This newest Mario Kart has you driving under water, gliding through the sky and even defying gravity while tearing up the track but does it live up to all the expectations? As a person who knew they were buying this game from day one, I can say that answer is not so black and white but what I can do is give my thoughts on the game, the good and bad.
The graphics are nice to look at, no complaints here. They are vivid and colorful, what you would expect from a Nintendo game.
One thing I've heard many people praise along with the graphics is the musical score. It's live music this time around and while some of it I enjoy, such as Moo Moo Meadows, others seem a bit annoying, like Dolphin Shoals with it's excessive use of the saxophone. It's not a bad musical score but this game definitely has more of a jazz feel to it which may or may not interest you as much as the musical score in other Mario Kart games.
There are new additions to this game such as new and old tracks, some of which have been tweaked to fit the style of Mario Kart 8. Most new tracks look impressive and are fun to race but some seem as though they could've been better, such as Sweet Sweet Canyon.
This game also introduces a few new items such as the piranha plant, boomerang and horn. I found the piranha plant to be a very useful item when you're stuck in the middle of the pack with many racers nearby because the plant chomps all racers in it's path while also giving you a small boost each time it chomps. It can also get rid of on road hazards and collect coins for you, though I noticed it cannot stop shells that are coming from behind you. The boomerang is an item you can use up to 3 times and it works how you would expect a boomerang to though it can be tricky to use at times and only really works when racers aren't too far away from you. The horn is an area of effect item and the only item in the game that can destroy blue shells.
There are also returning additions from Mario Kart Wii and 7. There are bikes and now ATVs which are customizable with car parts as in Mario Kart 7, tricks, hang gliders, under water driving and coins(which are fairly useless and can get you destroyed while racing). The other new additions exclusively for Mario Kart 8 are some new characters such as the Koopalings, Mario Kart TV and anti-gravity. There are many ways to play, with the gamepad, pro controller, Wiimote+nunchuk and yes the Wii Wheel.
Here is where things start to fall apart a little though. When you look at the character roster, you will obviously see just how lackluster it is. They added all the Koopalings, Baby Rosalina, Metal Mario and Pink Gold Peach. Why they removed characters like Diddy Kong is beyond me or maybe it was a tactic by Nintendo to have a crappy roster in order to release dlc later on in order to get more money.
I only wish that were the only bad thing. Along with the bad character roster are a plethora of other bad things.
The first complaint is that there is no options menu. This is also especially bad if you're playing split screen and want to change it to horizontal instead of vertical but there is no way to change this. I could live with this but sometimes the vertical split screen can hurt your play when there are turns you need to be able to see but can't see because of the vertical split screen. There is no reason at all why they couldn't have given an options menu. Speaking of options, the map is tied to the gamepad which means no map on your tv screen, period. This actually didn't bother me much but would it have killed them to let you have the map on your tv as another option? Since the map is also useful for the fact that it lets you know what items other racers have. The gamepad isn't utilized at all either, it's basically only useful because it's your only means of a map but besides that it has a useless horn button. You can also play just using the gamepad but while playing split screen, the gamepad also has a split screen. This I don't understand since even an older racing game like Sonic had one person playing the gamepad while the other player had the tv screen. These are the problems the lack of an options menu created.
Battle mode has also been severely butchered. There are no sub modes within battle mode anymore, there's only balloon battle and instead of having arena tracks they only allow you to use the tracks that are already in the game. If that's not a sure sign of laziness, I don't know what is. It's as if they were thinking,"just release another Mario Kart game since everyone will buy it no matter how lazy we are, it's Mario Kart after all...!"
The same modes that have been in previous Mario Kart games are also present such as Grand Prix, Time Trials, and online play. Something new they added was tournament mode where anyone can create their own tournament with their theme of preference. From standard racing to team racing, battle mode to team battle mode, even customizing such options as whether or not AI racers participate and whether or not you want items and coins to be involved. It was a nice idea but what's the point of creating your own tournament if nobody cares about something such as team battle mode?
What was supposed to be the biggest addition to the gameplay was the anti-gravity feature which lets you race upside down, sideways and along walls. You can also bump into other racers and on tracks obstacles for a speed boost. The problem with this is, besides it seeming like a cool idea, in practise it just doesn't seem as dynamic as maybe it could've been. Sure, there are times when you can drive on the wall for a few seconds but other than that, it just doesn't feel like it really adds that much. In all it feels about the same as racing normally, you don't really see anything to utilize this and don't really feel it.
I already mentioned the disappointing character roster but what's even more disappointing to me is the fact that there are so many characters but what's the point if there's nothing really unique about them besides their weight class/ stats? Why do we need a 30 character roster(and possibly more) if that's the case? That seems like quantity over quality. I can understand people wanting to play as their favorite characters but where is the depth? Where are the crazy specials like they had in double dash? Granted not everyone likes that game but at least it provided something we had never seen before in a Mario Kart game.
This is a fun game and will probably keep many occupied but is this really the game people should buy a Wii U for...? I would say if you've already played Mario Kart Wii or 7 that this isn't much different besides koopa kids and anti-gravity, and even then there's still not that much of a difference. People will say it's different and worth buying because it's more fair and the items are more balanced but I still don't think that reason alone is worth spending 60+ dollars. It's a good game and enjoyable but I had a lot of high hopes and I thought surely this would be one of the best gaming experiences ever since apparently this was "the" game that the Wii U needed in order to survive. Instead of one of the best gaming experiences ever, it comes up a little short.