A Critical Video About Mario Kart Wii

so i woke up today and i told myself you know it's been a while since i last angered a loud group of zoomers of my monotonous wii game opinions so what could i do to reach that high once more i got it i stated to myself i will harshly analyze a game tons of people grew up with mario kart wii nah just kidding this game won the recent poll i did anyways uh yeah let's uh let's talk about mario kart wii the video you're about to watch was supported by patrons such as romney batter abby knutson victoria mars and john hancock thank you if we're going to talk about mario kart wii i think we need to cover just how much this entry specifically influenced the future of the series starting with the big bowl of points we have the inclusion of the motion controls and of course the wii wheel by extension the motion controls of the wii caught the attention of a larger but more casual audience and as a way to appeal to said demographic mario kart wii's introduction of the motion controls was a big selling point at the time i mean you boot up the game and it's just mario and luigi fiddling around of weir modes until magic happens and suddenly it's all like wait a second the wii remote was a steering wheel just like me with miley remotes holy smokes it's like i'm actually there the game came bundled with that hunk of plastic dub the wii wheel so basically a booty slapped your wii remote inside and yeah that was basically it your booty slapped your weir mode inside there was no tech inside the wheel or whatever so it was more of a cosmetic more than anything it was great marketing at the time but these days i find the motion controls of the remote to be way too unwieldy i mean just naturally you want to sharply tilt the controller to steer sharp but if you tilt too far you'll start turning the opposite direction which uh yeah my roommate was not having it to make the game even more accessible for aunt gertrude at the retirement center they added an automatic drifting option so all you have to do is steer the wheel and the game does the drifting for you if you're turning sharp enough but if i had a damn corner for every time i played this game with someone else and they had no idea what the game was asking here though when you think of the words automatic and manual when it comes to vehicles naturally you're going to assume it's talking about the transmission i mean you get to this menu and it's just like automatic manual but yes it is asking about the steering here i never even noticed it said drifting in this quarter until i rewatched the footage also new to the series are the bikes they're pretty similar to the cart stat wise of the perks of sharper steering in the ability to wheelie giving yourself a burst of speed conceptually i think they're a great addition but uh yeah we'll go more in depth about these later because they are totally busted and practically make the carts obsolete if you are playing competitively there is now a 12 player limit opposed to the original eight which is a nice change of pace then as expected we have a handful of items new to wii three to be exact there's the mega mushroom which makes you increase in size and while you're mega you can smash any racers you bump into i used to think this was a cool item but in retrospect it really isn't too different from a star giving a surprising credit to mario kart tour that game has it set up so it will basically endure a single item before reverting you back to normal which is how i think it should be implemented if it ever gets reintroduced into another mario kart that matters you have the pal block which i think is a great addition it will make all the other players spin out after a short timer i actually like it more than the lightning for two reasons one you can't be blindsided by it you will always see it coming before it impacts you putting it more in line with the other items and secondly you can actually avoid being hit if you are airbound when it activates so if there is a slower route but it has a jump you might want to take it to avoid being hit or at least that's what i would be saying if it wasn't for the fact that you can simply avoid it by shaking the remote i think this is a really dumb decision to add this feature and i think the only reason people defend this feature is because the pal block is obnoxiously frequent make the item less common and remove the waggle dodge and i think you'd have yourself a great item the last new item is the lightning cloud which i think is a great idea for an item with terrible execution if you get this item it will activate immediately you cannot decide when to use it it will increase your speed but after a short amount of time it will make you spin out and make you tiny the idea is you want to bump into another player to pass it off to them sort of like a hot potato kind of thing again i think it's a cool idea but not being able to choose when to use it is super obnoxious i have definitely had games where absolutely no one was anywhere near me so i just had to take a hit all three of these new items are super cool in concept but very flawed which is likely why none of them ever came back outside the mega mushroom in tour mario kart seems to have this unspoken rule where if a new item is in two consecutive mario kart games it then becomes a mainstay the feather it wasn't in 64 so it never became a series stable the tanuki leaf same deal which is why it saddens me to report that the blooper returns in wii and has been in every mario kart ever since i know i ranted about this thing in ds but seriously i hate this item first off it hardly does jack and wii secondly in a series all about giving even the most novice of players a fighting chance of the items like the bullet bill or the tsar the blooper is unfairly harsh to players unfamiliar with the game if you get hit by the blooper and you're a pro