Mario Kart Wii is a broken , janky , unbalanced game, karts are relegated to the bottom tier and are virtually useless in a competitive sense. Sure you may be able to beat your buddies in some local play or the cpu. The bikes are just simply better in every sense you get much tighter driving and wheelies meaning that despite the supposed no yellow sparks in an attempt to make the karts equal doesn’t even matter. What’s even worse ? Only two char/bike combos are worthwhile.
I did say you could beat the cpu I however did not say that they functioned properly. If you are winning they will be relentless and spam the hell out of you with red shells (but whenever you use red shells they’ll probably hit a wall or the out of bounds before you ever hit another player) , Greens that for whatever reason have infinite bounce, at least 3 blue shells , and though it should be impossible due the supposed spawn rate of Shocks being 45 seconds after each use and a lap is average 2 minutes in my experience you’ll most likely encounter three shocks a race.
So I bet you’ve already decided to not even bother with the cpus by now, they’re unbeatable right ? False , when you are doing bad they decide to start driving 10 mph so you can catch up. Unless you’re super far behind and the game bullies you by giving you triple mushroom or golden mushroom instead of Bullet Bill or Star Power. You should realistically be getting at least fourth every single time save for whenever you get mario karted and simply can not do anything at all to make a solid comeback.
Now we get to some more fun stuff. Every new entry into the Mario Kart series must introduce a few new mechanics and items. Mario Kart Wii is where potentially the best mechanic is introduced , tricking , whenever you go off a ramp or an elevated area you can shake the remote or press up/side on the d-pad if you are using a classic controller/gcn controller which does a trick that gives you a minor speed boost when you land. This mechanic is incredibly fun and pushes a lot of boundaries in this mod where 200cc seems like 400cc. By simply doing a trick you can occasionally cut of entire sections of a track. Tricking is such a great feature that going back and playing previous games where it isn’t present almost feels wrong.
Mario Kart Wii also added a few new items but they are all mediocre. The blooper temporarily blinds you and makes your traction noticeably worse , the pow item would be cool as it’s like a mini earthquake but since it can be evaded by tricking/wheelies or just going in the air it is almost useless, now the thundercloud is a stupid item altogether it gives you a temporary speed boost (think piranha plant in mk8) but it shocks you at the end making you extremely vulnerable , this could be an interesting risk/reward item if you had control of when it was activated. You don’t so to hell with it. Thankfully CTGP allows you to turn the thundercloud effect into a mega mushroom instead. The mega mushroom is pretty lame, it is basically just star power.
Now before I talk about the mod I want to say that the official 32 tracks for this game are great and perhaps some of the most uniquely creative tracks in the series as a whole. Plus the soundtrack for this game is always s-tier
so the mod part CTGP stands for custom tracks grand prix , adding over 200 tracks there’s bound to ups and downs. Some of the tracks are great and could even be in the actual game , others are terrible and give me headaches whilst sending me into extreme rage as I fail my seventy-ninth time trial attempt all because the design is busted and I’m too stubborn to admit the track might just be unplayable for my skill level. Than there are the tracks that don’t care at all about difficulty aiming more for something fun for funs sake like my personal favorite Canyon Run. Besides adding custom tracks CTGP also adds a few new game modes. In item rain literally every item rains from the sky making the track even more of an obstacle course, 200cc is an incredibly fast paced mode (it’s my favorite because you can do lots of stupid shit), Knockout mode is a tournament style where every race the bottom 2 are eliminated til one racer is left standing , and soon there will be a 24 player mode.
CTGP also has its own online service called wiimmifi that is super active and somehow runs way better than Nintendo’s Switch online. There is also an online leaderboard for the time trials so if you want to see how good you really are that’s an option. (200cc time trialing is my absolute favorite thing to do). I’m extremely proud to say I am top ten on a few tracks.
CTGP is great and fun not because it fixes the issues that are bothersome but because it uses those problems to its advantage turns them around and makes the game even more compelling. A super easy install as well so for any MKWII fans please give this ago.
I did say you could beat the cpu I however did not say that they functioned properly. If you are winning they will be relentless and spam the hell out of you with red shells (but whenever you use red shells they’ll probably hit a wall or the out of bounds before you ever hit another player) , Greens that for whatever reason have infinite bounce, at least 3 blue shells , and though it should be impossible due the supposed spawn rate of Shocks being 45 seconds after each use and a lap is average 2 minutes in my experience you’ll most likely encounter three shocks a race.
So I bet you’ve already decided to not even bother with the cpus by now, they’re unbeatable right ? False , when you are doing bad they decide to start driving 10 mph so you can catch up. Unless you’re super far behind and the game bullies you by giving you triple mushroom or golden mushroom instead of Bullet Bill or Star Power. You should realistically be getting at least fourth every single time save for whenever you get mario karted and simply can not do anything at all to make a solid comeback.
Now we get to some more fun stuff. Every new entry into the Mario Kart series must introduce a few new mechanics and items. Mario Kart Wii is where potentially the best mechanic is introduced , tricking , whenever you go off a ramp or an elevated area you can shake the remote or press up/side on the d-pad if you are using a classic controller/gcn controller which does a trick that gives you a minor speed boost when you land. This mechanic is incredibly fun and pushes a lot of boundaries in this mod where 200cc seems like 400cc. By simply doing a trick you can occasionally cut of entire sections of a track. Tricking is such a great feature that going back and playing previous games where it isn’t present almost feels wrong.
Mario Kart Wii also added a few new items but they are all mediocre. The blooper temporarily blinds you and makes your traction noticeably worse , the pow item would be cool as it’s like a mini earthquake but since it can be evaded by tricking/wheelies or just going in the air it is almost useless, now the thundercloud is a stupid item altogether it gives you a temporary speed boost (think piranha plant in mk8) but it shocks you at the end making you extremely vulnerable , this could be an interesting risk/reward item if you had control of when it was activated. You don’t so to hell with it. Thankfully CTGP allows you to turn the thundercloud effect into a mega mushroom instead. The mega mushroom is pretty lame, it is basically just star power.
Now before I talk about the mod I want to say that the official 32 tracks for this game are great and perhaps some of the most uniquely creative tracks in the series as a whole. Plus the soundtrack for this game is always s-tier
so the mod part CTGP stands for custom tracks grand prix , adding over 200 tracks there’s bound to ups and downs. Some of the tracks are great and could even be in the actual game , others are terrible and give me headaches whilst sending me into extreme rage as I fail my seventy-ninth time trial attempt all because the design is busted and I’m too stubborn to admit the track might just be unplayable for my skill level. Than there are the tracks that don’t care at all about difficulty aiming more for something fun for funs sake like my personal favorite Canyon Run. Besides adding custom tracks CTGP also adds a few new game modes. In item rain literally every item rains from the sky making the track even more of an obstacle course, 200cc is an incredibly fast paced mode (it’s my favorite because you can do lots of stupid shit), Knockout mode is a tournament style where every race the bottom 2 are eliminated til one racer is left standing , and soon there will be a 24 player mode.
CTGP also has its own online service called wiimmifi that is super active and somehow runs way better than Nintendo’s Switch online. There is also an online leaderboard for the time trials so if you want to see how good you really are that’s an option. (200cc time trialing is my absolute favorite thing to do). I’m extremely proud to say I am top ten on a few tracks.
CTGP is great and fun not because it fixes the issues that are bothersome but because it uses those problems to its advantage turns them around and makes the game even more compelling. A super easy install as well so for any MKWII fans please give this ago.