Mario Kart for Nintendo Wii

Mario Kart is a racing game involving many of the characters from previous Mario games. I was playing in team mode with Chris. Players can choose from many different tracks that are categorized by competition. We raced on several of the tracks including Shy Guy Beach, Peach Beach, and WaLuigi Stadium.

Since neither Chris nor myself had played this game before, we consistently found ourselves in last place, but the game was amusing nonetheless. On each track there are cubes hovering above the track. The cubes can contain a power up or, alternatively, an obstacle. Some of the boxes are marked with what they contain, and others are marked with a question mark.

There were also different types of monsters on each of the tracks. Peach Beach had these giant crabs that can see players coming and will move towards them. Another track had Ghosts hovering above the racers.

The track that was the most fun for me was the WaLuigi Stadium. The track had lots of curves and dips with opportunities for jumps. This meant that even if I was going slow, it was still exciting. It’s also lots of fun to bump the other players, and it seems to slow people down when you collide with them.

The graphics in the game are very impressive as is the fact that even the machine generated players make mistakes. The machine generated player is no longer perfect at the game. This makes it more fun for a casual gamer such as myself, because it makes the competition a bit more fair. Another difference between this game and the other few games that I’ve played is that there are some objects in the game with which players are supposed to collide.

Mario Kart was very easy to pick up play without any real training. After all the stories that I’ve clicked through recently for Nintendo games, this was very refreshing. Racing games are fairly obvious anyway…steer and accelerate the car. The game came with a steering wheel that is supposed to be used with the WiiMote sitting inside. The wheel is easy to use, but made it more difficult to choose the character I wanted to play or point at anything else with the WiiMote.

I would recommend this game to other people to play. It was easy to have fun, and no trouble at all to learn. When a seasoned player and a casual gamer can play a game together, and enjoy it, it speaks to the game’s universal appeal.