Originally Posted by dirtyrascal7

Well, I picked MKW on Sunday morning when it came out.... and honestly I'm pretty disappointed. There are some great tracks, as well as some real snoozers. The characters certainly leave something to be desired... I loved the character-specific power-ups in Mario Kart: Double Dash, but here there is little strategy involved in choosing a pilot aside from "small", "medium" or "large". I find myself choosing Koopa Troopa most often because I find his in-game comments the least annoying.

The menus look terribly basic and unappealing. You can't do a 2-player Grand Prix anymore. But the biggest gripe I have with the game has to do with the AI. It seems rather than having the characters spread out as the race progresses, they bunch closer and closer together. I can't even count how many times I've gone from 1st or 2nd to 10th or 11th on the final turn... usually caused by a blue shell, followed by 2-3 characters running me over which delays me from moving even longer. The events seem less like races and more like wild, item-crazed circuses... which means that choosing good lines and keeping up your speed doesn't have much reward when there are so many random items being thrown around at once.

Overall, I'd say Nintendo spent too much of their time integrating online play and not enough time with the basics that make the Mario Kart series great.