Monday, April 28, 2008
Mario Kart: Wii
Mario Kart: Wii
Overall - B+
First Impressions - C
Pros: Wheel is fun, drifting with wheel is fun, mario kart game, 4-player grand prix
Cons: graphics, doesn't feel as tight, unlocking things
Neutral: Haven't tried internet yet
Ahh, the long awaited mario kart wii. Well, from the scores above, you can pretty much tell how this review will go. Anyway, so prior to the game coming out (over here, at least), I was reading about it on the message boards. What? no 2-player co-op? That's horrible! But then I read there is actually co-op, and actually it was up to 4-players, so that was okay. They said though, that you can only unlock stuff in 1-player rather than the usual 2-player, and there were all sorts of arguments and complaints and whatever.
At the time, I thought, "who cares?" I mean, you'll probably play the game periodically over the next, say, 200 weeks. And this "unlocking" period lasts through the first 2 weeks, so say, 1% of the lifespan of the game. So all these complaints and whatever, they just apply to the first 1% of the game, so I didn't think it mattered so much.
But I was wrong. There are now 32 courses and 4 difficulties and a time trial mode, so by my calculations, you have to do a minimum of about 500 laps by yourself. An average lap takes about a minute, so that's about 8 hours of playing time by yourself. And that's if you're GOOD. If you're not good, expect to play 1000+ laps by yourself. That's horrid. But after unlocking a few extra levels, then you just have to unlock characters and karts/bikes - so you'll have all the levels and you can enjoy the game in multiplayer mode, but the unlocking process will still be a pain because you can only do it by yourself. Alright, so that's the first part.
Graphics... well, the main game character models are pretty good, on par with Double Dash... road textures aren't that great. But the character selection screen... eww! Donkey Kong and Bowser? Looks kinda like Mario Party, but maybe even worse. Donkey Kong looks worse than he did in SSB64! I'm talking about the character selection screen - they look horrible! So, there's a negative for presentation.
Courses... well, there are 32 courses - 16 new, and 16 taken from past games, from SNES, N64, GCN, GBA and DS. Some good ones came back, some bad, and I haven't played the GBA or DS ones so those ones I don't have any memories for, but I guess they're okay. The new courses are kinda wacky and stuff, but overall... it just doesn't feel very epic. It's funny, SNES courses are still somewhat pixelized, but then again, a lot of levels seem to have bad textures. It's disgusting.
Also... nurburging grass. They now made it so that if you get off the road and onto the grass, your car pretty much slows down to a slow chug chug, like the grass in Nurburging in PGR2. I think in PGR 2 the grass was mixed with sand which made the car really hard to move. Same thing here - you step on the grass without a star or mushroom, and your car stops moving. Really not fun.
Music... some memorable tracks came back,but overall it doesn't feel so great.
Items... some items are okay, some have gotten more random and weird. Mario Kart Double Dash was awesome; each character had a special item that they would get more often, and the ability to hold two items strategically was also cool. This time, there's none of that specialty per character, nor holding two items, so it somehow feels like a stepback. There are some annoying items too, and overall it gets pretty chaotic. Chaotic in SSBB is sometimes okay - but chaotic in MK is actually very annoying.
Controls... actually, they're not bad. I really enjoy drifting in my drifty-car using the wii-wheel, but it's not as good as the gamecube controller. So, I would use the wii-wheel to have fun, but if I wanted to win, I'd switch to the gamecube controller.
So, overall, most of my comments were pretty negative, but it's still an okay game. Fifty bucks, includes a wheel. You can buy a second wheel for $10, but for now, you don't need it, just try it out first before you buy a 2nd one (I did, but nobody's using it). We should have a wheel-only, wild-car versus match sometime. That could make for some fun and/or frustrating driving.
Anyway, so that's it! I think Double Dash was too good of a game, so this game really didn't live up to it. In any case, we'll keep playing it. It's fun, despite losing so much on presentation and non-epic-ness. We still have so much single-player to do. It'll be a while till we unlock the blue falcon. Hopefully it's as good as its name =)
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Overall - B+
First Impressions - C
Pros: Wheel is fun, drifting with wheel is fun, mario kart game, 4-player grand prix
Cons: graphics, doesn't feel as tight, unlocking things
Neutral: Haven't tried internet yet
Ahh, the long awaited mario kart wii. Well, from the scores above, you can pretty much tell how this review will go. Anyway, so prior to the game coming out (over here, at least), I was reading about it on the message boards. What? no 2-player co-op? That's horrible! But then I read there is actually co-op, and actually it was up to 4-players, so that was okay. They said though, that you can only unlock stuff in 1-player rather than the usual 2-player, and there were all sorts of arguments and complaints and whatever.
At the time, I thought, "who cares?" I mean, you'll probably play the game periodically over the next, say, 200 weeks. And this "unlocking" period lasts through the first 2 weeks, so say, 1% of the lifespan of the game. So all these complaints and whatever, they just apply to the first 1% of the game, so I didn't think it mattered so much.
But I was wrong. There are now 32 courses and 4 difficulties and a time trial mode, so by my calculations, you have to do a minimum of about 500 laps by yourself. An average lap takes about a minute, so that's about 8 hours of playing time by yourself. And that's if you're GOOD. If you're not good, expect to play 1000+ laps by yourself. That's horrid. But after unlocking a few extra levels, then you just have to unlock characters and karts/bikes - so you'll have all the levels and you can enjoy the game in multiplayer mode, but the unlocking process will still be a pain because you can only do it by yourself. Alright, so that's the first part.
Graphics... well, the main game character models are pretty good, on par with Double Dash... road textures aren't that great. But the character selection screen... eww! Donkey Kong and Bowser? Looks kinda like Mario Party, but maybe even worse. Donkey Kong looks worse than he did in SSB64! I'm talking about the character selection screen - they look horrible! So, there's a negative for presentation.
Courses... well, there are 32 courses - 16 new, and 16 taken from past games, from SNES, N64, GCN, GBA and DS. Some good ones came back, some bad, and I haven't played the GBA or DS ones so those ones I don't have any memories for, but I guess they're okay. The new courses are kinda wacky and stuff, but overall... it just doesn't feel very epic. It's funny, SNES courses are still somewhat pixelized, but then again, a lot of levels seem to have bad textures. It's disgusting.
Also... nurburging grass. They now made it so that if you get off the road and onto the grass, your car pretty much slows down to a slow chug chug, like the grass in Nurburging in PGR2. I think in PGR 2 the grass was mixed with sand which made the car really hard to move. Same thing here - you step on the grass without a star or mushroom, and your car stops moving. Really not fun.
Music... some memorable tracks came back,but overall it doesn't feel so great.
Items... some items are okay, some have gotten more random and weird. Mario Kart Double Dash was awesome; each character had a special item that they would get more often, and the ability to hold two items strategically was also cool. This time, there's none of that specialty per character, nor holding two items, so it somehow feels like a stepback. There are some annoying items too, and overall it gets pretty chaotic. Chaotic in SSBB is sometimes okay - but chaotic in MK is actually very annoying.
Controls... actually, they're not bad. I really enjoy drifting in my drifty-car using the wii-wheel, but it's not as good as the gamecube controller. So, I would use the wii-wheel to have fun, but if I wanted to win, I'd switch to the gamecube controller.
So, overall, most of my comments were pretty negative, but it's still an okay game. Fifty bucks, includes a wheel. You can buy a second wheel for $10, but for now, you don't need it, just try it out first before you buy a 2nd one (I did, but nobody's using it). We should have a wheel-only, wild-car versus match sometime. That could make for some fun and/or frustrating driving.
Anyway, so that's it! I think Double Dash was too good of a game, so this game really didn't live up to it. In any case, we'll keep playing it. It's fun, despite losing so much on presentation and non-epic-ness. We still have so much single-player to do. It'll be a while till we unlock the blue falcon. Hopefully it's as good as its name =)