As some of you have probably noticed, I have a love-hate relationship with Mario Kart Wii. Most aspects of the game are polished and add to the gameplay. On the other hand, dropping 12 players into a game that suffers from lack of balance testing is sometimes enough to make one throw one's remote across the room.
One of my favorite elements of Mario Kart Wii is the excellent controls. So when I recently rented Mario Kart Double Dash!! (thinking I would help educate my wife on the "missing" chapter of the Mario Kart series), I was rather disappointed to find that the controls were, well, awful.
I thought the problem might be with my first Wavebird controller, so I swapped out controllers. Same problem.
I tried picking different characters and different karts. Same problem.
It seems that no matter what I do, the handling in Mario Kart Double Dash!! is not nearly as responsive as in other Mario Kart titles. The problem seems even worse in 2-player mode. I can see a banana five seconds ahead on the track, make my best effort to dodge it, and still hit it.
There seems to be a general consensus that Double Dash is the worst game in the series. Having previously only played it for a few hours at a friend's house and having played all other Mario Kart iterations, I, unfortunately, have to agree.
I say "unfortunately" because I remember those few hours at my friends' place being a lot of fun. Of course, I spent most of that time hanging on to the back of a kart and throwing things at people while helping my racing partner throw blue sparks.
The game is still fun, but I can't shake the feeling that I wasted a rental to play Double Dash when I have Mario Kart Wii sitting right next to my Wii.
Still, it is kinda cool to see the old Gamecube tracks. I'd open the last set of tracks to check them out, too, if only I could win the cups that are available out of the box.
One of my favorite elements of Mario Kart Wii is the excellent controls. So when I recently rented Mario Kart Double Dash!! (thinking I would help educate my wife on the "missing" chapter of the Mario Kart series), I was rather disappointed to find that the controls were, well, awful.
I thought the problem might be with my first Wavebird controller, so I swapped out controllers. Same problem.
I tried picking different characters and different karts. Same problem.
It seems that no matter what I do, the handling in Mario Kart Double Dash!! is not nearly as responsive as in other Mario Kart titles. The problem seems even worse in 2-player mode. I can see a banana five seconds ahead on the track, make my best effort to dodge it, and still hit it.
There seems to be a general consensus that Double Dash is the worst game in the series. Having previously only played it for a few hours at a friend's house and having played all other Mario Kart iterations, I, unfortunately, have to agree.
I say "unfortunately" because I remember those few hours at my friends' place being a lot of fun. Of course, I spent most of that time hanging on to the back of a kart and throwing things at people while helping my racing partner throw blue sparks.
The game is still fun, but I can't shake the feeling that I wasted a rental to play Double Dash when I have Mario Kart Wii sitting right next to my Wii.
Still, it is kinda cool to see the old Gamecube tracks. I'd open the last set of tracks to check them out, too, if only I could win the cups that are available out of the box.