It's-a-Me! Mario Kart!

In baseball terms (fitting, since Mario and crew were just impressed into duty in Mario Super Sluggers), Mario Kart is a fastball straight down the middle of the plate. Nintendo tweaks the Mario Kart formula only slightly with each iteration (Double Dash could be considered a major tweaking, and look how that turned out:( ) and doesn't throw too many curveballs in Mario Kart Wii either. The track list this time around is a mix of some fairly colorful and varied new courses and some old favorites, though to be honest the latter group seems to have been picked at random-how about a Rainbow Road remix cup?...just a thought. Instead of eight karts per race, now there are twelve. More is better, right? Um, not so fast. One of the hallmarks of Mario Kart, and to be quite honest, one of the areas where the game consistently fails, is in its CHEAP AI. The reward for first place is a banana peel, or a ghost item that seems only capable of stealing banana peels; meanwhile, places seven through twelve rain unholy terror upon you in the form of red shells, 1st-place seeking blue shells, and lightning bolts, meaning that your place at the finish line is more a result of lying low until the right moment or blind luck, or both. So, twelve racers means more cheap AI...but all is not bad in this game; in fact, Mario Kart is still the premiere racing franchise in all of videogamedom, and for good reason. The controls are spot-on, as always, and the selection of classic Nintendo racers and multiple karts (bikes, too, this time around) is excellent. You will, as always with this series, have a blast, despite some of the aforementioned shortcomings. One final note to Nintendo: The online is awesome, but why did you make battle a team-only affair? I happen to consider battle THE definitive Mario Kart experience, and whiled away countless enjoyable hours of my life playing Mario Kart 64's battle mode, the best, by far, to date. So, in summary, if you love Mario Kart, buy this one with no hesitation...just don't expect bigger to be better.