NASCAR Kart Racing for Wii Reviews by Gamers

You know, it's easy for reviewers to turn a game like NASCAR Kart Racing into a whipping boy. I was truly expecting to gleefully run the game through the wringer, ready to slam it for being all sorts of terrible things and ruining the Wii library with its expected cash-in crumminess. The problem: the game isn't bad. Oh sure, it's a shameful Mario Kart clone with NASCAR rednecks instead of Nintendo mascots, but for what it's worth the game isn't an embarrassment to the Wii line-up. NASCAR Kart Racing is actually, you know, fun.



The concept just seems ridiculous: the whole idea of taking a lucrative brand and turning it into a kart racer has been the running joke of the gaming industry for years now. Electronic Arts clearly wanted to do something with its exclusive NASCAR license and tailor it into something that would fit the Wii's audience, and NASCAR Kart Racing is the result. While I'm sure that some Wii owners would rather have a realistic NASCAR sim, the public – and the Wii capabilities – have driven EA to take the over-the-top exaggerated direction. And while the result is a silly, almost satirical romp through the world of NASCAR, it's also a solid and tight Mario Kart-style racing game for up to four players.



Even though the developers tried to turn this racer into its own game, it's hard not to see all the Mario Kart influences. Everything that forms NASCAR Kart Racing's core mechanics has a Mario Kart equivalent, from the rocket start to the powerdrifting to the line-up of weapons. Nearly every power-up in NASCAR Kart Racing can be compared to something in Mario Kart: the red, white, and blue rocket in NASCAR is this game's turtle shell; the Yellow Flag has the same effect as MK's Lightning Bolt. There's even a power-up called "Your Ad Here" that, I'm not kidding, displays your driver's sponsor over the screen to obscure other players' views, mimicking Mario Kart's splatting ink stain from the squid power-up.



Speaking of ads, this game's full of them. No, scratch that: the game's busting at the seams with them. I still haven't decided whether the developers were attempting to be funny by mocking NASCAR's over-dependence on advertising – right down to the over-the-top "your ad here" attack power, Coke Zero branding, and the countless vehicle and track decals – or if it was simply a contractual obligation. I'm willing to wager it's a little of both, weighing heavily on the latter.







But I'm willing to deal with the aggressive consumable branding in NASCAR Kart Racing because, one, it's an accurate part of the NASCAR world, and two, the game's solidly developed. A good amount of effort went into making NASCAR Kart Racing play fast and tight…just like Mario Kart Wii. The designers made sure the game plays well for every control configuration: tilt control with or without the wheel attachment, Wii Remote and Nunchuk, Classic controller and GameCube controller support. It's not entirely a cloned experience as there are a few elements that are specific to NASCAR Kart Racing. The game's main hook is its teammate play: along with your choice of kart racer, you choose a teammate, and during the race if you're near bumper-to-bumper with your teammate you'll charge up your turbo boost. You can also charge up your boost by powersliding around turns. You'll only earn a boost if you can fully charge up the whole chamber, so if you lose the slide or sever the link between your teammate mid-charge, you'll lose all that energy without gaining the boost.



There are twelve tracks in total in NASCAR, only one of which is the traditional "turn left oval" design. The rest are well-designed, cartoony romps through all sorts of different areas of various terrain. There are plenty of jumps, hairpin turns, and shortcuts to discover, and while twelve tracks doesn't sound like a whole lot, they've been designed with both directions in mind so you at least have that option to mix things up. The single player campaign features a ton of different events, and it's important for you to participate in them since several of the tracks and racers are locked away. NASCAR Kart Racing features a full-on four player splitscreen mode, so it'd be a drag if you got all your friends together only to have access to half of the available courses and drivers.



And while Mario Kart Wii was pretty much the blueprint for NASCAR Kart Racing, the game does stumble a bit in places. The time trials, for example, don't offer ghost racers for the best times per track. There's no online support for worldwide competitions. And some of the mini-challenges, like "drive through the gates" and "drive as far as you can before the clock runs out" are uncreative busywork.



The developers and art designers aren't really taxing the video processor of the Wii as the game looks like a GameCube generation title running with widescreen support. Of course, the same could be said for Mario Kart Wii, so it's hardly a real knock against the game when it's pretty much on the same watermark as its inspiration. NASCAR Kart Racing, like Mario Kart Wii, also features 60 frames per second in one and two player modes, but for three and four player splitscreen it drops to 30. The game does suffer from a lack of personality since – apart from the car color and decals – every racer looks identical to each other.

©2009-02-10, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved