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Yes, the imaginative items are what set the Mario Kart games apart, but they seem to have reached a zenith of ridiculousness in this latest effort. While first-place racers are "rewarded" with near-useless Banana Peels and Green Shells, those savvy and or sorry enough to languish near the back are showered with items practically guaranteed to put them back in the hunt. Chief among them is the Blue Shell, which makes its return here as the unblockable scourge of first-place racers and possibly the most patently unfair item in all of gaming. Other items shrink the kart, spin it out, and cover it in vision-obscuring sludge with such depressing regularity in the 150cc races that I almost found myself longing for a more banal, realistic racing game like Gran Turismo.
It's a shame, because were it not for the interference of these items,
Mario Kart Wii would rank as one of the most skillful games in the series. Any player that masters the game's new boost-granting mid-air tricks and the difficult-but-rewarding motorbike wheelies will likely develop a sizable lead over any unlearned competitor, but that skillful lead is all for naught if the opponent gets a Blue Shell, a POW Block or a Bullet Bill that can effortlessly transport them from eighth place to first in the blink of an eye. The net effect is a race that is always thrilling but rarely satisfying -- a luck-of-the-draw mess where hanging in the middle of the pack until the final seconds is a quixotically winning strategy.
This problem is allayed somewhat in the multiplayer modes, where a Blue Shell launched by a desperate friend is somehow less frustrating than one launched by a soulless game system. The local multiplayer modes suffer from their own problems, though, not least of which is a noticeably jumpy frame rate when three or more players race on the same TV. What's more, the last-man-standing battle mode -- a series staple -- has been transformed into a team-based, timed affair in which groups of players battle to a generally anticlimactic conclusion as the clock winds down. It's an interesting twist on the formula, but one that should have been an
addition to the traditional battle mode, not a
replacement for it.
The new team-based battle modes are better-suited to online play, which is an impressively smooth experience this time around. The much-maligned Wii friend codes are still around, but now players can at least use the Wii Message Board to send invites to already-registered friends. The matching system makes it incredibly easy to face off against up to 11 other racers from around the world or around the region, though there were some occasional server problems during our playtest. The
ELO-style, point-based ranking system provides a big improvement over
Mario Kart DS' simple win-loss system, although these ratings seem to have nothing to do with the race match-ups (perhaps this will be fixed in the occasional, time-sensitive online tournaments Nintendo plans to run). Nintendo also places a nice twist on the high-score list by letting players race against downloadable versions of the fastest recorded races, which can spice up the normally staid time trial mode. Racing against a version of the best racer in the world is a humbling experience, to say the least.
These are the kind of surprising, humbling features that make
Mario Kart Wii a success despite its flaws. All the frustrations over cheap item selection and inconsistent difficulty seem petty and forgivable when the core design is so tight and joy-inducing. Nintendo has succeeded in creating a game that new and old players can enjoy equally, and one that I find myself jonesing for even after an entire weekend absorbed in it. If that's not a sign of a good game, I don't know what is.