So Mario Kart 8 is a failure.

#So I managed to play Mario Kart 8 for awhile the other day, and I'd like to share my consensus...

First off, let me say that I've been a fan of the series since MK64. While MK64 is probably the one which holds the best/most memories for me, my personal favorite is Double Dash, mostly due to the great choice of weapon items and tracks. I even thought MKDS and MK7 were decent iterations in the franchise, but honestly, MK8 is garbage.

Rather than go on and on about why this is probably the worst entry in the series, let me highlight some of my main complaints:

- A ton of lame and lesser known characters while also missing good ones.

- Uninspired maps.

- Worse weapons, fewer weapons.

- I hear everyone boning about the controls. Are you kidding me? These are some of the worst controls in any MK game I've played. The A button is your gas pedal, but the bottom left trigger is used for shooting items? What the ****? Not to mention, rounding corners is awkward, thanks partially to the obtuse WiiU gamepad.

- Aside from the visual style, which is always colorful and creative in keeping with typical Nintendo graphics, this is not a great looking game. Sure, it's better than MK7, it's high resolution, it has a higher polygon count than what you'd expect, but these graphics wouldn't have looked out of place in a 360 or PS3 launch game.

- The new features feel cheap and tacked on. My advice for Nintendo would be, if you're going to add something like personalized karts to a game, make it a little deeper and more engrossing than allowing you to pick simply a a kart, wheel, and parachute. I get it, the game is supposed to be "accessible", except adding optional features like deeper kart customization in no way impacts the casual experience of most players who probably won't even explore the game to that extent anyway.

- The battle mode.... Oh my god, the battle mode. Who doesn't have great memories of playing on the trippy, colorful, blocky battle maps of MK64, or even Double Dash? Playing deathmatch in karts was all too fun, and the balloon system worked well for the arena style. Now, the battle mode is barely distinguishable from a regular kart race. What the ****? Nintendo, you're going to take out one of the best features of the game, which would have been easy to replicate or improve upon, and slap the name on a rehashed racing mode? That is just shoddy work.

Whatever minor improvements Nintendo made to Mario Kart this time around are, frankly, overshadowed by the negative aspects. I was sorely dissapointed by what MK8 brought to the table, and honestly, while this might sell 2 million copies, it's never going to be the big hitter than Nintendo needs, and it surely won't be receiving support from me.

Your opinion is absolutely horrid.

I should have stopped reading here...

here...

and especially here.

I highly disagree with everything but the lame roster and battle mode.

Your opinion, Blog it. :P

These are poverty complaints. Most generally are greatly exaggerated or just flat out untrue.

I am as about as hard to please as it gets for a Nintendo fan.. I complain literally ALL the time about nintendo not doing x, or needs to improve y...

But this game is great. Any complaints I have with the game overall are small nitpicks; outside the lack of battle tracks. Only complain that I feel brings the game down.. But those can and hopefully will be added through DLC..

Other than that, the game does almost everything it set out to do well.

Disagree with almost everything you said. Just because you personally don't like it, doesn't mean it's a failure. It's quite the opposite, actually.

Personally it sounds like you didn't even play it... I could be wrong. But you call it a failure and only give your opinions on the game. When arguing or proving a point you could either go with your opinions, in which we could say cool opinion blog it, or you could use facts. The facts actually point to Mario Kart 8 being a success as it is critically acclaimed, and it has provided the Wii U a nice bump when it so desperately needs it.

It's unfortunate you didn't enjoy the game because personally it was the first game this year that has me invested for longer than a few hours.

Just about everything you said is factually wrong. It's not even an opinion at this point. Outside battle mode and the shit roster, it's wrong.

What should I expect though from someone who thinks Double Dash is anything but terrible.

I have a lot of problems with MK8, but none of anything you said I agree with.

If you think MK8 looks like a 360 or PS3 launch game, you must have gotten a very special model of those systems made just for you. Nothing at launch on those systems looked anywhere near as good as MK8. That's not even a debatable point, that's simply extreme hyperbole on your part.

Failure? Hardly.

I agree it could have been a better game, but it's still fun. The AI can be horribly cheap at times and the roster is lame, but I only race with a few characters anyway. I'm more upset with no map on the TV screen and no race stats.

...great? I don't agree with anything except battle mode, but that's fine. It's your opinion, after all.

The only thing I agree with is the disappointing characters. We get a bunch of crap characters like Metal Mario, Metal Peach, and 5 babies, but Diddy Kong, Boo, Petey Piranha and others get cut, and others such as Prof. E Gadd don't even get considered.

I'm with you on maybe Battle Mode and the characters (too many babies) but all your other points are laughable.

The Music is awesome

Well, I definitely don't think that this game will be a failure; I expect it to be the best selling Wii U game, but I have to admit that after spending more time with this game as well as going back and playing some of my older Mario Kart games, my honeymoon period with this game is fading and I'm seeing how it is flawed compared to past Mario Kart games.

-My first and by far biggest complaint is how Nintendo completely butchered battle mode. It's obvious Nintendo treated battle mode like an afterthought when developing this game, which is a huge disappointment because when battle mode is done right like in Mario Kart 64, it is just as fun as racing. I really hope Nintendo releases some real battle arenas as DLC to fix this.

