It's out in Europe, and we've hit the track running with our retail copy. Check out our early impressions of the new controls, tracks, vehicles, and more. http://nintendoworldreport.com/impressionsArt.cfm?artid=15749 European gamers starved of multiplayer anarchy in the absence of Super Smash Bros. Brawl finally got their fix last week in the shape of Mario Kart Wii. Having sat down with the game over the weekend, I've toured all the game's tracks and modes and come away mostly pleased with the results of Nintendo's labours, though not without coming across a few notable drawbacks.
Upon start-up there are nine characters to choose from. The drivers of Mario Kart Wii break down into three weight categories (light, medium, and heavy), determining which set of karts/bikes they have access to. At first, each set of vehicles corresponding to the weight classes contains three karts and three bikes, but as you achieve certain goals, more machines will be unlocked to expand the sets.
Thus you can accumulate a good range of driving options for your favourite character, but in functional terms, the only real difference between any of the characters is in their weight class, as the character specific items of Double Dash!! are no longer present. Whether it be Yoshi, Luigi, or even your own Mii (an unlockable bonus, weight class determined by how big you made it originally) in the driver's seat of the Nostalgia kart, for example, it'll handle just the same.
After selecting a character and vehicle, you will be presented with an option that seems quite foreign to the Mario Kart series: "Automatic", or "Manual". However, this is nothing to do with shifting gears, but rather pertains to the new drifting mechanics that have been implemented. In the automatic case, players do not have to press a button to hop and initiate a power-slide in order to navigate sharp corners, rather the slide is initiated automatically as you steer heavily in one direction. This form of drifting keeps things simple for beginners, and lacks the reward of a mini-boost at the end, so Mario Kart vets shouldn't concern themselves with this, and instead proceed with the manual option from the get-go.
As you may have heard by now, the drifting in Mario Kart Wii has been modified from the system employed in the DS version. The rocking back and forth of the steering in order to build up a mini-boost found in the past several Mario Kart games has been taken out. Instead, how quickly you build up through the two levels of mini-boost (available for karts, as bikes only have one) is now dependent on how heavily you steer into the slide. This means that the straighter your course after initiating the slide, the longer it will take for the boost to accrue, rendering the oft-maligned snaking technique no longer viable as a way to get ahead.
This is to my satisfaction, as I did not find attempting to exploit the old drifting mechanics to be enjoyable per se, but some may lament the passing of snaking as a skill to be mastered. However, I would say that there is some depth to using powerslides in Mario Kart Wii, as it further encourages taking corners as sharply as possible, which is a nice risk-reward element.
Mario Kart Wii follows Brawl's lead in providing players with the full compliment of possible control schemes on Wii, and this is very much appreciated as there are significant pros and cons to the different setups. The much-publicised Wii Wheel doesn't add anything functionally to simply holding the Wii Remote on its side, but its construction is solid and provides some comfort and additional ease in steering and reaching for the B trigger to initiate a power-slide.
Using the wheel at first proved to be somewhat unexpectedly enjoyable and functional, but as soon as an over-steering mistake costs you a GP title, you too may find yourself longing for the feel of an analog stick against your thumb. The GameCube and Classic controllers can accommodate this need, providing tight, very familiar control that can be finessed much more easily than the turning of the wheel.
Where these methods fall down a bit though is in the activation of the new trick system. When using the Wii Remote, flicking upwards just as you take off from a ramp initiates a nifty piece of aerial acrobatics on the part of your driver, granting you a boost as soon as you touch the ground. The gesture recognition has been totally solid in my experience, and on the GCN and Classic controllers the d-pad is relied upon to execute this manoeuvre, which is a little bit awkward by comparison (though hardly representative of a major problem). However, the Wii Remote-Nunchuk combo controls really do represent the best of both worlds in this case, as they combine the precision and familiarity of control stick steering with the ability to flick the remote even more effortlessly than when holding it on its side.
