Mario Kart inc. wheel for Nintendo Wii

Mario Kart WII is one of the Nintendo WII's best-selling titles* and, well over a year after its release, still one of the games that generates most interest in the console.  Having enjoyed Mario Kart Super Circuit on the GBA, I was looking forward to this game and wasn't disappointed by it at all.

A fun and often crazy racing game, Mario Kart WII features a host of familiar Nintendo characters - Mario, Luigo, Wario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, etc - as they battle for supremacy amongst a large selection of tracks.  There is a single-played championship mode, which is fine in itself, but the game really comes alive in multiplayer mode.  You can have up to four players on a single WII (though without a big screen this can be a little confusing!), and typically race in a tournament of 4 trakcs, each of which can be selected separately. 

The game looks great; we all know that the WII's graphical capabilities aren't the most impressive, but the bright, bold, colourful cartoon-style graphics suit the game (and the console) down to the ground.  There are some very nice touches, lots of attention to detail, and good animation (some of it very funny).  The tracks have a lot of variety in terms of difficulty and aesthetic style.  Crucially, there is a good impression of speed as you zoom round the tracks.   The sound also is great - fun music, insane sound effects and speech samples.  It looks and sounds great, and plays just as well.

You can play the game with a classic controller or a Wiimote turned on its side.  As standard the game comes with a steering wheel that you can slip the Wiimote into for a more authentic driving experience.  It takes a while to feel comfortable with the Wiimote alone and it's definitely easier (but less fun) with a classic controller. 

Apart from simply driving (which can be challenging enough, with some tricky courses and various parts of the track that will affect your car - speed0up lanes, creatures that wonder onto the track and can slow you down (or worse!), mushrooms to bounce on - with a tumble to the bottom of a deep canyon as the alternative.  All of this is great and makes the game a lot of fun, but what seals it is the power ups (and power downs).  No just that there are loads of different things to collect to help or hinder you winning the race, but all of the AI opponents use theirs too.  All too often in games like this the AI racers rarely if ever use a power up, but here they're fully used by each competitor.  This makes the races very unpredictable since you might be winning and suddenly find your car shrunk to the size of a hedgehog with a similar loss of power; someone turning into a rocket and zooming past you as if you're not moving; a could shooting lightening suddenly appears above your car and won't go away; your windscreen is squirted with ink and you can't see the track properly for a while. 

This can be a bit of a mixed blessing since it sometimes detracts from the skill needed to win; often skilful use or avoidance of particular power ups / downs is more important than actual driving skill.  However after a while it became clear to me that, while this part of the game certainly introduces a random element into the races, overall your skill in the game is what counts most.

The key strength of this title is its variety - there are loads of tracks to race on, a good number of different characters to choose from, and many different vehicles to race in.  Both single and multiplayer modes have a good number of options, and there are several different game modes - standard racing, battle mode where you can blow each other up (well actually you can do this in race mode too, but maybe not as much!) and collecting coins.  In these games you can act individually or as part of a team, with 6 on each side (though I've tended to find that whoever's in the same team as me automatically becomes useless!).   There is also online play to challenge up to 11 of your friends, and a variety of online challenge modes which are constantly updated and added to.

Naturally it's the multi-player mode that offers the most enjoyment for this game, but whichever way you look at it, Mario Kart WII is a very strong title.  Some might feel that there is a bit too much randomness to the races, but if you persevere you'll learn just what to use and when to get the biggest advantage against your competitors. 

Overall Mario Kart WII is great fun, and with the excellent online multiplayer plus the huge (and expanding) variety of courses, challenges etc means that you're never likely to get bored of it.  If you liked racing games and aren't looking for a pure simulation, Mario Kart WII should suit you right down to the ground.


*             Mario Kart WII is 4th in the WII best-seller lists with 17.39 million sold; only WII Fit (21.82m), WII Play (22.98m) and WII Sports (47.62m) have sold more.  Figures taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games#Wii on 1st September 2009.