Mario Kart Wii

Thursday, April 24th, 2008 by Nick Maunders

Release Date: 11/04/08

Finally the time is here for me to write my review on which looks to be one of the best games so far in 2008. A lot of you would have seen the trailers on TV and the internet and even more of you would have been pre ordering the game before it came out. That’s right I’m talking about “Mario Kart: Wii” one of the most anticipated games of the year.

The Mario Kart Series is a long one which has been going on since 1992 with the Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and the most recent one (besides the wii) in 2007 with Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 for the arcade (coin operated machine). This new instalment however looks to be the very best one yet. With more characters than ever before the selection is huge!

The character list is huge for the game. There are a total of 24 characters; 12 of which are playable from the beginning of the game and twelve of which you have to unlock. You can also play as a Mii for the first time ever which is excellent news. Some of the characters returning are of course: Mario, Luigi, Toad and Bowser of course there are even a couple of new characters that have never been in the Mario Kart Series such as “Baby Daisy”, “Baby Peach” and “Funky Kong”. There are also a number of new tracks. A total of 16 new tracks and a nice twist with 16 retro tracks.

Each character has a weight group which affects there abilities. There are three weight groups: Light (Toad), Medium (Mario) and Heavy (Bowser). These groups affect 3 categories: Acceleration, Top Speed and Off-Road. So the light driver is the best at acceleration, the worst at top speed and the best at off-road. The medium racer is obviously by the name in the middle of the heavy and light driver for all three settings. The heavy driver is the worst at acceleration, the best at top speed and the worst at off-road.

As well as this there are different types of vehicles which you can unlock throughout the game. Each vehicle however falls under two different classes. The kart and the motorbike. There has been a lot of discussion over which of these classes is better and in my opinion the motorbike is slightly ahead of the kart for one main point: speed. Although the kart is in away more stable (it has four wheels) there is no easy speed boost the motorbike has. As the motorbike only has two wheels you can do wheelies on it which gives you a speed boost which makes the motorbike faster than the kart.

Again there loads of different pick-ups you can use in the game which I will go into in more detail in another review. There are also a lot of cool techniques that can really make it easier for you to win against the computer and your friends. One of them being the rocket start. Now what this does is it gives you a speed boost at the start of the race which puts you in front of the competitors. In the instruction manual it tells you to hold down ‘2′ sometime in the start, this is not very helpful because if you do it wrong your kart or bike will stall and you will end up way behind the other racers. To do the rocket start hold down the two button just as the number two on the countdown is starting to fade away!

A great thing with this game is it gives you the opportunity to play online against other people and friends. If your connected to the internet you can go on it and vs up to 12 people online in a race. If your friends are online you can vs them as well. You can also do time trails online which will be posted. If you there is someone with a faster time than you then you can download their ghost data which you can vs again. Unfortunately already there are a bunch of cheaters which think it is fun to cheat and beat everyone else. Well in my opinion they are just a bunch of losers.

I think this game is great which is why I’m giving it a rating of 9.9!

Shop	Image	Description	Price	Buy
		Mario Kart Wii With Wii Wheel	£37.98
		Mario Kart Wii With Wii Wheel	$49.99
		Mario Kart Wii With Wii Wheel	Out of Stock
		Mario Kart Wii With Wii Wheel	Out of Stock

Posted in PC Reviews, Wii Reviews