I keep hearing how competitive MK Wii is and it sounds great. There was nothing wrong with the core mechanics in the MK series, it just started to get cheap with DD. There were too many times where you would be kicking someone's ass and watch them get a lucky streak of powerups and absolutely annihilate you. While it's nice to give players in the back an opportunity to get back into the race with power-ups, there has to be a limit to how badly the leaders get screwed over by said power-ups. DD bordered on 90% luck, 10% skill in many of the races I played. That's terrible.

Anyway, I might have to buy this game after hearing people like Penny Arcade rave about it. Those guys are about as straight-up as it comes in this industry. 

Did you ever actually play any of the other Mario Karts?

Mario 64 was the same way.  There were 2 winning positions and only two.  The first was so far ahead that your opponent would need at least 3 blue shells in a row to even put you back within sight.  The second was right behind your opponent picking up a Red shell or Red Shell trio and waiting till the end of the race. 

I'll agree with you there, they don't too TOO many Nintendo games, but there is a large majority of people that DO like the single player, myself included. And if they're going to completely bypass mentioning the bad with the good, then I feel it's an incomplete review.

Like I said they've reviewed many games where they seem quick to mention the bad as well. I dunno, I honestly don't have much proof of they're bias, it was really just that comic strip, and then the lack of comic strips doing anything of the sort to a Nintendo product. Then this review pointing out all these amazing things in MKWii yet, letting they're opinion remind us of the problems GTAIV has, esp with comments like un-originality when the same statement could have been said in full swing against Mario Kart.

While I've never held much love for Penny Arcade, my opinions on gaming have nearly always been in line with Tycho's. You can always count on him to deliver a concise, well-thought-out opinion that cuts through all of the BS that other "gaming journalists" buy in to.

So, unsurprisingly, he basically stated what I've been saying about the GTA games all this time. The open-world aspect may impress and entertain tons of people, but those of us looking for an intriguing core gameplay experience can give it a miss.

Lemme see... I have owned every Mario Kart until the current release so yeah, you could say I played them all.

Adding the special attacks and spamming the dick-you-over-powerups in DD completely cheapened it. MK has always been about screwing over your buddy but it went to absurd levels with DD. There were multiple times when my wife would be in 4th place and then just activate the chomper and fuck everybody else in the game over. Sometimes it would happen multiple times in the same race. And that wasn't even including the constant powerups in the game...

Seriously? I thought you understood exactly what I was trying to say. Thats the point, both Mario Kart and GTA have stayed close to they're roots, you just act like Mario Kart Wii is some amaaaaazing evolution of video games -_-; My point is that from the first GTA to the fourth, they ALSO have taken a number of changes and progressions. You just listed my point and put what game they ended up in. I believe that would be evolution of a series no?

I'm not sure where your point is going about the motion control aspect. Are you saying I don't get motion controls for the PS3? (the hd console that came with a motion controler?). What if I decide to play MK Wii with a gamecube controller? (which I would be doing) How good are the motion controls then?

Believe it or not, how fun a game is is actually part of any valid review process.  Fun is subjective, but that's why you review a game for its target audience.  You don't review Halo for the Wii Play gamers and you don't review Mario Kart without considering how fun it is in multiplayer.  

This is why comparing games accross genre makes you look ignorant.  The size of a game is not a meassure of its quality, nor is the complexity.  I could make a 50 mile field of green and force you to navigate 236 menus to take 1 step forward.  It would be the most complex and large game ever made, but it wouldn't be fun.  The diverse claim is pretty laughable.  Mario Kart isn't diverse either, although that shouldn't matter in either game as long as it's fun.  In the end, GTA boils down to 2 actions: Driving and blowing stuff up, which leads me to my next  point.  

More intellectual?  Are you joking?  A a game based on drunk driving, blowing things up, killing hookers, and general mindless chaos and violence practically defines testosterone driven immaturity.  Not that Mario Kart is in any way thought provoking, but at least it's not catering solely to teenage psychopaths. 

The sandbox game was innovative 6 games ago.  This is just the same game with a broken cover system added.  Again, I'm not arguing that Mario Kart Wii is innovative, just that GTAIV is not.  Technical advancement once again is not a meassure of quality.  It's not even close to more challenging.  The single most common complaint in the Mario Kart Wii reviews is that the 150CC AI is too good.  Grand Theft Auto IV has been unanimously declared the easiest game in the franchise.  Especially with its auto-targeting.  

I honestly laughed out loud at the line "requires a greater degree of cultural capital to fully appreciate all of it's intricacies."  I'm not sure where to start with this one.  Well, first of all, reviews have pointed out that the game has signifficantly less of the witty decade-mocking humor and irony, and replaced it with such amazing dialogue as "Take a bite of my hot chihuahua meat."  As if the series didn't cater to brainless teens enough already.  

Now, if you enjoy GTA more, then it's a better game to you, and that's a valid statement.  

Now this is where I stopped taking you seriously, and started to wonder if this was a joke post.  GTA not only doesn't support gaming as an art form, it's one of the primary culprits in spreading the view that the gaming audience is nothing but stupid teenage boys.  Electroplankton, Okami, Odin Sphere, Viewtiful Joe, Wind Waker, Shadow of the Colossus.  These games are art.  Honestly the idea that anyone would even suggest holding GTA in league with these works of art makes me sick.  I can't believe you are suggesting anything in GTAIV is innovative.  It's GTAIII with a Gears of War cover system shoved in.  

Oh, and Tycho used narcotic as a synonym for addictive and mood altering, which is certainly a valid use of the term.  

PA doesn't review games, at best they give impressions much like most of this forum. Occassionally they take the time to point out the things that the rest of the media seems to gloss over or ignore entirely.

I'm not sure how the argument that you'd rather play a well-crafted game over a more-fun one actually makes sense. Say you have more fun playing GTA4 if anything, otherwise it's just a stupid statement.

And reviewers are often wrong about games. They review games based on what they want them to be, not based on what they are. GTA4 happens to fit that mold perfectly. But GTA3 and the like were pretty much universally acclaimed anyway, so the fact that so much more went into GTA4 while keeping everything else the same pretty much guaranteed that everyone would have to give it 10's to remain consistent.

Just keep in mind that Ocarina of Time got a lot of the same acclaim and it didn't help the N64 any against the PS1, and *that* was an exclusive game. ;>

 i mean that you can play all gta 3 games and gta 4 and you don't see any difference except graphic, but you can't say the same thing about kart games. 

It was a retorical question... I knew the answer before I even asked.  ^_^

I disagree about Double Dash doing it worse.  My character choices were Baby Bowser and Baby Donkey Kong.  I'd spend the entire racing sitting in first place dropping giant bananas and tossing Bowser Shells backwards (since those are the only two small super power-ups you can reliably get in first place).   Chomper never mattered to me.  Either I was so far ahead that the opponent could never get within range of me with it or I was right behind the other person enjoying the carnage.