Mario Kart Wii review

Along with millions of other sheep I got the first decent game on the Wii, Mario Kart! So I thought it’d be a time to review it and get my friend code out there. It’s 4038-6165-3622 by the way, post yours in the comment and add me.

The game itself is pretty good, it’s good fun and fairly easy to get ok at. There are 8 different Gran Prixes with 4 tracks in each one. All of them are very different and there’s plenty to keep you interested. I haven’t been playing too long but I’m still learning the tracks, luckily there are some from older version of the game, going all the way back to the SNES version.

I’ve found the time trial mode quite cool, especially as you can challenge the ghost of people round the world and also improve your own. Then you can see how your time is in comparison to the rest of the world or against your friends. Which is good when they’re not online you can still challenge them in some way.

Moving onto the Battle Mode, I haven’t played this much and when I have I’ve sucked pretty badly. There are two different modes, coin and balloon. You either collect the mode coins or burst more balloons. It’s hard to choose between them but coin is a bit more tactical because you drop your coins if you’re hit.

Race mode is my preferred way of playing, so far the games have been closer than I expected and I’ve even won a few races. 1 Player mode is easy on 50cc but way harder on 100c with the annoying bikes. You can do wheelies on the bikes to get a speed boost and you can power slide (although I haven’t been able to pull it off) in the cars, both of them allow you to do mid-air stunts to get speed boosts.

What else is there to say? Oh yeah it’s much better online! It’s certainly going to be a challenge to get a full license of all the trophies, there are 3 classes of race but there are 4 lines on the license. Add me! 4038-6165-3622, 4038-6165-3622, 4038-6165-3622! And I can kick your ass :D

Why 4 stars? Well it’s not very original, this is the 5th (?) version of the game and apart from the online play, a few tricks and extra powerups it’s not that different. But oddly this is the most fun, especially with the Wheel.

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Gloom review

Gloom is based on the premise you must engineer your own families demise. It’s a game for 2-4 players but I think you can increase this with the various boosters available. It’s surprisingly fun! Firstly you choose from a selection of 4 families and draw cards as you’d expect.

There are four main types of cards Character Cards, Modifier Cards, Event Cards and Untimely Death Cards. The aim of the game is to get the lowest score.

For example, by playing “was driven to drink” means the Character has a -15 score, and the transparent cards means you can play on top of others. When your Characters are of a low self worth play an Untimely Death on them and then you get the points.

Once all your Characters are dead you total all the points up to see who ‘won’.

I’d highly recommended it, it gets very competitive, tactically speaking it’s ok, you can do things like kill off the other players’ characters when they are only -5 or so and win that way and the game lasts around 30-60mins.

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