With excellent online capabilities and fun racing, Mario Kart Wii is fun for the whole family.
The presentation of Mario Kart Wii is flashy but subtle. It really doesn't have much to show off but the core gameplay. The menus are also very easy to navigate through, giving you the options of playing single player, multiplayer or online. This game can be navigated easily for even the most inexperienced player.
The controls in this game are very solid and are offered in many varieties. You can use the Wii Remote as a steering wheel, the Classic Controller, the Wii Remote and Nunchuck combo, and for the aficionados of Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, the option to use the Gamecube controller. All the controls work fine but the Wii Wheel is probably the most fun to use and offers very good controls. The Wheel is also very responsive and works as though you're driving a car. Overall it doesn't matter what control scheme you use, all of them work just fine.
The gameplay of Mario Kart Wii is best described as fun and addicting, with a few bits of frustration. The basic premise of the game is that you do standard races with 3 laps on each course and race across 4 courses. The races don't mostly revolve around speed, but the items you acquire after hitting a box. The items are varied, from a banana that can cause the other races to slip and slow down, a shell that is used as a projectile, a mushroom that gives you a speed boost, and many other items that give you an advantage or disadvantage to other players.
The racing is very solid, but the AI can get very cheap, especially on the harder difficulties. The items that are featured in the game are mostly used to your disadvantage rather to your advantage. By this I mean if you are in 5th place and desperately need a good power up you get a banana peel, which is pretty worthless. But if an enemy is behind, you usually are the one that get bombarded with powerful items that will make you go from 1st to 8th. This happens a lot in the game and it can even make the most experienced players lose to a person who never played a racing game before, which can cause a lot of frustration. Another annoying thing about the racing is that the walls often reduce your speed to unbelievably slow, which can slow down the high speed racing action in a course with a lot of tight turns. The newest feature in the game is the ability to use motorcycles, which is a very fun and great alternative to the standard kart. The one major difference is that the bikes can do wheelies to gain a speed boost, while the kart doesn't get much of a boost.
Another new feature in this game is the trick system, which is used to do tricks in midair and gives the player a speed boost. The trick system is very fun to use and easy to pull off, using the simple tap of a button or wave of the Remote. And finally the courses in the game are plentiful, with over 32 courses, half being new and the other half being redone courses from previous Mario Kart games. The new courses are very fun and fast, also taking advantages of ramps to pull off many tricks, while the older ones are just very old and boring. The only time you would go on the classic courses would be to just beat the cup or for nostalgia's sake.
The multiplayer is also pretty good, except the battle mode has been simplified and you can only play on teams and have it timed, which is a major letdown. Another problem I have with the multiplayer is there are no new features added. There really has to be more multiplayer modes for the game besides the traditional VS and Battle Mode. Besides those problem the multiplayer is still fun and addicting despite it being mostly the same multiplayer modes from the previous Mario Kart Games.
A feature that is perfected from Mario Kart DS is the online capabilities. It is simply terrific to say the least. Connecting to the Internet and starting a race has never been easier. Though you don't have many options if you have no friends, the random races are still fun. And another great thing is the connectivity you have to the database. There has never been any slowdown occurring in the races and there are very few times you will disconnect from the server. My problem is that there is no way you can tell if your friend is online or not, unless you check on their statues. It would have been nice if you can have a small alert message appear just to tell you that a friend just connected online. With those minor gripes aside, Nintendo has proven that they make a proper online mode for their games.
The graphics in Mario Kart Wii are very nice and colorful, especially on the new courses. Each course has a certain tone set on it and is overall a joy to look at. The frame rate is overall excellent, running smooth offline and online at 60 frames per second. Even the older redone courses from the previous Mario Kart games look somewhat decent, despite the blandness of the stages, though it is not the graphics, just how the stages are empty and there is really no work required to redo these stages. I also enjoy how polished everything in the game looks and it shows that Nintendo has worked hard to make the graphics look charming and colorful. In a simple statement, the graphics in the game are not impressive, but good.
The sound in the game is pretty average stuff. Everything sounds just about right but you really won't be blown away by anything. The music is pretty good, with many tunes ranging from the Mario Universe and every tune seems to match the stages theme perfectly. One problem I have with the sound is some of the voice overs. A lot of the characters have the pretty standard voices, but some of the characters voices are just plain annoying (Daisy, Donkey Kong), and just makes you want to scream. I swear if I hear Daisy screaming "Woo hoo!" past me one more time, I'm going to lose it.
The lasting appeal really depends on if you use Wi-Fi or not. The single player and offline multiplayer is bound to last you a long time, let alone the unlockable characters, but the online multiplayer is what will make this a must have. There is plenty to do, including online racing, sharing ghost trials, ranking, Wi-Fi tournaments, and plenty more. Just know you will be playing this a long time.
In the end Mario Kart Wii is just a very fun game to play, despite the rubber band AI in the later cups. This game is not without it faults, but the things it does right truly shine. It's basically a game anybody can enjoy. If you like racing games or happen to like having fun, then Mario Kart Wii is a great buy.