Let's-a Go!

I've been a fan of the Mario Kart series for a while now. (A highlight of my last couple weeks living in Virginia Beach were these epic networked Mario Kart Double Dash games involving eight players and two big screen TVs jammed into one living room.) I actually bought the newest installment, Mario Kart Wii, on the day it came out. But it's only now, over a month later, that I'm finally getting around to putting down my thoughts on the game.

Why so long? Well, to be frank... I don't quite like it as much. I was playing it a little here and there, but it wasn't really pushing Rock Band off the video gaming throne for me. And then along came two other Wii games that did do a more effective job of making room on said throne, and Mario Kart got a bit lost in the shuffle. (More on those other games another time.)

The first big fault I find with the game is one I can't get too down on it for, because this was also a flaw with every previous installment of Mario Kart -- you have to unlock things in the single player mode. Good ol' Yahtzee Croshaw, in one of his Zero Punctuation reviews (don't ask me which one), commented on this really crap phenomenon in games. Time and time again, games intended to be played multi-player have features you must play solo to unlock. In the process of playing solo, you become better at the game than all your friends who don't own it. So when they come over for the big group game night, you run circles around them, and it isn't very fun for either side.

I had this problem with Mario Kart Double Dash. I played the crap out of it in Virginia, with lots of friends who also owned the game, and were all quite good at it. But then I moved back to Denver, and the people I played it with about once a week didn't own a Gamecube. It took about six months, with me "handicapping" myself the entire time by taking the lamest karts and characters, before they caught up to a level where we could have reasonable races against each other.

I have no desire to repeat this with the Wii version of the game. Now, I still see these friends about once a week. So the process has been, I play a little bit during the week, unlock a new set of tracks, maybe a kart or two, and then don't actually play with any of them. Then when I see my friends on the weekend, we all try the new stuff out for the first time together.

Consequently, it's taken me this long to formulate a full opinion of the game. That opinion is this: you do probably want this game if you own a Wii. It is fun. If you don't own a Wii, but are a fan of Mario Kart, this might well be one more game on the pile to push you into buying one. (I have a friend who did.)

But it's just not as good as Double Dash. The double driver mechanic of that previous game was great, and the way you'd switch them to manage the unique weapons that certain characters could get was fun strategy. All that is stripped away in this Wii incarnation, with no special weapons for any characters.

In its place are bikes and tricks. Neither of these add anything of significance to the game. The difference between karts and bikes is purely cosmetic -- each bike could have just been a kart with different statistics. And the tricks are just one more thing you have to time perfectly for a burst of speed, like drifting already is. It's a redundant mechanic.

There are a few weapon changes in this version of the game. A "bullet" replaces the "Chain Chomp" of Double Dash as a device to auto-pilot you from the back of a pack. It does work more reliably than the Chomp, so I'd call it a net improvement. But there's also this horrifically awful storm cloud "weapon." Really, it's the "goat behind curtain #3" of Mario Kart items. Pick it up, and you've got about five seconds to bump another racer before lightning strikes you. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to punish players for grabbing item boxes by occasionally sticking you with this piece of crap?

The track selection is a mixed bag. Even Double Dash had tracks I hated along with tracks I loved, so no real disappointment there. Well, at least, there shouldn't have been. See, they tried to do this cool thing by including a bunch of extra tracks lifted from earlier versions of Mario Kart. The trouble is, the ones they picked are almost universally among the worst selections from their respective games.

But now that I've gone all negative for a few paragraphs, let me reiterate: overall, this is a fun game, and pretty good. I think it would be fair to say that all my disappointment in it ultimately stems from comparing it to earlier Mario Karts. And I should mention there's one new mechanic that's a total winner, drafting. In this version of the game, you can drive directly behind another car for a couple seconds to pick up a sudden burst of speed. Very neat concept, and very useful strategically... if you're willing to risk getting a weapon shot at you while you're tucked right behind somebody.

Overall, I think I'd rate the game a B. It's not going to go completely out of the rotation for some time. But I'm also not too upset that I'm only playing it just a little every week, just enough to unlock the next couple things for my friends and I to share.