Mario Kart Wii: My First Day

Sometimes your inner-voice can take a hold of you, which can lead to good or disastrous outcomes. On Saturday night, leading into early Sunday morning, you could say it was a good outcome. I was making my way back home from a friend’s house, when I noticed it was midnight, and I happened to be passing Wal-Mart. Remembering that MK:Wii came out I decided to see if the evil Wall-Mart (for you South Park fans) had it out yet. There was an interesting conversation between me and another guy picking up a Wii, and I walked out with my copy.

The Wii Wheel Makes For Some Exciting Mario Kart: Wii Racing

I thought I would just go home and play a couple matches and call it a night. After sliding my wii remote into the wheel, that plan went out the window. The moment that Latiku dropped the flag for my first race I was hooked. My first go around took me through Luigi’s circuit, and after getting down the physics of the Wii wheel, I was floored.

Mario Kart: Wii could easily be the best IR motion that the Wii has seen so far. The sensitivity between your in-life motions and the kart on the screen are top-notch. Once you have tackled turning, then it’s time to learn how to drift correctly and pull off tricks. Drifting which has been a MK mainstay has a whole different feel to it in MK:Wii. Turning the wheel yourself, makes drifting that much more rewarding and fun. The trick system, which I was skeptical on at first makes a perfect fit into the MK gameplay. Tricks make karting around seem a little more faster and give the game a more chaotic feel. Tricks are fairly easy to pull of, as all you have to do is flick your Wii wheel back to execute them. What can make them challenging is finding places to pull off the tricks while coming back down at a good placement.

Been a Koopa Troopa Kartster Since The SNES….And Will Continue To Be

Another new element to the game, is the bikes, which was another aspect of the game I was skeptical about. But just like the trick system it seems to integrate itself well into the series. In my first day of gameplay, I’ve found bikes are easier to control than karts but at a price. With bikes you really have to watch where other drivers are coming from, because a bump can send you flying in a direction. It’s also a little harder to catch the more powerful drifts, as I could only get a blue flame drift from a bike.

The online play for Mario Kart: Wii, in the three matches I had were spot-on. Not only is this the most fun I’ve had on multi-player for a Nintendo game, it rivals COD4 for multiplayer action. I only played three matches, but it was action packed and just a blast to play. The match set-up was seemless, taking all of 5 seconds to find a race with 9 drivers. Two of my matches went down to the wire; I won one, and came in third on the other. My third race, I got hounded with weapons, which dropped me back to fifth.

The last sentence from the previous paragraph is my only gripe with MK:Wii. Items have a major role in MK:Wii, more so it seems like than any previous entry in the series. The mega-mushroom, which is a new item; is like an over-powered version of the invincibility star, and the Bullet Bill. I was kind of hoping for less reliance on weapons this go around, but it looks as though it’s the opposite. I will say that in most of my single player, and two out of three multi-player matches, good driving got me to the end; not items.

For anyone that has been a fan of the Mario Kart since the SNES days, do yourself a favor and pick it up. If you’re new to the series, then do yourself a favor and pick it up. Heck, if you don’t like video games at all and like do intellectual things like reading and studying, do yourself a favor and pick it up. Getting a little repetitive here, but this game really does offer something for everyone. It’s easy enough for the younger, or less game-savvy crowd. While offering a good challenged ride, especially in multi-player for the more hardcore competitors.

I will be posting a more thorough review, as I get further into the game. I just wanted to drop my first impressions to everyone that has been deciding whether to play the game or not. Who else has picked up the game? And if you have what has your first play-throughs been like?