WaveBird & WaLuigi Stadium
I caved in last Friday and bough Mario Kart: Double Dash!! for the GameCube. Edge gave it a 5 out of 10. If you haven’t read Edge before - they have a harsh, but fair ratings system - they don’t give every game 8/10 like most gushing games mags.
It’s an accurate score - as long as you already know the other MK games. If you were twelve years old and had never played Mario Kart 64 it would be great. and it is a fun game - one I haven’t really taken full advantage of yet as I haven’t had the opportunity for a proper 4-way scrap so far. The multiplayer aspect has always been (to me at least) the most important part of Mario Karts - you get the most fun out of it when you are cursing your real-life opponents who are bearing down on you with an arsenal of red shells.
There are some clever tweaks to the game (the opportunity to carry two weapons for example) - but the missing parts outweigh them - it’s not fast enough, the tracks just don’t seem to have the flair of MK64 and I’m not a fan of the new kart handling.
It’s Mario Sunshine all over again: Technically improved - but lacking the coherence of the N64 version.
Now for the good news:
I needed some extra controllers for Mario Karts - so I got a couple. What I didn’t realise until I got to the counter was that one of them was a WaveBird wireless controller - bought it anyway and am very pleased with the result.
There are a few things I would change if I were in charge of version 2 though:
1 - Get rid of the AA Batteries - use a rechargeable one instead.
2 - Add a cord! Stay with me here - the cord would be unpluggable at the controller end and would allow recharging of the battery and continued play.
3 - Have an optional rumble. The current model has no rumble for battery life reasons. In tethered mode the rumble could be on - and when wireless the user could opt for rumble with a shorter battery life - It’s rechargeable.
4 - Use Bluetooth - then the controller could be used on other bluetooth devices.
tom says:
I have to say I thought the edge score was pretty ridiculous, I’ve been glued to the game since wednesday last week and though the power up balance is flawed and the graphics aren’t exactly revolutionary there’s really nothing average about the game. The course design is more robust than MK64, I’ve yet to find anywhere you can really fuck someone up by making them fall on to earlier section of track and we finally get non cheating computer players. This last point is what probablyled to the greater reliance on powerups; If you introduce a more random element pure driving skill is a diminished factor and the enemy driving skill in this game mostly sucks. but come on, Edge gave that mosquito game 7 out of 10 a couple of months ago and Freakout got a 7 last year both were imaginative games but I never played them for more than a couple of days before getting bored, the feeling of solidity and quality just wasn’t there.
Genrally I’d defend Edge against a lot of the crticism they get, i mean reviews are a matter of opinion, but their review scores have become more eratic since the departure of Tony Mott a couple of years ago (with relation to my opinion i.e. I can’t say “well they allways like this kind of game less than I would so I’ll get it even though it only got a 6″ etc.).
All I want is consistency, at least give us the reviewers name so we can get some idea of who’s reviews we trust and who we generally dissagree with. I’d really like to see them ditch the numbers in favour of writing well argued reviews. After all you don’t read book reviews and expect a number at the end, why should all games be placed on a 1d scale?
rant over
December 3rd, 2003 at 10:32 am
zachary towey says:
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January 3rd, 2004 at 1:22 am