After playing enough of MKWii, I suppose it’s finally high time I got around to writing about it. First things first… I’m giving this game an 8.5 out of 10. That isn’t to say that I don’t completely love the game, because I do, but it has enough moments where you ask yourself just why Nintendo decided to do things the way they did that can really take you out of the game.

Let’s talk about the good. To many vets of the DS version of Mario Kart, Mario Kart Wii is almost going to feel like “more of the same”. Fortunately for those of us who liked MKDS, this isn’t a bad thing at all. Nintendo didn’t change the formula too dramatically, with the biggest changes coming in the form of motorcycles you can race in (to complement the karts) and the new steering wheel adapter that really does a great job of motion-controlled steering. Bikes are a bit tough to adjust to at first, but if you play the Grand Prix circuits the 100cc circuit is exclusively bikes in an effort to force the player to at least get a taste of them. Bikes can only charge a single level of sparks in drifts, which means they can’t get the same level of Mini-Turbo (MT) coming off a turn as a kart can after charging to the second level, but bikes gain a distinct advantage in the straightaways with the ability to pop wheelies for a small boost in speed. They also handle much tighter than any kart, which is great for tracks with tight corners but can very often leave you stuck in the grass on the inside corner of a turn (or facing the inside corner of a wall) for the inexperienced racer. Still, they’re a nice change to the series and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them stick around for the next installment of the series as well. Fingers crossed Nintendo just stays away from airplanes a-la Diddy Kong Racing.

For the most part, “the good” simply contains Nintendo continuing to do well what they have done well in the past with the series. A healthy number of tracks – 16 brand new and 16 “retro” revamped tracks, similar to what they did in MKDS – with GP’s across 4 race classes: 50cc, 100cc, 150cc, and 150cc mirror where all the tracks are flipped left-to-right. On top of the GP’s, there are Time Trials where you simply race the clock with three boost mushrooms to last the full three laps. Similarly to MKDS, there are Staff Ghosts that come with the game so you can race against a saved ghost to try and better your time with a goal in mind. A new addition in this game are EXPERT Staff Ghost times, which will unlock on a track after you beat a certain time better than the original staff ghosts; these guys are tough, and I doubt most players of the game will ever beat most of these ghosts without serious dedication put into the game.

Online has been slightly re-tooled, mostly for the better. Pick-up-and-play has seen a vast improvement in MKWii over MKDS, with online matches supporting up to 12 players at the same time (and one console can bring 2 players online to play split-screen, also). When you attempt to find a game, you will more often than not be dropped into spectator mode of a session already happening online, where you will have to wait for the current race to be over before going back to the Track Voting screen. Personally I prefer this method over the servers attempting to find players who happen to be looking for a match at the same time all into the same game, especially when you do have the 12-racer limit. You may have a race with 5 people, and the next race will have a full 12 players on the track, which is really nice and also doesn’t limit you to a 4-race, Grand- Prix-style format either, since you can stay in one session and keep racing for as long as you want.

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Every fan of the ABC show ‘Lost’ should read this theory. Right now.

There are a few things in the writer’s theory that I don’t completely agree with, or some things where I think he took a few too many creative liberties stretching what we know into an “answer” in the theory. But overall? I think there’s some really good stuff in there and if nothing else it makes for a good read. Make sure you also continue beyond the theory and read the Q&A as well as the Rebuttals for further explanations surrounding different points presented in the theory.

Season 4 is making good strides towards giving us some answers… or at least leading us down the path towards answers by finally beginning to address some of the core questions. I will be sad when the show finally comes off the air after Season 6, but at the same time I’ll be happy to have most of the questions behind us and know what the heck was really going on. Next week the show comes back from the writers-strike-induced midseason break, and from there on out it’s new episodes every week until the finale. I’m psyched.

This is kind of scary, but I’m glad they’re stepping up to let people know about this rather than try and brush it under the rug. I just wanted to re-post the information here in case anyone reading might want to check their fridge or let their friends know. A good chunk of the news release is below, and you can read it yourself here.

During a routine bottle inspection at one of our breweries, we detected possible defects in a small percentage of bottles resulting in the random presence of bits of glass, most the size of grains of sand, but some small slivers in some bottles as well. Based on this sample, we quickly began testing bottles of Samuel Adams at all of our breweries and identified that the problem appeared to be isolated to a single glass plant of the five that supply us.

We assembled a panel of food safety, medical and packaging experts including a medical doctor who have thoroughly evaluated the samples. People who bite or swallow a fragment could possibly be injured. While the possibility of injury to an individual consumer is very low and the Company has had no reports of any injury, we do know that the risk is not zero, so we are voluntarily recalling all products in bottles from this specific glass plant that we believe could possibly be affected. While we believe that the number of bottles that actually contain glass is significantly less than 1% of the bottles we are recalling, we are taking this measure to protect the safety of our drinkers.

Bottles made in other glass plants that supply us have not shown defects. The potentially affected bottles are easily identified by a raised letter and number visible on the bottom edge of the bottle. Affected bottles are embossed with the digits “N35” followed by the letters “OI”. Please see the photo below. Bottles with this coding should not be drunk.