"Mario Kart Wii" is a racing game released on Nintendo Wii year 2008.
As the title implies, this game is a part of the Mario Kart-franchise, and has of course Mario and friends racing and compete with each other in order to get the first place. This time in eight cups which all together include new but many challenging tracks, and retro tracks from previous games which have to be unlocked.
As always, items are presented well. The problem is, the better place you get (let's say from 1st to 4th place), the bigger chance you get to become attacked with great items like a Blue Shell, a POW Block and Red Shells, just so other characters can get a chance to get 1st place. Which can be somewhat frustrating sometimes. Otherwise, 1st place characters only get items like Green Shells and Bananas.
Many of the tracks presented here are pretty challenging as well. In Moonview Highway you can easily get run over by any cars and trucks, while in Rainbow Road you can easily fall of the tracks if you're not careful due to this track lacking fences to protect the players from falling. DK Summit has skiing Shy Guys as well.
Unlike "Mario Kart 64" which was the only MK game I've played before this, this game has many characters to be unlocked, including Diddy Kong, King Boo, Princess Daisy and Rosalina. Especially unlocking Dry Bowser and the lovely Daisy was pretty hard because of several tasks I had to do, like winning Special Cup in 150cc just to name an example. You can also unlock several other karts and bikes as well.
Overall, you'll not only need skills and chance, but you will also need a good amount of luck to win in any cups you're playing.
As usual, there is a Time Trial, as well as other modes like VS Race, Battle and Ghost Race. Battle Mode is pretty funny as well, but challenging sometimes as the option on how many characters you'll fight against doesn't exist. But it should in my opinion. I actually find the Time Trial to be a good way to start the game, because this is how I got to know most of the tracks, before going ahead on the Grand Prix and race against other characters.
This game is pretty funny in general, but as I told you earlier, this game can be frustrating sometimes because of the challenging elements I've mentioned. The characters I've been using the most in the game are, in random order: Mario, Bowser, Daisy and Rosalina.
This is one of the first two games I've got for my Wii, together with "Mario Party 8" I've reviewed about earlier here on IMDb. The edition I got for this game included a Wii Wheel in the box, letting you get the feeling as if you really were driving a car. Only using the Wii controller itself in regular way is optional.
Because of many things to be unlocked, some of the challenges I've mentioned earlier and the game's fun itself, I give this game an overall rating of 8/10.
3 out of 3 found this helpful