at the game it's hardly going to impact you because you're already familiar with the tracks conversely if you invite a butt over to play some carts and they aren't familiar with the game they are put at an unfair disadvantage because they don't know the layout of the courses to begin with just get rid of this terrible item i hate it anyways back to the new stuff the trick system when going off a jump if you shake the remote you'll perform a trick granting you a burst of speed when you land constantly waggling the remote can be a little annoying but much like the bikes i think this is a fantastic addition on paper thankfully future entries allow you to just bunny hop to perform a trick which i believe feels much more natural as you can tell mario kart wii made a decent number of noteworthy changes a lot of which became series staples and add more strategy to the racing or at least they do in future games as mentioned the wii was obviously successful because it catered to a demographic of players who wouldn't normally play video games and making sure newcomers would have an easy time acclimating to mario kart wii was clearly a priority to nintendo because the gameplay has been dumbed down in a lot of ways to be fair it was probably a smart move on nintendo's behalf given this is the best selling entry in the series nonetheless series veterans are going to notice some big changes right away starting from the character select there are 24 characters here which to be fair is the highest count we saw in the series up to this point but they are all split up into three weight classes and all the characters of a particular weight class will share these same sets of base stats between other characters in said weight glass with the exception of a stat or two they excel at the most famous examples of course being funky kong and daisy who each have a boost in their speed stat either way it's not like mario kart ds where each character has a completely different set of stats if you compare mario to yoshi and ds you know a character infamously known for his all-around stats to a character known to have high acceleration and you see the difference right away if you compare those same two characters on wii however it's like oh wait a second how are these characters different the problem with this change is that it puts too big of an emphasis on specific characters if all the characters in the heavyweight class are more or less the same why wouldn't you pick funky kong whose higher stat is his speed by the way while we're on the subject of the characters what's going on of all the babies there are so many of them they even have their own dedicated role in the select screen there were two in double dash but if they were going to add baby mario it made enough sense that baby luigi would be his double but baby daisy that's not even like a real character once veterans get behind the wheel is when they will likely notice one of the most controversial changes we made the drifting so in previous entries once you initiated a drift you would quickly snap the stick left to right to build up a mini turbo nonetheless they removed that on wii so now your turbo is predicated on how long you hold a drift in practice this means snaking has essentially been removed as it takes a long time to build up a charge especially when charging two yellow sparks if it didn't take so long to get to your final charge i wouldn't entirely mind this change i mean i do prefer the older drift style but in entries such as mario kart 8 it feels fine enough but drifting has always been the bread and butter of mario kart and to de-emphasize such a crucial element ends up making it feel like well not a mario kart game at all not to mention it puts an even larger emphasis on the bikes since they have the superior turning outside the inability to reach yellow sparks which as mentioned won't matter anyway because it takes so long to reach that tier speaking of which why don't we talk about the bikes so what is it about the bikes that makes them so good well in brief they counter all of the shortcomings of mario kart wii's new engine you can no longer snake on straightaways but the bikes have the wheelie function which is more or less a substitute cornering feels much looser and weak likely to complement the motion controls however certain bikes can make some extremely sharp turns so that hardly matters and finally the drift metagame has been extremely nerfed de-emphasizing super mini turbos which otherwise would have been one of the biggest strengths of using a cart i want to make it abundantly clear that i don't mind a different playstyle in fact i think it's really smart game design when a single game can accommodate so many methods of play the problem is that bikes don't add another playstyle as much as they replace one and i won't lie to you i am terrible of the bikes it's a personal preference obviously but i think the carts are more fun so i never bothered getting good of the bikes despite them being objectively better if you prefer using the bikes it's likely that none of this will be an issue of you but a game that is designed to accommodate multiple play styles should not give you an inherent advantage with a particular style if i prefer the feel of the carts and gameplay that has me drifting nearly the entire race i shouldn't be penalized for favoring that style of play especially when the series up to this point had been built on that gameplay it's the same sort of methodology that a designer should have when approaching a fighting game obviously no one is perfect so there will always end up being certain characters slightly better than others no matter what but ideally a developer should try to the best of their ability to make every fighter viable i don't know when you play a game online and 90 of the players are using one of two character and bike combos it becomes pretty clear