Mario Kart Wii

In the attempt to give all things a chance I decided to go see Speed Racer this weekend, even though no one watched it when it was in the theatres. Upon arriving at gatornights I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they were having a demonstration of Mario Kart Wii, so much for watching the movie. I am not sure where they found this demo version of the game but it must have been an import as the race commentary was done in a multiple languages, either way I love Mario Kart and I was excited to see the demo. The opening scenes of the game left much to be desired. You are introduced to basic story line of the game. In this version of the game Bowser is in control of the WRL (Wii Racing League) and he has captured baby Mario’s bother baby Luigi, with the help of champion racer Waluigi. Baby Mario must now out race the competition to reclaim WRL for all racers. Baby Mario is help out along the way by baby princess, his father Mario and mother princess, his love interest baby princess, the duo of toad and diddy kong, and of coarse head mechanic Luigi. Now on to the racing, the first race course is pretty simple and looks like a cross between the old Luigi’s circuit and rainbow road. The challenging part of the opening race is that you also race the ghost of baby Luigi who holds the track record. In the demo the racer does not beat the ghost leading me to believe that if you can you will unlock a secret part of the game. The courses get more challenging with an updated Koopa Troopa beach, Kalamari Desert, and Choco Mountain. In both the Kalamari Desert and the Choco Mountain races, you race as team. In the demo the race team consisted of baby Mario, Yoshi, a locked character, and baby princess who gets use a helicopter. In these races your main competition is Wario he is given extra weapons to help defeat you. If you can finish in the overall top three for the cup you are given an invitation to the grand prix. The grand prix is championship race and not a cup like in the older Mario Kart 64 and it is winner take all. The race takes place in an updated Wario stadium and you main competition Waluigi. He is given special weapons to help defeat you. Should you win the race you get to unlock the mystery racer who turns out to be the missing baby Luigi. My overall impression of game was positive. I like the way game looked, the game play was satisfactory not great, and introduction of a story line I think was bad idea. Not only did the story line feel forced, I thought it took away from the overall game play. If I wanted story line racing I would go play Diddy Kong Racing. Overall I give the game a B+, not quite on the level of the old Mario Kart 64 but getting close, maybe with a few more playings my opinion will change.

After typing all this up I just discovered that Gator Nights did not have a demo of Mario Kart Wii playing and instead I was actually watching Speed Racer. What a complete and total let down. Sinse I have already typed up the Mario Kart review I am not going to delete it now. Instead i have just put added an abridged review for Speed Racer. It starts of slow and the style gives you a head ache for about the first 30 minutes, but you soon get use to it. Just as you starting to actually enjoying the movie the bad story line and dialogue have to get in the way. For anyone who grew up watching this show be fore warned you are too old for this movie. What were they thinking? Who thinks it is a good idea to take cartoon from the 60’s and make it into a movie for kids in the 00’s? No wonder no one came and watched this movie (for further reading on this subject see Bewitched). With that said the movie had real potential the whole idea of sports being over corporatized and full of cheating is very contemporary, just think the Patriots meet Barry Bonds meets NASCAR, brilliant. I think that if they had just gone for it and developed a more in depth story line this movie could have become an instant classic an updated version of Any Given Sunday. But instead it looks more like Mario Kart the movie, which is better played than watched. Hmmm…..

A short review of Fool’s Gold:

They are anchored off of Key West and Key West has mountains.