Chris W

Lonesome Traveller

Game: Mario Kart Wii
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Rating: 3+ (PEGI), E (ESRB)

Co-operation and competition go hand in hand; working towards something with others, against a common obstacle, gives rise to life’s greatest achievements and rewards. Ultimately it's competition that remains at the heart of all play, but Nintendo, in its renewed energetic rush towards family activities, seems determined to push co-operation and inclusion above all else.

As a result, Mario Kart Wii hinges on those concepts, to the extent that it’s useless without them. Try competing in a grand prix against cpu opponents, and watch as weapon after weapon crashes down on you as you near the final corner, rendering the game savagely unplayable. In the absence of voice chat, raising the number of vehicles to 12 may have seemed like a good idea for fostering amusement online, but once you try challenging for the cups all you’ll find is that the number of racers throwing items at you has increased by over half.

It’s certainly not that collaboration improves everything, either. Replacing battle mode’s tension-driven Last Man Standing premise with teamwork and infinite respawns has left a dull, subdued experience, mechanical and repetitive from start to finish. While Mario Kart has never been about the battles, this must surely be the final nail in its coffin.

On the other hand, time trials, those strangely individual contests, benefit immensely from a little mutual assistance. Encouraged to download - and if you initially ignore the option, forcefully presented with - the ghosts of other, slightly faster racers from around the world, you’ll unwittingly find yourself a part of a vast support network, ruthlessly plundered and shaped from the self-same competitive efforts it engenders. An endless, interactive tutorial, it’s an elegant system that works well.

But to witness the true strength of co-operation, head back to those races and turn on the team option. With weight of numbers no longer against you, what was hopeless alone becomes second nature with an army at your back; what was an unforgiveable last-corner laceration against the individual becomes a gallant war wound to be circumvented and reciprocated by the many. If the freneticism of TimeSplitters' bot-based death matches, the camaraderie of team-based Halo, were to be directed into a vicious, pure-blooded racer, this would be it, for there's a primitive, guttural pleasure in stealing a 1-2-3-4 win against that cheating computer scum, one which binds in the living room just as strongly as it does on the racetrack. Especially, as all agreed, when three of you are reptiles on motorcycles.