that there is a problem with the balancing a problem other mario karts are not nearly as guilty of mind you and then there's the item balancing or really the lack thereof there is no reason to dance around it the item balancing in mario kart wii is ruthless firstly getting hit by an item sucks in wii specifically because of the severe penalty of spinning out you get hit in a game like double dash and sure it has a notable impact but you can recover from it like right here boom i hate that item it made me crash but just like that i'm back in the game but on the wii version when you get hit it just kills your speed like it's just over to make matters worse there are fewer invincibility frames than your typical mario kart meaning if you get hit once it's very likely it will happen again and again and again and again and then there's the blue shells don't even get me started it is so bad in this game i had a race where nine of them popped up [ __ ] nine i'm not even kidding count them of me [Music] and then this happened you are constantly being bombarded with and i don't think any other mario kart even compares to the number of times i got cucked right before the finish line you know that one really popular clip of someone getting quotes on quotes mario karted well look what mario kart that was in king wee a big contributor to the item bombardment you will experience and wii is due to the rubber banding while rubber banding when racing cpus is definitely something that has always been present in previous games we goes a little overboard of it because of the rubber banding the computers are always lumped up when nearing the finish line in other mario karts if you get hit with a blue shell the last lap you might still have a chance to get the gold but because everyone is constantly up your ass and wii one single item and you're getting passed up by like five people maybe i'm speaking for myself here but in other entries once i get to first i can hold that position pretty reliably however on wii it's a constant game of cat and mouse and it's not like it's because the ai is hard if you're not in first the computers will practically slam on the brakes so you can catch up and then the second you're back in the lead they suddenly remember the gases on the other pedal and immediately catch up so wow that's a lot of venting i just did i must hate this game right not at all we might be flawed but just like any other mario kart there is a lot to admire mario kart wii for as well this is extremely subjective but i'm going to go out and limb here and say this entry has the strongest selection of tracks out of any mario kart game there are legitimately not that many stinkers here in either the modern or retro cups i mean for the new tracks you got coconut mall dk summit daisy circuit koopa cape maple treeway everything i just mentioned are like 5 out of 5 maps really solid stuff i think the only new tracks i didn't care much for are the luigi and mario circuits just because like come on how many times are we going to do the generic green and sunny race course i know it's a staple of mario and all but we literally have five of these and we on the retro side of things they really stepped up their game since ds whereas ds had like i don't know maybe three retro maps i actually cared about here i'd say most of the picks are solid as said in my ds review in that game it seemed they intentionally picked the easiest stuff to recreate regardless if they were fan favorites or not not the case for wii however it's clear nintendo is more conscious about what they were putting in because there's a good number of fan faves here delfino square waluigi stadium dk mountain and peach gardens just to name a few to top it all off this series staple of introducing a new variant of bowser's castle and rainbow road comes back stronger than ever especially the wii's version of rainbow road this or the version in mario kart 7 are likely my favorite variant of it this is easily the most difficult rainbow road in the series which is likely why i'm such a fan personally as far as how it's all presented on the other hand i've never been a fan of the graphics on wii there is such an abundance of bloom you can visibly see a halo around the player model on certain tracks by no means is mario kart wii a bad looking game or anything but it was much more appealing nearly five years ago on the gamecube compare peach beach on double dash on how it's represented on wii and it's night and day the colors are much more rich on the gamecube and without the post-processing stuff getting in the way the gameplay also looks much sharper it's not a deal breaker obviously and overall the art direction particularly on the new tracks is really solid despite its many faults the main racing modes on mario kart wii are still a lot of fun regardless or not you're into the competitive scene a round of mario kart with some friends is always a blast even when you're getting hit by your fifth blue shell certainly much better than what they did to battle mode okay look if you're a die-hard fan of mario kart wii and you're already fed up with my takes on the racing then honestly just dislike the video and leave now because i would rather be honest to you all and have a giant mob outside my window then pretend i'm complacent with something i dislike that being the case i'm going to give it to you guys straight the battle mode in wii is one of the worst in the series i mean it's not mario kart 8 bad where they had the players trying to battle on the race courses but let it be known that this is the entry that forever ruined battle modes in mario kart after the release of mario kart wii every battle mode sense has been timed and if you're like me and you prefer the last man standing style of gameplay well you're out of luck because mario kart ds was the last entry to allow you to play that way i mean it's like if smash bros got rid of stock battles do you really think people would be okay with that i understand players don't like waiting around while they wait for the game to finish up because yeah dying early and having to watch other players play isn't super engaging however here's my two issues of this one at least give players the option to play the way they like yeah sure in smash bros when you die in a stock battle you do have to wait for the other players but most people don't mind stock is still the way they prefer to play with their friends and secondly there are better ways to resolve the issue of making sure everyone is invested at all times than simply removing the elimination battles entirely in mario kart 64 when you lost all of your balloons you turned into a bomb you could run into the remaining players and you know what people loved it not only did it allow players who were eliminated to keep playing but it decreased the time they had to wait until the next game because by running into other players they were essentially speeding up the pacing of the current match forcing players to play the timed mode stinks and all but unfortunately for wii that change is the least of its problems for whatever reason on mario kart wii you are required to play on teams there are no options for free-for-all or anything basically if you're playing battle mode on wii you're playing on a team of six whether you like it or not the problem with this should be obvious enough as fun as teaming up of your buds can be it's just as fun to have an all-out free-for-all doing the best in your squad and then losing because your teammates couldn't hold their own weight makes matches feel inconsequential though given the broad appeal of the wii this might have been intentional to make the mode appeal to casual gamers much like mario kart ds mario kart wii splits the battles into two separate modes balloon battle and coin runners both of these modes only return in name however the balloons no longer matter like at all you start with three and getting hit does make you lose one as you would expect albeit if you lose all of them you just respawn yeah really you don't even lose points it just throws you back in with three more balloons as if nothing happened in mario kart 8 which also had a timed balloon battle losing all of your balloons has the game taking points from your total score to then spawn you of some more balloons which makes sense there should be a penalty for losing all your balloons timed or not i mean obviously the penalty for being hit is the enemy team adding one to their score but the point i'm trying to make is that if losing all of your balloons doesn't penalize you in some way why even have the balloons at all whether your opponent rids of your first balloon or your last that's only a single point for them so why not rid of the balloons entirely and just call this score battle then there is coin runners which despite sounding similar to ds's shine runners it's really nothing like that since as mentioned prior both of the modes are now timed instead of trying to pass a coin threshold so you could stay in the game all you do now is just get coins drive around and get coins until the timer says you're done that is the mode i've never been a fan of this mode but considering all the changes made to the battle mode and especially balloon battle i think this is the better mode of the two the lesser of two evils if you will the timer and mandatory teams just complement the mode better plus trying to hold on to a huge sack of coins or trying to target the player of an abundance of them proves to be a decently entertaining time well relatively speaking of course it's a shame really because not only does the wii have the largest selection of maps it's a strong selection as well i think maybe some of the maps are a little too big i mean these things are practically the size of texas but in terms of design again they're good this is the part of the video where we're gonna start getting into some more murky territory because it's hard to talk about the wi-fi without discussing the huge competitive and modding scene the game has today but starting vanilla we saw the return of online races allowing for the full 12 player cap as well there was also battle mode online but yeah nobody really did that the official servers obviously are up these days but from what i remember it was like the only wii game that had decent online when it comes to nintendo franchises with a good track record for online play one of these series has consistently been solid and one of these is smash bros you could even do split screen of a friend online which was a fantastic addition not enough games do stuff like this in my opinion but what if you want to play online these days well that's where the fan servers come in it's supported by the same servers that run the mario kart ds fan servers in fact it works well but you need to mod your wii which might be a bit of a hurdle for those not familiar of the modding scene i'm glad these servers exist for those who want to race online these days but i think the skill barrier for wii is even higher than ds that right there is why i've never been a huge component of these fan servers anyone modding their wii and going out of the way to set all this up is going to be damn experienced and you better believe the competitive scene on mario kart wii is absolutely nutso nothing but funky kongs flame runners and insane shortcuts as far as the eye can see the competitive scene from mario kart wii completely transforms the game from some janky game for casuals to this hyper competitive racer that's so intense people literally remember the time thresholds between item spawns we know the shock was used around like 45 seconds 45 50 and that in there so the next shock won't be available until 30 seconds after it's like kicking your son off his