Haha, poor Shameless...

Well, that kind of illustrates a point to me... I have never been a "snaker" in Kart. I play the track, drive well, use power-ups carefully -- including hitting the approaching ones as they come up behind, and control my line to stay on surfaces that don't slow my Kart. Strangely, that sort of driving is good for a win every time unless the other player is really good. I learned how to snake and frankly didn't like it. Though I don't consider it 'cheating' per se, I thought it un-leveled the playing field.

For me, removing snaking INCREASES my potential score of the game. You've said it is perhaps as much as a full point and I suspect that a half to a full point is what most of the "professional" reviewers are doing as well.

'nuff said. I'll be picking mine up in about 2 hours as it is already paid for.

I've played Double Dash hours and hours and hours.... I'll post up a mini-review when I've had a bit of time on it.

I'll be picking it up tomorrow. The ads sold me on it ;)

Midnight launches ft. I'll be picking mine up in 20 minutes.

I guess it just isn't amazing. Right now on metacritic its an 83.

GTA4 is currently a 99.8 based on 7 ratings (PS3 and 360 combined)...don't you wish you had a PS3/360?

If that wasn't a joke coolestguyever, I'm reporting you for mindless trolling.

ive heard from many many many gamers that GTA4 is not a must buy cause it will be like GTA3 and such but with better graphics. but have talked to the same gamers that are like "have to get mario kart wii". after watchin teh videos ive come to the conclusion that MKW will be as good as or better then any of the mario karts. ill be trying to get mine in the morning. (gonna trade in no more heroes and a few other games that i dont play for it, sorry i cant keep my interest in no more heroes cause i just dont have the time to get indepth into that but mario kart i can cause event he kids wanna play hehe)

A)I have a 360 and B)I don't care. Sand Box/Open World games aren't my thing. I didn't like the one GTA game I played (or tried) on my PS2 and haven't really cared for open world ever. I prefer more linear style games. Call it ADD or whatever you want, but as far as I'm concerned, the GTA series could disappear and I wouldn't give a damn.

Does it bother you that I'm picking up Mario Kart at a midnight launch and won't even be buying GTA (much less picking it up at midnight?) 

shameless, i'd also like a match with you.. not that i'm good or anything.. i just want to see you playing, i'm at 2105 8990 6252

In answer to OP:

I'd say because Mario Kart Wii hasn't kept the standard of Nintendo's other 1st party games, where by they changed certain aspects to be more casual friendly but also didn't alienate the core gamers.

Mario Kart Wii kind of missed the target because of the new way to drift (simply holding down the B-trigger on the wii-mote and holding your line). It makes it easier for the casual market, but it eliminated alot of the challenges of mastering snaking around each course.

Another issue I have with the game is the unbalanced nature of the weapons, you could literally be miles ahead in first place, only to be hit by a succession of weapons and end up finishing 5th, even though your skill level indicates you should have finished 1st. It's quite frustrating being first place then being hit by the blue shell, the lighting cloud, the lightning, the Pow box, the squid and a few more other items, which ends up putting you in 6th place in the last half of the final lap.

All the more frustrating when you play competitively, on my first outing of online (I hadn't read the manual about the revised drift mechanic) so I didn't snake/drift at all in the race, I was coming 10th, only to have a string of lucky items which put me into 2nd place. My skill at the time obviously didn't warrant me getting 2nd, but the unbalanced nature of the game means Luck is almost always > skill.

There are a few more issues (i.e cheapshot AI in single player), but I haven't played enough of the game to notice yet.

80%+ certainly doesn't make it a bad game with bad reviews. In comparison to Nintendo's other releases it looks to be the "worse" but that's not really fair considering the quality of Nint's 1st party releases.

@scorptile: Your comment isn't exactly fair to GTA4, considering that it's just peoples opinions on a game they most likely have yet to play. The opposite could be said about a lot more gamers, that GTA4 is the must buy and Mario Kart Wii is just Mario Kart DS with better graphics.