Eh, the press complaints can be dismissed readily as part of their newfound hatred for all things Nintendo (the various reasonings of which we have long elaborated upon here), and i've always scratched my head at the people who complained loudest about the "luck" factor, bitching about how the game "punishes skill." I've yet to see it. If i was in a race with somebody worse than i, they would lose most of the time. The points rankings for online play reflected that, such that it didn't reflect your win/loss record, but a general reflection of your overall skill
I loved most of the new tracks. Some of them were kind of boring in terms of theme (like Daisy's raceway), but all of them brought something unique to the table.
The only new item i truly hated was that damn Thundercloud. The CPU always had a tendency to rub off the cloud on me right before it burst.
Online play was fine, within the limitations of the system. It would have been nice if they had made that game the flagship for Wii Speak, but i don't think it loses too much without it, especially since the game already had its own peripheral. The netcode they used, however, was silky smooth. I never had problems with lag or slowdown, and only occasionally had problems where the game would crash in between races
I'd rank it as one of the best in the series, if not the best. 64 has always been overrated (mostly through the rose-colored glasses effect), and the 2D games were far too frustrating (though still fun). Really, i would say that Wii brought together the better elements of Double Dash and DS (DS's excellent kart selection, retro tracks, online, and double dashes excellent track design and item system), while nixing the worse stuff out of both (notably the game-breaking snaking, and the whole double-dash gimmick)
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
