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By brikrok3 (8th May 2008)Stripped-down tracks combine with a great steering-wheel add-on to make Mario Kart one of the year’s best racing games.

If one were to uncover the defining characteristic of the Super Mario Bros. franchise—besides the fratelli themselves, of course—then what would it be? In short, an unflagging willingness to rethink and reinvent everything that has made Mario and Luigi not merely shorthand for videogames but also the most enduring franchise in gaming itself. Which is strange, one thinks, when you take the time to consider how dull, how lacking in personality those two chaps are. Since their earliest, 8-bit days, Mario and Luigi, the characters, have been nothing more what NES was capable of: flat, two-dimensionality. At the same, though, that flatness has made Nintendo’s favourite bambinos infinitely malleable. While Sonic, like his name, always stood for speed—and then only stood for speed—Mario and Luigi, like the good little proletarian labourers that they are, were always ready for a new job: platforming, sports, FPSing—you name it, and Mario and Luigi would sign on the dotted line, looking you in the eye and promising to do a better job of it than any hedgehog ever could. So just as Mario Kart 64, Super Circuit, Double Dash!, and DS were profoundly enjoyable rethinkings of the racecar genre, so too is Mario Kart Wii, the latest in hopefully an ongoing line of Mario Bros. racing games.

The game itself is fairly simple: you are Mario or one his friends, and you race. This in itself is something of an improvement upon Mario Kart’s earlier (though admittedly still tremendously good) incarnations. Like the DS version, Mario Kart Wii shirks the more-more-more obsession of most racing games, and offers tight, short tracks and straight-forward racing logic. Just get in your whip—either a kart or a motorcycle (and why shouldn’t these two disparate vehicles race in the same fantasy world?)—and drive. Of course along the way you’ll encounter all kinds of obstacles, such as giant caterpillars and lumpy, slow-moving cows, that are for the most part easily avoided (though you will maliciously snicker each time a competitor crashes into a cow head- or udder-on). As well, you can expect all kinds of little tricks to help you on your way. Hit a ramp, get a little speed boost; spin your wheel quickly, get a little speed boost.

Gameplay itself is solid—a feature only enhanced by the Wii wheel, a free steering-wheel add-on that your Wiimote locks into. Added to this is the game’s online capabilities. Most Wii titles have been slow to integrate online play. This is, in part, to be expected, as many designers have had notable difficulty thinking outside of the button-hammering logic of today’s videogame world, in which unthinkably complicated combo memory is combined with exhaustingly futuristic controllers. The first question, thus far then, has been clear: How do we design a videogame suited to a simplified control system that functions via motion sensitivity? (So far, most sports titles have offered simple, mimetic ports, as have stripped-down platform-style games, to some extent; other formats haven’t proven quite as adaptable). But now that we have started to get good games well adapted to a radically rethought control scheme, a second question has become more pressing: How do we employ online play in a thoroughly internet-savvy world? Mario Kart Wii suggests an answer. Instead of replicating at-home playing models—up to four people, all squinting at an often quartered and increasingly shrinking screen—Mario Kart allows for up to a dozen online players. As a result, not only do players get their own screens, but the world of computer-generated competitors is eradicated. On top of that, in the absence of complicated control schemes, even the most amateur player has a chance to hone his or her skills, maybe even winning a race or two along the way. Moreover, you are able not merely to race individuals the world over, but to compare data—regional and world stats, for instance, or friend rankings. Admittedly the online side of the Wii is at times irritatingly prohibitive, but even this seems like quibbling; I expect that just as motion-sensitive games have improved so too will the Wii’s friendplay.

The previously mentioned Wii Wheel is undoubtedly an intelligent add-on—and hopefully one that doesn’t fall to the wayside once gamers tire of Mario Kart Wii—which adds not only stability to the controller but the realist effect of actually driving. Moreover, steering in the game is surprising responsive, allowing for quick and tight turns without the tedium of overcompensation, spinning cars, and the like. Of course even the Wii Wheel will have its detractors, a grumbling already anticipated by the game’s developer. Thus you’ll be able to use not just the wheel, but a straight Wiimote, the Wiimote and Nunchuk combo, the Nintendo classic controller, or the GameCube controller. Surprisingly, all work well.

Visually the game is good, though not really stunning. This isn’t surprising, I suppose, considering the Wii’s inferior graphic capabilities and the Mario Bros. franchise’s prioritization of content over presentation. At the same time, it’s always nice to have a little pizzazz to go with a solid base. This isn’t to say the game looks bad. With its cutesy, bubbly landscapes packed with magic kingdoms and rainbows (some how even a rickety quarry ends up taking on a free and breezy air in this game), it’s hard to say there is anything intrinsically unappealing about the game’s visual presentation. That being said, those mortally opposed to the anti-realist, cloying affinities of the Mario Bros. series—the sweetness-and-light visual thematics, purposefully conceived as almost parodic celebrations of utopian perfectability—will most likely dry heave a little upon first sight of the game. This feeling, though, should be tempered, Clockwork Orange-style: first, by the game’s steadfast reiteration of its own topography-cum-utopian dreamscape tendencies; and, second, by your inability to stop playing it.

With all this, simple as it may seem, what is Mario Kart Wii missing? Well, nothing integral, but maybe the second characteristic that has always, or at least increasingly, defined the Mario Bros. series: absurdism. Thinking outside the box for the Mario Bros. series always meant not just interrogating the pieties of the gaming world but the laws of physics and a mother’s sense of tidiness and organization. In Mario Kart Wii we simply don’t get the same carnage, the same just plain loopy-ness of earlier Mario Bros. games, like Mario Strikers Charged, their decidedly unconventional take on the beautiful game. But that’s a small gripe. In reality, Mario Kart Wii is great racing game—easily the best released in 2008 for the Wii—and certainly worth the purchase.