OMG Nintendo.com

When a new first-party Nintendo titles hit, you expect reviewers to explode with the sort of unadulterated glee that accompanied Super Mario Galaxy's reviews. With Mario Kart Wii, you've... sort of gotten that response. You've also gotten some of the most relentlessly negative coverage of a first-party Nintendo title I've seen in quite some time. The dichotomy is so extreme that, despite Mario Kart Wii's 84% metacritic ranking, I'm just going to cover the top two and bottom two scores and let you see what you make of it.

For my part, I have no idea what to make of this game. I want to get around to playing it eventually, but with bigger contracts on my hands it'll be about a month before I have time to check it out. Will anyone still be playing it online by then, though? Hell, will Nintendo actually succeed in making a Mario Kart game I like any better than the original? Beats me. In the meantime, Mario Kart Wii is definitely going to be popular, but less popular than Brawl, and very likely to get steamrolled by Grand Theft Auto 4.

Anyway, Mario Kart Wii's high score is 10 out of 10 from Ace Gamez that is honestly one of the craziest damn things I've ever read. I mean no personal disrespect to reviewer Tom Baines, yet his text gives the impression that playing Mario Kart Wii is akin to some sort of religious experience. There's really no other explanation for passages like this:

Some games are very, very serious indeed. There's plenty to be said for true-to-life physics, painstaking motion capture, and AI so frighteningly realistic that it's hard not to believe that the game's developers haven't been going around stealing people's souls and storing them on little silver discs. However, deep down, we're all glad that for every Tiger Woods there's an Everybody's Golf, for every Final Fantasy there's a Kingdom Hearts, and for every Gran Turismo there's a Mario Kart.

Or this:

This choice in vehicles within the categories isn't purely cosmetic either, as is often the case with serious racing games. Because of the cartoon nature of the game, the stat increases and decreases of the various vehicles are quite exaggerated - admittedly it seems a little strange to watch Baby Peach in a pushchair go flying past Wario in a hot rod, but there is method to this madness. You can team a more lightweight, better accelerating vehicle with a heavyweight character, for example, to compensate for the innate abilities of the driver and find some middle ground in between middleweight and heavyweight. Or alternatively, you could go in the opposite direction and turn your already beefy sort into a veritable tank. This variety and scope certainly adds a feeling of customisation and tailoring your racer to your own style, and while most players will settle on their favourite combinations after a few trial runs, the experimentation is enjoyable and you'll always find yourself testing out that new character you unlocked or trying the modified kart you just won to see if it improves your racing by a fraction of a second.

When people sit around complaining about how terrible the writing in games reviews are, this is more or less what they mean.

GamePro happened to also love Mario Kart Wii, devoting a six-page blowout to the title and awarding it a 4.75 out of 5 score that feels a little more plausible. Reviewer Tae Kim makes some of the usual complaints about how the gameplay goes out of its way to punish whoever is in first with crappy weapon drops, but otherwise seems to have had quite the spectacular time. The review gets a little weird when it comes to dealing with online play, though...

Mario Kart Wii also has a huge ace up its sleeve: online multiplayer: I didn't get to test it out because no one else has the game as I write this, but unless it's completely broken, I can't see how it won't be a great addition to the series, the complexity and fickleness of Nintendo's online service notwithstanding. The Mario Kart Wii channel is also a cool little widget that sits in the Wii Menu and lets you access online stats without needing to boot up the game. I hope to see more games take advantage of this cool feature.

Eh? Now, it's a noble thing to just flat-out admit when you couldn't test a feature in a review. That said, Mario Kart Wii supposedly supports worldwide online multiplayer, and has already been out for months in Europe and Japan. Hell, Europe's already found game-breaking bugs. Getting some online action should've been possible, provided the test unit used in the review was capable of making any sort of wireless connection. For such a major feature and such a high score, this kind of omission and excuse just feels kind of weird.

For instance, the guys over at European mag Edge clearly had no issues getting online action, and they had test builds at their disposal much earlier than any North American outlet. Online actually figures heavily into its final score, too, which is much lower and more negative than any of the North American outlets dared venture. There's no individual reviewer byline for the two-page spread review or its 6 out of 10 score, but the tone is one of frustration and betrayal. Edge ultimately seems to think that in building the game around twelve-man multiplayer, Nintendo's essentially ruined the franchise's core appeal.

While we wait to see if grandma steps up from Mii artisan to karting ace, seasoned Mario Kart fans are left with online competition offering both a Mario Kart Wii strength and a low point for the series. Built around 12 players, the various modes offer increasing fun for every slot filled. With 11 human foes, barren courses seem a little busier, the patented Wacky Races insanity returning courtesy of the Machiavellian divvying up of items. While there is nothing more galling than an AI kart receiving a race-winning tool for dawdling in 12th position, the constant table-turning is more acceptable amongst friends.

Start plucking away those friends - or, indeed, random online strangers - and the AI sidles into place with its usual brand of party-poopery. This is most violently felt in local splitscreen multiplayer. When taken in concert with slowdown, eight computer bullies can easily overwhelm races. You can play without AI but the wide courses, tailored to 12 racers, will feel very empty. Team games - including the horribly deformed Balloon Fight - are particularly unpleasant, able human players paired with unreliable allies to undermine their cunning strategies.

As wounded as Edge sounds about Mario Kart Wii, the review from Game Chronicles makes it sound positively pestiliential. This is one of the most angry reviews I've ever read, doling out a 4.2 out of 10 score. Reviewer Mark Smith can't make any headway in the game's 150cc mode. He is furious like a man posting to GameFAQs.

If you have your Wii jacked into the Internet and plan to race online then youll likely enjoy this game. If you are coming for the solo game modes then stay away&stay far away. There is nothing more frustrating than doing the same race (or series of races) over and over and over again only to have victory snatched away at the last second by some cheap shot from the overly aggressive AI. I certainly don't mind a challenge but Mario Kart is ridiculously hard, especially for a game targeted for kids.

Seeing as how the game doesn't require a wheel, and as some others have reported the game actually plays better without it, I think it is slightly unfair for Nintendo to be forcing the wheel on you for an extra $10. I'm guessing a game-only version of Mario Kart will arrive soon enough for $40 and that will be a more reasonable price.

So, what's the moral of all this? That Mario Kart, and especially Mario Kart Wii, makes people go absolutely insane. Sensible writing standards lapse, pants are soiled in glee, and the unbearable agony of the blue shell leads to the wearing of sackcloth and ashes. Nintendo appears to have made a game that is, all at once, the best and worst thing ever.

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