost feel like I'm playing something besides a racing game. Maybe Nintendo needs to make a "Wii Fan" peripheral that blows air in your face, depending on how fast you're going.
Unless I'm missing something, there's seems to be no two-player GP mode. That's too bad, because I always enjoyed unlocking the cups with a friend. You can still race other people, both online and off. But without working towards something, those kind of matches feel a little empty to me. MKW has a lot of new characters and vehicles to unlock, but you have to switch to single player to unlock most of them. And when you unlock things, it only unlocks for the player who unlocks them. So KJ and I will each have to master every GP and time trial by ourselves, if we both want all the characters and vehicles. There's a lot of stuff to unlock (14 characters and 18 vehicles, I think), so doing it twice is a pain. And from what I've read, a few of the characters/karts are going to be a downright pain to unlock.
But despite my complaints, most of the time I'm having too much fun to care. I've seen some mixed reviews of MKW so far... Well, most reviewers have loved it, but a few have made the same complaints I mention above. Also, Nintendo has been accused of just going through the motions for this one, and saying that this is actually a step down from the much more innovative "Mario Kart Double Dash" for the Gamecube. I never played MKDD, so I can't really say if that's true. In fact, I haven't played any of them since the N64 version, so I can only see MKW as a huge improvement.
Sidetrack - Should reviewers base their reviews on previous games in the series? After all, if MKW is only a disappointment to those who played Double Dash, then how many people is that, really? The Wii console has probably outsold the Gamecube several times over by now. This question has bothered me for over a decade. When Capcom released "Super Street Fighter II" for the SNES, EGM gave it a bad review because they were tired of Capcom re-releasing the same game over and over, with only a few improvements. While I agree with the sentiment, I think a game should be reviewed based on its own merits. If a game receives a high score, then a few months later they release a version that's the exact same except for a few improvements, how can it get a lower score? That's letting personal politics get in the way of your review. There might be someone out there who didn't buy the previous versions of the game, who is trying to decide between the second or third version. Then they see that the second version got a better score than the third version, and don't realize that the reviewer was just trying to punish the game company with a bad review.
Another example, and one that never fails to piss me off: When a game is released for a couple of systems I don't own, and gets killer reviews. About a year later, it finally comes to the system I do own, and every review I find says, "Well, it's as good as ever, with a few improvements even. But we've already played it on Systems A and B, and we've moved on. We've beaten it so many times that we're bored with it now, so we're giving it a low score." WTF? Not everybody owns all three current consoles. How about a review for those of us who haven't played it yet? I'm a late adopter. I tend to wait for the prices to come down before I buy something. So I don't mind playing games with last year's graphics. Heck, I still regularly play games with last decade's graphics.
Anyway, sidetrack over, back to MKW. The online mode is a lot of fun. It's hard to say what's different, except that real people are a lot less predictable than computer AI. And knocking someone off the track is somehow more fulfilling when you know there's another human at the controls, than when it's just another bot.
The wheel works a lot better than I thought it would. I personally do better with the classic controller, as it's what I'm used to after all these years. But I have played with the wheel, and it's pretty responsive and a lot of fun. KJ does great with it, and it's all she uses. I just might have to buy a second wheel when I get the cash.
So if you have a Wii, and you've enjoyed any of the Mario Kart series in the past, you should pick this one up. It's flawed but fun. I wouldn't buy a Wii just for this game, but I wouldn't buy a Wii without it.
Anyway, if any of you also have a Wii, and want to add me to your friends list and whatnot, here's my Nintendo codes. Like Smash Bros, Mario Kart Wii requires its own code, different from the Wii console's friend code. Remember that I have to add yours as well, or nothing will happen. So if you put in my codes, you also have to send me yours.
Wii Console Friend Code:
7045 1920 7172 8881
Smash Bros Code:
4468 0854 8798
Mario Kart Wii:
Matt 0387-9165-2538
KJ 1504-6091-8383
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