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the latest installment of nintendo’s glorious franchise mario kart. packed with challenging, addicting, and frantic gameplay for the nintendo wii. returning to the cl-ssic one seater racing play compared to the previous experimental double dash. this new series is packed with a large array of carts and motorbikes. all your favorite characters plus a number of unlockable characters return to the tracks to duke it out mario kart style.

pros:
– it’s mario kart dude, it’s supposed to be a frantic, wild affair

– the characters, mario, luigi, peach need i say more?

– multiplayer, suit up 2, 3, or 4 of your friends and battle for first place

– online gameplay, fighting players from around the world for the best lap times, first place and bragging rights.

– large selection of carts and motorbikes. although most of the available vehicles are gimmicky and extremely weak on the courses. it’s best to stick with the carts or motorbikes with a good amount of top speed, quick acceleration, moderate amount of weight, and good handling.

carts are best for race course like tracks where speed and acceleration are crucial. (i.e luigi’s circuit, peach beach) their secondary drift boost and extra weight is important when jockeying for position and breakaway speed. go for a motorbike when you’re facing hairpin turns and 90 degree corners. (i.e rainbow road, dk mountain, wario’s mine).

cons:
– overly random and luck based gameplay. it’s frustrating and quite annoying to claw your way into 1st place only to be knocked back to 10th place with a random -ssault of items on the last lap. watching your compet-tion blow past you while you tumble off course from a blue sh-ll, red sh-ll and then getting slammed by a bullet bill is maddening.

one can compare mario kart wii to nascar where restrictor plates and various restrictive measures are implemented to prevent a series wide margin victories. everybody deserves a chance to win right? you might not be the best racer to grace the wii wheel but even you might land in 1st place given the right amount of chances.

mario kart wii’s narrow margins of victory ensure tight, compet-tive racing but it seemingly penalizes and curtails better racers for the inept-tude and inabilities of poor racers.

-items, the bread and b-tter of the mario kart franchise. everybody loves and loathes the items. whether it was a mushroom that allotted you enough speed to rocket into 1st place or the despised blue sh-ll that divebombed on top of you.

in mario kart wii, items play an unfairly disproportionate role in the gameplay. compared to previous installments, items played a much smaller role in the game. however, in mario kart wii it’s safe to say that items determine whether your going to win or lose. now add on the fact that lower placed racers usually at or below 5th place are more likely to get powerful weapons that can affect everyone such as the blooper, pow block, thunderbolt, multiple, mega or super turbo mushrooms, blue sh-lls, and bullet bills. whereas, higher placed racers usually at or above 4th place are less likely to get powerful items and are usually stuck with green sh-lls, red sh-lls, the occasional mushroom, fake item box and bananas.

compounded onto this is the fact that items such as the pow block, lightning, blooper, and bullet bill occur at an annoyingly high frequency due to lower placed ai or human racers. every mario kart wii racer shares a tale of being screwed on the last lap by onslaught after onslaught of pow blocks, thunderbolts, and blue sh-lls.

rating: given it’s many design drawbacks, mario kart is an addictive game suitable for a group of friends or online play. single play is frustrating given the luck based and randomness of ai gameplay. but overall it’s worth the minor irritations of losing due to ai item onslaughts.
mike: dude i freakin hate mario kart wii, the stupid ai always get pow blocks and bloopers. i can’t race with such stupid ai programming. how is it possible for me to have such a great lead and fall back to 12th place on the last lap!!! it’s like nintendo doesn’t want you to win or be the single victor. freaking communist j-panese game developers.

hank: that’s just a part of the game mike, you have to accept the fact the mario kart wii isn’t your run of the mill racing game. yeah, it’s built on goofy scales of luck and chances and the fact that i got screwed on the last lap by a blue sh-ll is what keeps me playing.

