Mario Kart Wii: 9.0

It has been a tradition that the newest Mario Kart game is the best in franchise's history and this is also true for Mario Kart Wii. In my opinion all the important improvements have been done to online play.

Since this is a karting game there is no real story. You just drive on different tracks and have fun while doing it. In the process you'll unlock some bonus characters and karts.

Graphics are colorful and pretty simple but functional and they have that same light Nintendo style you've come to expect. Music and sound effects seem to be mostly recycled, but that is not a bad thing: it's just nothing new.

Controls are simple consisting just acceleration, break/reverse and a button for launching an acquired item. Wii's motion controls are used in an included plastic wheel in which the Wii Remote is put. Quite a few people seem to use it online and it works fine, but I tried it just once and have been using Classic Controller ever since.

There are little over 30 tracks and about half of them are recycled from previous Mario Kart games. Tracks are divided into cups in 3 different difficulty levels, which are named 50 cc, 100 cc and 150 cc. You can also choose to play Time Trial and try to get the fastest time or Battle, where you fight against AI or human opponents by using game's items. These temporary power-ups are many and most of them are familiar to Mario Kart veterans. Unfortunately some of them are unfair and as a result races can sometimes be just a matter of pure luck.

For the first time there are motorcycles added and it seems that most people are using them online, since they are a little more responsive in terms of controls. I still prefer the good old karting car. You'll also unlock more playable characters as you progress, but it seems that the only thing you get by choosing a different character is that you get to see another character as you drive. Your choice doesn't seem to have any effect on actual gameplay.

Let's face it: people will buy Mario Kart Wii, because they want to play either online against other people or offline against friends. Multiplayer modes are easy to use and easy pick up (and just play for hours). This time you can choose to play only with your friends or your friends can join you and race against random people as well. There can be as much as 12 karts racing at the same time and there's hardly ever any lag. Best feature is that now you can't leave in the middle of a race, which was a real problem in Mario Kart DS. Worst feature on the other hand is that winning and losing sometimes seem to come random depending on what power-ups you and other racers get to use.

Mario Kart Wii is clearly best in series, but if you didn't enjoy the previous installments you're not going to like this one either. Still this is by far the best racing game on the Wii.

Nometet.com says: 90%