Here We Go!

Apologies for the length of time since the last post, I've been rather caught up in various other things. What i wanted to talk about in this post is two big releases that I've been waiting a while for, both of which landed this past Friday.
The first of these is Mario Kart Wii. While I was never a big fan of my contemporary childhood version, Mario Kart 64, I loved the DS version and subsequently revisited the classic SNES original. I've been stoked for the Wii version since it was announced, but I became worried by the lack of news flowing from Nintendo HQ. The game seemed to go under the radar for a long time and even when screenshots started appearing the whole PR seemed remarkably low key. No major announcements have been made since the original, and the game easily made ship date of Q2.
I shouldn't really have worried, as the final product is more than up to the series' usual high standards. I had the great advantage to be staying round a friends when this was unleashed, and together with another mate we basically played the game until the small hours. There's not too much to say that hasn't been said about all previous Mario Karts, save that I love the motion sensitive steering, and thus the plastic wheel packaged in is not a complete waste of time after all. Still probably the worlds greatest party game.

The other release this week I've been anticipating for a long long time. It's the PC port of Assassin's Creed, about 6 months late and with a huge fallout from the console release to deal with. It's only fair to point out first that this game ticks nearly everything on my gaming dreamlist: developed by the Prince Of Persia team at Ubisoft Montreal and marrying that game's flowing acrobatics to huge free roaming environments, sprinkled with intelligent crowds and cold-blooded contract killings, I was sold on this game the moment I heard of it, and the mixed reaction from the console versions did little to temper that.
I'll offer more fully detailed impressions once I've completed the game, but I must say that my first impressions are overwhelmingly positive. The only downside is that this game will kick your system, and kick it hard, and as a result, although I'm running in high resolutions, it doesn't look quite as stunning as the console versions. There will definitely be more words written on this one soon.