hot wheels set so you and the boys can keep a time log of how fast each car is playing online these days is about on par with randomly jumping into the competitive melee scene and expecting to win against the guys who study that [ __ ] like sure you might get lucky but most likely you're just going to get your ass handed to you and study really is the right word to use for these people because the guys into the competitive scene played this game like it's their job in that aspect mario kart wii is eerily similar to smash bros melee both games are jank as hell and have some serious balancing issues but once you play the game at a competitive level it turns into a damn esport even bigger than the competitive scene however is the modding scene now this is more my speed the granddaddy of the modding scene is ctgp this is a mod you can install and play on original hardware and gives you access to hundreds of brand new tracks done by several different craters obviously many of these don't have the polish of the official tracks done by nintendo themselves but as many of you know about me i absolutely love all forms of community content whether it be fan games or level mods game design produced by independent creators always excites me i just can't help this childish giddiness i get anytime i see a custom level in an older game i like in fact when i was a kid i would actually draw out my own custom mario kart track ideas on line paper i still have some of these in fact this one was supposed to be like a beach map i think then this one was supposed to be like a delfino square sort of deal except in a desert if i ever have the time i would love to model these out in 3d to potentially turn them into a custom track of my own anyways i'm getting way off topic but the point is while i personally may not be a fan of the mario kart wii engine my hat goes off to the community that keeps this game alive it's super inspiring even as someone who isn't a huge mario kart wii stand the games community in the modern day is extremely interesting so then where does all this leave mario kart wii today mario kart wii in my opinion is the most polarizing entry in the entire series there's just so much to take into account when discussing the game it's got a lot of stuff i like and a lot of stuff that well given the nature of social media people are likely just going to interpret this review as me saying i hate mario kart wii it's bad that's just gonna happen regardless of what i say because of how much this game means to people given how much this entry sold this is a lot of people's first mario kart and please believe me when i say i genuinely do like mario kart wii and i do think it's a good game nonetheless the biggest critique i have for this one is that for your average mario kart fan the appeal of the wii entry specifically mods and fan servers aside of course is much more niche than its advocators likely realize i mean this game is going to appeal for two specific types of players the first demographic being people who grew up of this entry and are insanely nostalgic for it and for those people even the most objective of critiques are not going to phase them they really don't care if the game is flawed one way or the other it simply brings them joy just to relive a part of their childhood and if you are one of these people then i think that's fair enough the second demographic this game will appeal to are those into the competitive scene much like melee fans these guys have become so accustomed to the quirks of the engine that most of the stuff that people would describe as faults are what define the playing experience to them also let's be honest if you belong to this demographic it's likely because you already belonged to the first group i mentioned however if you do not belong to either of these groups i believe mario kart wii to be obsolete in the face of its siblings if you want both a solid and accessible racing experience then you are better off of an entry like mario kart 8 and if you want to play some battle mode then essentially every other mario kart that came out prior will serve you better all that being said i still have a lot of respect for this entry mario kart wii did so much for the future of the series that i think even demands appreciation from its naysayers it added the trick system motorcycles motion controls 12 player races and a slew of fantastically designed tracks while the game might not be my cup of tea for the reasons i mentioned i'm glad it came out and i'm glad people still play today honestly mario kart wii is proof of how much a fanbase can greatly improve the experience of a game while the word fanbase is typically viewed within a negative connotation for good reason it's hard to look at what the fans have turned mkwe into and view it as anything but impressive it's one thing to support a game you like years down the line but to somehow find a way to turn all the game's weaknesses into strengths is a whole other inspiring feat on its own mario kart wii may be a pretty damn flawed experience but it's a good one i mean if it has sparked so much creativity in gamers all across the world how bad can it be [Music] hey thanks for watching you would be shocked to hear how busy someone can get when they're getting ready to move to the other side of the country okay maybe not i'd like to give a shout out to my patrons such as daniel rottwind jan kopp david pacheco john hancock amanda guth robbie batter cashinator jeffrey p long oliver larkosh and pretoria mars thank you so much for watching but until next time have a good one [Music]

Channel: SilokHawk

Views: 273,926

Rating: 4.8605814 out of 5

Keywords: mario kart wii, ctgp, competetive, online, wifi, nintendo wii, battle mode, review, silohawk, time trial, world record, glitch

Id: QhD3huHOZgg

Length: 26min 27sec (1587 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021