Mario Kart Wii.

Play it with 3 mates and its awesome. Even two people taking on the internet is great. Yes the POW thing is spammy and annoying and the drifting is best set to automatic for ease of use but other than that its pretty darn good.

Must've played it with the GF and mates for about 15 hours the past two days.

Right, now I've put it some decent playtime I think I can comment on it further.

I like it. A lot. I havn't played the DS version nor the SNES version so those tracks are new to me and are quite interesting. The track selection is good and I've unlocked all 8 so far on 50cc and 100cc and as usual the AI is up to its old tricks on 150cc. Its classic mario kart and its fun, the Wii Wheel took some getting used to and I havn't gotten a hold of the new drifting system yet (Automatic seems to work very well). The addition of stunts and motorbikes has added to the gameplay, you can pull of stunts easily and they can make the difference between 1st and 2nd place in many maps. The motorbikes are just cool and doing wheelies down the straights for extra speed is a nice touch.

Moonview Highway is a bitch on 150cc grand prix.

The new power ups I'm less than enthused about. The Bullet is much better than the old Chain Chomp and the Thunderstorm thing is a real pain when you find yourself alone. I do like the Squid spraying ink over the screen but after a while you get used to it and its more of a niggle than a annoyance (except on rainbow road....) and the POW block should never have got into the game. Theres so few areas to avoid its effect (being airborne...) it just boils down to spam.

I'm glad some of the old MK64 powerups came back, i hated how double dash got rid of the triple shells spinning around your kart, the same for the trail of bananas. They've finally come back and the game is much better for it. The lightning is still annoying but it doesnt blacken my screen, sounds like you're TV's up the wazoo. The blue shells seemed to have been toned down in their frequency for the addition of the 4 extra players (12 not which is relieving.

Unlocking the new karts and characters is fun and you can sink time into that although the characters add nothing, the upgraded karts do have minor benefits.

The online play is pretty good, my only other online experience with the Wii are GH3 (awful) and Mario Strikes (awesome) and Mario kart Wii falls under awesome, i've not added any friends yet (thrik/reno codes?) but the continental/worldwide option is great and works quickly. The voting system seems really random (good/bad) and I feel it picks easier tracks more of the time than harder ones.

Overall I'd give it 9/10. Its good old fashioned fun for old and new players alike, it might not be the prettiest of games or the most advanced but thats not what Mario kart was ever about. It was about pure unadulterated fun with 3 mates sitting next to you, beers in hand and having a cracking time which this delivers.