[DDDorian]

So, who's played this? It's pretty much a big brother to the DS game, which is fine with me. The choice between bikes and karts adds some legitimate strategy, which is nice, and I think I prefer the revisions to boosting/snaking. The new tracks are pretty good, but the retro tracks seem to have been picked almost arbitrarily, I guess they just wanted to remake tracks that hadn't been done to death. Online play is great and exactly what Nintendo should be doing with every game: friend codes that actually let you see what your friends are doing, random matchups based by skill level, geography and ping, global and regional leaderboards and the ability to trade ghost data. No voice chat, though, but it's not as if wanna hear "OMG J00 FAGOTE!!11" from a bunch of adolescents when I beat them anyway, heh. Two specific annoyances, though: firstly, split-screen multiplayer drastically reduces the level of graphical detail, which is disappointing, and secondly, the rubber-banding is insane, even by Mario Kart standards, so expect to be absolutely hammered every time you make the lead. I don't have a copy of the Wii Whell to try out, but from all accounts it's a viable choice for hardcore players.

In short: play it