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Wii Mario Kart

21st of Apr, 2008ce* in: blog

my advice, don’t bother. I sold it. What a terrible let down.

I may not be articulate enough a reviewer to pin it down but, I just couldn’t be bothered to play it after a few days, theres something mind numbingly boring about racing the AI. Not that it’s too easy or anything. Online is OK… bit like the DS online.

There’s lots to make the game more chaotic than it should be, so racing skill is not really needed. you can be in 12th position and still finish 1st if you get the right item. Which with recent mario kart iterations is a real let down. They keep adding more random penalties to level the playing field but at the same time have eroded the skill element which should have been paramount as on the super nintendo. You could be the best driver in the world and still finish last if you’re unlucky. in fact, this happens far too much.

Choosing drivers for their advantages / disadvantages is also pointless. If you chose a big heavy driver you won’t get anywhere, because the random factor of being penalized is so frequent it removes any advantage of incremental speed gains, because you take longer to recover / gain speed. So an old mechanic is left in and you’re left with the worst aspects, none of the gains.

I’d give it 3 / 10 on gameplay, 5 / 10 on graphics and 2 / 10 on audio

The DS version has better tracks, better racing mechanics and is a trickier game to master, that rewards the player.