The eighth instalment of the famous karting series has you racing on roads, walls, underwater and gliding through the air. One of the first things you will notice is the graphics. Everything is just so crisp, colourful and detailed. The attention to detail is amazing; there's plenty of little touches such as birds which fly away from the road as you approach which just makes you feel more immersed in the world. Nintendo sure have taken a while to get used to HD, and hopefully this is the standard from now on.
The character selection screen is huge and although this is a welcome addition; there's too many similar characters. There's the 7 Koopalings, 5 babies, and 2 metal versions of Mario and Peach. When you think about who has been in previous rosters who are absent from this game, it does seem a little disappointing: Diddy Kong, Bowser Jnr., King Boo, Birdo, Pete Piranha, Para-Kooper, and Dry Bones. Nintendo could even have included new characters like Goomba, Nabbit, Kamek.
When you choose a character, you get to pick a vehicle body, wheels and glider. The character has a large say on the base stats, with the lighter characters giving you high acceleration and handling, and the heavy characters giving you high speed and weight. There's obviously karts to choose from, in addition to bikes and a few quads. There's plenty of vehicle combinations which are unlocked by collecting a certain amount of coins. Each item is randomly awarded to you when you meet the coin targets.
To start the race with a boost, you need to start to accelerate just after Lakitu's countdown is at two. The boost has varying speeds based on how accurate you were, and is therefore more forgiving than previous installments. There's plenty of opportunities to boost around the tracks. Drifting is easy and there's plenty of ramps to jump off of.
The main feature that was hyped-up by Nintendo was the anti-gravity sections. For me, these sections don't really add much to the game. It does give you the opportunity for boosts for crashing into other racers, but visually, the majority of the time you don't actually realise you are driving upside-down. Sometimes the sections are great like the option of driving along a wall for an alternate route, but the main routes are not much more than a bit of elevation.
Coins are back, and being in possession of coins will give you a minor boost in speed. Being hit or falling off the track will lose coins. Lakitu now collects you extremely quickly when you fall; probably because he gets paid so provides a good service.
The item balance is a welcome change from the days of Mario Kart Wii. That game was infuriating with the amount of blue shells. Blue shells still exist, but you see them once every several races and they are apparently capped at once per lap. Most weapons are actually pretty rare which seems to be the major complaint of many players since you often end up with coins if you are in the top positions, and mushrooms if you are towards the back of the pack. Stars no longer give significant speed boost but possibly a bit more acceleration; so they don't have the same impact like they used to.
You can no longer stockpile items either. Even if you trail an item behind you like a banana or shell, passing through a new item box does not give you another weapon. This means you have to decide to ditch your current item when you are approaching item boxes which can be risky if you ditch a shell and end up with a coin, leaving you defenceless against shells.
There's a few new additions to the weapon roster such as the Piranha Plant, Boomerang, Horn and Crazy 8. The Piranha plant is very useful, particularly when there's plenty of action around you. It will chomp nearby players, clear items that are ahead of you, and collect coins. The boomerang is quite similar to having a triple shell which you can only fire once every several seconds. It's quite hard to hit racers due to the change in elevation. Quite often, it looks like it should possibly hit but either fly above or bend to the side. It can hit players on it's way back to you, but it's very unreliable. I've spent a long time with the game and haven't come across the horn too much at all. The horn blasts your surrounding area and is the only way of countering blue shells. Crazy 8 gives players 8 items to use at once which circle around the kart.
Overall, the way the item balance is geared is towards a race focus rather than combat. That's not to say there aren't times when you will feel like you've been hit with bad luck, or can't use a nicely timed shell to your advantage. These things are still here, but there's just more focus on racing skill, rather than getting lucky and spamming weapons.
At the end of the race you are awarded your points and at the end of the set of races you are awarded bronze, silver or gold, and a star rating out of 3. Strangely, you don't get to see your times so have no idea how many seconds ahead/behind you were.
I don't normally care about the sound in games so rarely comment on it, but Nintendo have done an amazing job with the soundtrack. It has been recorded with a live band and has a strong jazzy focus, giving a technical and happy vibe to race to.
When you play online, you are thrown into a game regardless of skill level. There is a basic ranking system where when you finish in the top half, you acquire points, but lose them if you are in the bottom half. It seems to be weighted depending on the people you beat. Regardless, the games are usually fun and have a nice mix of skill levels. Obviously, being on a Nintendo system, the online aspect is free, giving even more value to the game.
I haven't currently tried local multiplayer but apparently you cannot use the Game-pad as one player's screen while the other player uses the TV (like you could in Sega All Stars Racing Transformed).
The time-trial mode is slightly disappointing. Obviously the main fun the the game is just improving your own score, but can be enhanced by competing against some great scores. Firstly, the staff ghosts are a bit inconsistent; some are slightly challenging, while others are seriously bad, swinging out wide on corners and generally driving slow. Secondly, it doesn't give you the option of racing against multiple ghosts. Thirdly, it doesn't store your top X scores, only your best time, and neither does it store your best lap time and total lap-times separately. Fourthly, although you can look online for a ghost to race against, it just seems to give you the option of racing against the very best scores, or people who have beat your score by a few milliseconds. I'd want to race against someone who has knocked off a second or so from my time which is more achievable than racing against the best in the world.
In terms of modes, you could say Mario Kart is pretty sparse. There's been games before like Diddy Kong Racing that's had a story mode, and Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed had a challenge mode.
Mario Kart TV attempts to bring the game into modern times with the ability to upload the video direct to Youtube and share on Miiverse. Sadly, the editing options are severely limited, so you have to choose a few options of which characters to focus on, specify a length of the video and hope that Nintendo's algorithm comes up with something decent, but it often ignores the event that you actually want to capture. It's nice that it does record every race you play, but it's annoying that you can't just save a few seconds of action and make your own montage.
You can play with all sorts of controllers and play with a standard set-up, or motion control. I opt for the Game-pad and use it like a steering wheel. I've had so much fun with it, I haven't even bothered trying the other options!
The core game could well be the best Mario Kart yet, there's plenty of characters, courses and vehicles, has good online multiplayer, and gears the races more towards skill. Opinion on the internet seems divisive and it almost seems that everyone has a different version of the game: people think it's too easy/hard, too many items/not enough items, game is too slow/fast. There are definitely features that can be improved but it's just several minor things really. There's no doubt that Mario Kart 8 is a great game, and Nintendo could improve/expand it further if they choose to experiment with DLC.