Mario Kart

14.04.2008

Because there was a lot of doubt in advance. While it was quiet for a long time about this fun racer of the traditional company, a few gameplay videos and screenshots have appeared in the last few months, which caused a few furrowed brows among certain players. Graphically, no masterpiece was expected – the Wii doesn’t have enough power for that. Some slightly better visuals would nevertheless not have been too bad for the title. Admittedly, the drivers with their nice animations still look very cute, but the completely missing anti aliasing and the occasionally hazy backgrounds spoil the graphical overall picture a little. Mario Kart Wii nevertheless has enough of its well-known comic-book charm for the whole family. A second reason for furrowed brows: motorcycles and stunts. Is all the tearing around with our famous plumber turning into some kind of Tony Hawk game? We can reassure you on this point. The motorcycles are integrated superbly into the game, and the stunts are set off by simply shaking the Wiimote. It does admittedly look somewhat amusing when brawny Bowser suddenly executes a backward summersault on his motorcycle, but thanks to the great animations and the Boost which you get from the stunt, you quite quickly forget that you initially had your doubts about Nintendo.

Mario Kart Wii is closely modelled on its immediate predecessor, i.e. Mario Kart DS. Instead of sitting on the karts in teams of two, as in the GameCube release, Double Dash, Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Wario, Bowser and friends are on the loose alone again. The number of drivers has been increased to twelve, which provides even more action on the 32 racetracks. 16 of these tracks are newly developed, while the other 16 are recycled from previous episodes and have been ported in a graphically improved form to the Wii. In order to do justice to the new focus of the game, some of these already known tracks have been fitted with jump ramps and new Boost fields, because Mario Kart Wii relies on the skilful use of Boosts. Another difference to Mario Kart DS is the snaking, where the driver drifts skilfully through the straights to gain an extra bit of thrust, which is completely removed from the game. Instead, the sparks, which are thrown from the kart as it drifts, fade after a couple of seconds. At the same time, it is crucial how tightly you drift round the curve. This mainly makes it easier for beginners to achieve results, while the professionals try to drift as tightly as possible and without losing time through each curve. The choice of a suitable vehicle is also vital. Karts and bikes differ in their top speeds, their acceleration, off-road performance, handling and even their drift performance. The motorcycles by and large have higher top speeds than the karts, but only have one additional Boost, while the sparks of the karts change from blue to orange, and Boost more powerfully. It is also worth to keep a lookout for Boost fields on each track. Only those who get all of them and increase their speed at the right moment with the obligatory Boost mushroom, to show off even more skilful stunts after the jumps, have the best chance of victory.

Typical of Mario Kart, first place is not only awarded for the players’ skills, but also for the luck with which they pick up items. It is a little unfair that only the drivers in the back receive the good items, while the leaders almost always have to make do with banana skins or fake item boxes. This does not always makes it easy to win, especially in the higher speed classes in Single Player mode. Thanks to the game’s rubber-band AI, your competitors will immediately close in on you again and again, so that first-place drivers can still fall right back to last place in the last curve. Then suddenly a Blue Spiny Shell crashes into you, another Red Shell is on your tail, and a flash of lightning reduces your size, which really slows your own vehicle down. Against the CPU, the races are sometimes quite unfair and will very quickly leave you frustrated, but playing against a friend will naturally lead to an enthralling competition with heaps of glee when your competitor is shot out of the game by a Shell shortly before reaching the finish. Nintendo has added three further items to the traditional ones: a thundercloud, cannonballs (which basically replaces the dog chain from Mario Kart: Double Dash) as well as the Enlargement mushroom from New Super Mario Bros., which lets your driver grow into a true giant for a short period of time.

These meaningful expansions are rounded off by the Online mode. Up to twelve players from around the planet can battle it out. A point system indicates the players’ abilities. As in the Nintendo DS, individual drivers are selected at random, which is fine, as Mario Kart Wii naturally has no voice- or text chat. The private lobbies for friends are new. Gone therefore are the days when even games between friends could only happen by coincidence. Great: if a friend is playing in a global or continental game, you can simply select the ongoing game, if there is space, and join in. Not so great: Friend codes must still be entered (the list provides space for only 30 codes!!) and a friend can only enter a private lobby if the lobby creator is also on his list. Otherwise, except for a couple of small time-lag difficulties, which don’t affect the gaming fun at all, the Online mode works great. Of course, even the traditional Battle mode can be tackled, but in a team. A Free-For-All mode is for no discernible reason no longer available. A new entry is the Coin Match, where you replenish your own life energy by collecting coins. Anyone who doesn’t want to play online, can simply sit in front of the split screen with up to four friends and duel it out.

Casual players can quickly get into the game thanks to the sensitive controls. Appropriately enough, Nintendo has fitted the Fun Racer with a plastic steering control assembly, into which the Wii-Remote is simply inserted. Steering by tilting to the left and right remarkably works fairly well, while serious lap times or more precise control is only possible with the help of an analogue joystick. For this, Nintendo offers three further control options: the Wiimote in combination with the Nunchuk, the Classic Controller and even the good old GameCube Controller. Anyone driving with this will almost feel like in Mario Kart: Double Dash, although the stunts have to be performed somewhat awkwardly with the control pad. The control option that you eventually decide upon is simply a matter of taste. The “steering wheel control” even allows casual players to jump into the race immediately and have some fun. This multi-player bombshell is rounded off with fitting background sounds and cheerful, appropriate tunes.