The addition of bikes to the Mario Kart cavalcade of craziness (or should that be kavalcade of kraziness?) is not as superfluous as I had first thought, and injects a few new elements into the formula. The bikes are predictably much more manoeuvrable than the karts, making them good for weaving in between obstacles and traffic, but also vulnerable to battery by heavier machines. In some cases, the turning circle is so tight that only a brave man would power-slide more than occasionally, and with just a limited boost to be earned when on two wheels, drifting becomes a lesser part of the game.
More interestingly, bikes can travel at higher speeds when you perform a wheelie (once again by flicking the remote up/d-pad). The price to pay for this ability is that the bikes become even more vulnerable to attack while balancing on one wheel, and lose almost all capacity to change direction, so this must be used carefully. It proves most useful for maintaining high speeds following a boost when on a straight, and presents a risk-reward mechanic that is entirely unique to this new breed of Mario Kart racer.
Having now seen all of the 32 tracks (16 new, 16 retro, as in Mario Kart DS) on offer, the selection is pretty satisfying, although everyone will have their grievances regarding omissions from the retro list (no Waluigi Pinball or GCN Yoshi Circuit!), and a little more thematic variety would have been welcome. The new tracks start off pretty basic but progress into some of the wildest the series has seen yet, with solid track design augmented by some interesting use of the new trick mechanics by littering the track with exploitable ramps and bumps.
While the game's graphics may not immediately impress, the 12 racers on the tarmac (or sand, or flowing water even) combined with the madness created by some of the new courses create a greater sense of spectacle than was apparent in Double Dash!!. However, in accommodating the 12 competitors most of the tracks have been made very broad, which rather diminishes an already lacking sensation of speed. While Mario Kart has never styled itself as akin to F-Zero, on those occasions when you activate multiple turbos in quick succession you might wish that rush was felt rather more frequently, at least in the 150cc class.
Unlocking aside, multiplayer's the name of the Mario Kart game, and local four player races have an impressive set of options this time. In addition to being able to set up a competition over a number of courses of your choosing, the level of the AI opponents can be toggled through three difficulty settings, while the items can also be modified or turned off altogether. In addition to the "balanced" default setting, there is a choice to make the extreme items (such as the lightning bolt or Bullet Bill) more or less common.
In the latter case the items remain largely contained to the basics (such as green shells, mushrooms, and bananas), preserving combat between racers while eliminating the items that are least associated with skill or strategy. A comprehensive item switch might have been preferable, but this is a step in the right direction. Where Mario Kart Wii is most regrettably less customisable is in the case of Battle Mode, which must be played in two teams of six competing in a score-based match rather than an elimination format. This seems needlessly limiting and, so far, appears to be to the detriment of the fun to be had in Battle Mode.
Finally there's the online play, which is undoubtedly a step up from Nintendo's other ventures in this area. Joining a series of anonymous matches is very quick and easy, and is not limited to a set number of races or affected by dropouts, so the contests proceed smoothly for as long as you care to race in the quest to accumulate ranking points based on your performance (a system akin to your skill scores in Wii Sports). The game itself runs smoothly (seemingly in 100cc mode only) even with the full compliment of racers, and copes well if playing with a friend in splitscreen on the same Wii.
Currently I haven't been able to dabble in friend matches, but friends can now be invited to add your code using your Wii Message Board address book in the Mario Kart Channel (standalone installation requires 86 blocks, but the same functionality is available through the game disc as well). This channel also lets you see if any of your registered friends are online with Mario Kart Wii without having to insert the game disc.
Overall, my time with Mario Kart Wii so far has shown me that while it definitely does not "reinvent the wheel" (though it does provide us with one whether we want it or not), there are a significant amount of tweaks and new elements to offer something a little different to the Kart veteran, while staying true to the core formula that was so well received in Mario Kart DS. The superior online functionality (and indeed, the absence of snaking) could well mean that this one will last us even longer in spite of some annoyances, but anyone demanding that Mario Kart Wii transcend its forebears altogether is clearly not going to be satisfied.