mike: screw you, i’m going to play burnout
a video game that works on the wii (obviously). it’s all about racing and battling each other with wii wheels (sold seperately)
i beat my sister at mario kart wii (whoohoo!)
unfortunately, the worst mario kart game ever made, even though all the faults circle around little aspects of the game.

fault 1
the biggest fault in mario kart wii is the multiplayer mode–namely the balloon battle; in the mario kart predecessors such as mario kart:double dash the balloon battle was all about popping the opponent’s balloons and when all the opponent’s balloons were popped, the opponent would be eliminated from that round. on the wii version however, popping an opponents balloon would give you a point and when all the opponents balloons are popped, they lose a point.
to be fair though, the coin battle is better due to the fact that the ais actually go for the coins.

fault 2
fault 2 is the dreadful music given to some of the new courses such as the new bowser’s castle where the music is almost muted and maple treeway (which the music is absolutely terrible for the course). not only that, there are a couple of notes at the start of a course on the first lap, they used to do this on the 3rd lap as well but in the wii version they don’t.
being fair though koopa cape and dk snowboard cross have really good music.

fault 3
the star ranking system on this game is harsh and compet-tive, mario kart was never meant to be really compet-tve because the whole point was to win. mario kart ds had a ranking system but it was just a skill indicator and didn’t affect the game, whereas mario kart wii requires you get 1 star rank on specific courses to unlock new bikes and characters–note that even people who are good at mario kart struggle to get 1 star due to the harsh ai and the biggest indicator of all, so how is a five year old going to manage!

fault 4
the biggest indicator of all in the last section drives hate and fear into every mario kart racer to have ever existed, yes, it’s that peice of flying blue overpowered peice of doom called the blue sh-ll.
the blue sh-ll makes mario kart but in mario kart wii, the blue sh-ll appears too frequently, it makes you go all the way back to 7th place and lowers your star rank. this item even appears in coin runners (the coin battle), even then it only seems to hit you.

fault 5
the items on mario kart wii are better overall but there are several nasty items.
thunderbolt: appears far too frequently unlike it’s predecessors where thunderbolts were rare
pow blocks: this item was completely unessecary and is very annoyingly frequent
thundercloud: makes you tiny after a certain period of time but can be p-ssed on, it’s a dud item basically.
bullet bill: autopilots you to first and hits everyone along the way
although, the mega mushroom was a good edition to the game.

fault 6
some of the new tracks are awful, such tracks would be coconut mall (why did they need to add the miis), maple treeway (the worst track ever) and rainbow road (which is stupidly hard).

fault 7
the cpu’s are stupidly difficult to beat and unlike all predecessors, mario kart wii uses the rubber band technique so only cpu karts can get a boost to catch up with all the other racers to be in with a chance of winning

fault 8
there are 12 racers now, 8 was enough; on top of that, there is no 2 player grand prix, this is mean.

fault 9
what is the deal with stunts, they are completely unessecary and ruin the game.

fault 10
why did they have to include funky kong? he is faster than every other character and has the ugliest painted bikes/karts and over-reacts when he gets a boost or does a stunt like shouting waaaaahoooooo at the top of his voice. every person uses him in time trials so it is really unfair on those who want to be good with yoshi or dry bowser but have to use funky kong

fault 11
if they updated the system so the time cheat is fixed, why do people take m-ssive shortcuts that cut 30 seconds from a time trial; these people aren’t experts, they are cheats!!!

the only good thing that is new is the much improved karts that actually look proper, bikes are okay but they kind of take the whole point out of mario kart.
the graphics are the same as mario kart double dash but the cars feel like they move at 10 mph, meaning they had to slow down the cars to avoid the game overloading.
this actually happened to me.
i got 2 stars instead of 3 on 50cc sh-ll cup because even though i drove round the courses perfectly while drifting and avoiding bananas, i was pummeled by 10 blue sh-lls, 20 red sh-lls, 7 pow blocks and 5 thunderbolts. i still got 60 points though, so mario kart wii’s mechanics are wrong and stupid.