Nayrman's official Mario Kart Wii Review

[Nayrman]

From the makers of "Nayrman's official Super Smash Bros. Brawl review" and "God dangit I hate the Blue shell" comes Nayrman's review of Mario Kart Wii.

First thing's first: THIS IS NOT A BAD GAME...it just feels like one compared to the greatness of all the other Mario Kart's we've come to know and love. It suffers from some major design flaws as well as a true lack of any real identity as a Mario Kart title.

Graphics/Sound: Just to get this out of the way. Character models are HORRIBLE. They look like Sub-par Gamecube models. Rest of the game looks pretty decent...but some more time to polish things would've been nice. Sound is also standard "happy mario music" themes for all the courses. Nintendo clearly didn't care in this department...and both feel rushed and not up to par.

Lets move on to things the game does well:

Bikes are a GREAT idea: Finally changing from the kart formula, motorcycles/bikes have finally been added to the kart series. It's a good idea and a great change of pace. Both Karts and Bikes have their own pluses (karts are heavier, while bikes have a wheelie boost, etc.), and it helps balance the game out. Also, the bikes just look cool in addition to changing the pace. I love the idea and I hope Nintendo can expand upon it later in the series (motorboards would be cool as well).

Full Mii integration: Another "Why didn't they do this sooner?" like the bikes. Mii's fill the background, posters, whenever there are people watching the race, there are Mii's. It's awesome to have your own Mii's cheering you on in the race. Even better is getting to play as "yourself" in Mario Kart. It's fun to play as "me" and whoop the computers. It's also fun to use my other characters (Master Cheif destroying Mario in Kart racing...lol) in the game. It's about time, and why don't we get more of this?

Online: ITS ABOUT F***ING TIME! And this time (unlike Brawl in which Nintendo obviously doesn't care), there is pretty much no lag and it's fun to play other people than the horrible AI (more on that later).  Battle could've been better, but for the first time, it's okay. And what's this? A WAY TO GET AROUND FRIEND CODES!? "Angelic Choir breaks out" *sniff* thank you Nintendo! *sniff* It took WAY too long to just add friends from the Wii system to an online game. WAAAAAYYY TOO LONG. Despite the horrendous "texting" system (VOICE CHAT! DO THIS AND YOU WILL HAVE AN ACCEPTABLE ONLINE NINTENDO!), online is fun and fresh, giving Mario Kart the full multiplayer experience the series has claimed to have.

Those were some good things the game had. Now to the bad. And by bad, I mean HORRENDOUS flaws that will make this game the "worst Mario Kart to date".:

Characters are a joke: Besides Mii and the "obvious" characters (Diddy, Bowser jr., etc.) the character roster is so poor I would laugh at it if it wasn't so bad. Baby Daisy? Dry Bowser? Daisy unlockced at 150cc? This is a joke right? Nope...the characters are shovelware crap Nintnedo just decided to fill in for no apparent reason. It's terrible that Mario universe is so starved for characters we have to resort to this. I don't want "Super Smash Kart" or anything...but maybe we need to branch out for some non-crap characters. Kirby and Pokemon would fit right in since they're relatively kiddy (or kid friendly, I should say), and have plenty of characters to add to the mix. This is would also help the courses...

New courses are crap, and old ones are the bad ones: Many of the new courses are so generic and predictable, it's almost like, "so now we have the generic highway course, and now yet ANOTHER rendition of Mario circuit". It's getting pathetic. Bowser's Castle and Rainbow Road, fine. But no one wants another generic Daisy course or the Luigi loop course. It's boring and proves nothing. The other courses also tend to be either so annoyingly difficult or do little to keep you interested. There are of course some exceptions (Toad Factory, Wario Gold Mine, and one or two others), but not enough to warrant many of these other courses. There is an easy way to make this better though...simply make the courses about the Mario games! A Mario Galaxy stage would be cool with neat gravity effects. Or a run through Bomb-omb Battle field too. Please no more "genericness".

The old courses are, of course, the bad ones. No one liked Peach Gardens on DS, so why put it in here? Nintendo apparently doesn't know what good courses itself came up with. And the few good ones that were brought were changed just enough to not really play like their old counterparts. It's rather annoying, and frankly no one wants to play the old courses no one liked in the first place. How about having a poll when the new Mario Kart comes se WE can say which ones we like?

AI is TOO good: Of course, we all dominate the 50cc, but thats pretty much it. The AI in later stages is annoyingly difficult, keeping right on your heels for when the inevitable blue shell comes to hit you. The AI should not be THIS good, or at least mix up the guys who come in first/second/etc. so that way if you could get a 2nd place finish, you're not completely screwed. Mario Kart should not be this difficult...but if it must be, give us humans our ace in the hole back (snaking....please I miss my snaking...).

Items are, ONCE AGAIN, complete BULLSHIT: Half the items are completely useless (banana, green shell, fake item) while others are on the "cheapest items ever" lists (Blue Shell, POW block). This wouldn't be as bad if they were spaced out, but no, the game sends five of these things at the SAME TIME. Get hit by blue shell, finally land, lighting bolt, red  shell. There, you just wasted 20 seconds and now you're in fifth place. ENJOYABLE ISN"T IT!? Never before as a Mario Kart completely abused it's item list until now, and it's going to annoy you consistantly throughout your play experience. There will be many "BULLSHIT I WON!" 2nd place finishes in grand prix's due to this, and it's going to frustrate you to no end. Nintendo seriously needs to fix this next game.

Control is not good: Wii Wheel/Wiimote are, like many other "traditional" games, completely horrendous in my opinion. Stick to Gamecube or Classic. There were MANY times I oversteered or veered off course because of the Wii not picking up my movement. It's not good, and it seems Nintendo didn't spend enough time calibrating the system. The Wii should have better pickup than this. In fact, I KNOW it can. Look at Metroid Prime 3, where the sensing is SPOT ON. Nintendo can do better than this...


Final Result: This game suffers from being RUSHED. For the first time in Nintendo's long history, they finally RUSHED a game! It's by no means a BAD game, but compared to Double Dash, Mario Kart DS, and the rest, this game fails on so many levels it's astounding. This was an obvious attempt to combat GTA IV in terms of sales. Nintendo, you CAN"T compete against GTA IV with THIS crud. It's just not possible. This game needed more time and a LOT more work.

Buy, Rent, or Skip?: Well, it really depends on what you're doing. If you've got GTA IV or Brawl to keep you busy, then you don't need to go anyware NEAR this game. However, it's not a bad pickup if you're desperate for something to play until MGS4 or something else comes out, then go ahead. I personally found this game annoying to play, so I'm sticking with Brawl and GTA until F-Zero Wii comes out for my racing fix.

Final "score":
Graphics: 4/10
Sound: 5/10
Playability: 5/10
Difficulty: 8/10 (7 of it being in the "frustration" category)
Control: 4/10

Nayrman, signing out...you can find me in Liberty City if ya need me.