Me and a friend of mine had great expectations for this version. Note that we were, and still are, great fans of the Double Dash Gamecube edition.
As the release date came nearer (April 11th), we saw videos that weren't encouraging us much, particularly concerning the battle mode (balloons). We still decided (barely for I) to go get the game on friday. We came back to my friend's home and launched the game.
We started to take a look at the battle mode, good it did to us:
* Two type of games in battle mode: balloons and coins. The first still puts player in arenas where they have to use the bonus boxes to get items to make other's balloons explode and the second (which I haven't even tried) implies to get as much coins as possible and prevent the other to do so.
* First bad surprise: there's a 3 minute time-limit per round. So no camping to try and decide on a strategy nor item hunting.
* Second awful surprise: you can play in team play-mode ONLY. So no friendly-fire, you won't take teammates' shells or even yours... booooriiiing. That was the most single hilarity source in Double Dash.
We were totally disgusted by this mode and decided to just ignore it. To us, Mario Kart Wii DOES NOT have a battle-mode... and thus lose more than half its interests.
We decided to give the game a chance so we tried race mode.
* Most circuits are boring.
* Characters' special items DISAPPEARED: no more big bananas, no more Bowser shells...
* Apparently you can't tweak your bananas/maluses throws.
So battle-mode is inexistant and race mode is pretty meh, what are the other things that bothered me.
* Wii Wheel didn't give me a nice impression and although I've tried it again and now find it kinda ok, it still prevents you to play much time with it.
* New method of skiding, you like it or not, it prevents "snaking" though (never used that personnally).
* Classic pad setting (GC controller or classic controller) just plain sucks. The guy who did the button settings must have been drunk, and you can't even change it. Wiimote+Nunchuk is the best control setting.
* Graphically, the game is indeed inferior to Double Dash to me and you can particularly remark that as there's two re-edition of tracks from the GC version (along with 14 others and 16 "new" tracks, a couple being largely inspired by old ones).
* CPU seems to cheat as it never did, still doable though.
Now, I'm a fan of the Mario Kart franchise, and of Nintendo in general, but I really was dissapointed in this game. I already intend to sell it, I've never intended to sell any other Wii or Gamecube game (and I have SSX Blur and both editions of Resident Evil 4).
It's true online mode is easily accessible and apparently well done, although you can join any game that will start a new track so no Grand Prix but I guess it's logical and there's a system of ranking apparently simple and explicit, but what's the point if the game bores me?
I'm never buying a Nintendo game the eyes shut.
The Wii is a great gaming console, Nintendo really let me down this time, they totally rushed (and massacred) this edition. Good thing there are games like Guitar Hero 3 or Bully (which was pretty amusing).
End of venting.
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