-The roster is lacking. I would expect the roster to get better with each new Mario Kart game, but in this game it has gotten worse.

-The tracks are not as good as past Mario Kart games. At first I thought the new tracks were cool, but after playing them more and replaying past Mario Kart games, I now realize that they are all style and no substance. The anti-gravity and underwater sections make the tracks look cool at first, but it's nothing more than visuals. They lack the interesting gimmicks that tracks in past Mario Kart games had. Plus, it has the weakest selection of retro tracks in any Mario Kart game as well.

-Not having the map on the TV screen is annoying. While it might be neat to look at the gamepad screen for the map, what about all of the players that are not using the gamepad, Nintendo?

-The fake item box being gone sucks. This item added a great layer of strategy in trying to drop them in the perfect position so people would expect it to be a real item box. Instead, they made lame coins an item.

-You are pulled back up way too quickly when you fall off a track in this game. There is no need to even worry about falling off a track now because it will barely cost you a second.

It's Mario kart. It's not the Sistine chapel of games, you should know what you're getting.. I really doubt it's worse than Mk Wii though.

But that's why i'm not getting Mk8 or Smash 4, been there done that and nothing will ever be as good as Melee or Double Dash anyways.

As someone who likes the battle mode in MK8, I don't think it was just an afterthought. When battle mode was four players in an arena, it was really fun. The player count being upped to 12 broke battle mode. It was too hectic and FAR less skill based than regular racing.

I expected Nintendo to just make a few more battle arenas and copy/paste the mode from MK7 or MKWii in, which would've made me never touch it. And when I heard they were only doing tracks, I thought that would be even WORSE.

Then I tried it and had a blast. Every move needs to be calculated, every shot precise. Winning a match without getting hit is actually possible now, and it's always satisfying. And even if you get destroyed, you can still have fun, Bomberman-style, while waiting for the end.

It's not perfect, but I've had more fun with battle mode in MK8 than I have since Double Dash.

They might patch in some arenas, though, and I'd be fine with that, since people seem to like them. But they need to be multi-layered and gigantic to really work well with 12 people.

Lol so now people are starting to see my complaint with the lack of multiple gamepad use AT LAUNCH of the WiiU. This will be an issue in Smash as well as other games. I got alot of slack from some members here about there not being a need for multiple gamepads but they failed to see at the time how important it really is. Only one gamepad gives just that ONE player an advantage in certain games. They REALLY needed to have multiple gamepad capability available at launch especially seeing as how this was their main controller for the WiiU. It's like having a SNES with only One controller playable.

Ok this may be a fairly long read but bare with me here everyone.

The real issue that Nintendo screwed up with this is the LACK of 5 player multiplayer. I had 4 friends over yesterday and one had to sit out and wait while the other 4 of us played. That was bad. Sonic Racing Transformed has 5 player simultaneous racing so there was ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for that to be omitted.

Let me start though by saying, TC's OP is Opinion which they are entitled to and on some points I agree.

Point for point let me approach TC's opinion with mine.

"- A ton of lame and lesser known characters while also missing good ones."

I have unlocked all the characters and I am SOOOOO Glad they included Lakitu, ShyGuy and the Koopa Kids as they NEEDED to be something outside of just being well known common Mario bad guys all the time. The Koopa Kids played a bigger part in the mario universe than Bowser Jr. ever did and will. Now we talk about lame additions, he was not needed as the koopa kids are much more popular AND have more history in the Mario universe than Bowser Jr.

Thank God we do not have to look at a ton of Funky Kong's on Flame Runner Motorcycles. That was a HUGE issue on Mario Kart Wii. Everybody online pretty much used this setup. This setup pretty much ruined online for Mario Kart Wii outside of Hackers. That is one character that I do not miss one bit, however, with the new balancing, he could be included since the bikes don't have unlimited speed increase from walking the bikes anymore. I'm soooo glad they removed that. I was an expert at walking the bike but I'm very glad to see that feature removed as it broke the game.

Now the Metal versions of the characters were a COMPLETE waste of slots. If they wanted them playable, they should have just added a palette swap. They should NOT be seperate characters as they could have used that space for other characters so I agree with TC's opinion there.

Why are Chuck, King Toady (Wart) and Hammer Bros not playable yet? With the exception of King Toady, these are staple characters in the Mario Universe. Much more so than Waluigi, Rosalina and other less popular characters. Their addition is long overdo.

"- Uninspired maps."

I sort of have to agree and disagree with the TC here.

I'll say the stage design on the new levels are pretty good yet some stages feel really short such as Bowser's Castle which should not be so.

Now where I'd have to agree with the TC here is the stage selection. They seemed to have chosen some pretty meh stages for the retro levels. I mean really, no old school Bowser's Castle AT ALL?!?!?! Bowser's Castle DS would have been PHENOMENAL for this game as it is already setup for antigravity sections etc. I would have loved a retro Choco Island 2 redone with added anti-gravitational sections, a retro Vanilla Lake 2, a redone Airship Fortress and more.

The GBA Mario Kart has 12 cups. Why does this one only have 8?

"- Worse weapons, fewer weapons."

Again I have to agree and disagree with the TC here.

I agree that they should have kept the old items such as the Fake Item Box, but it seems like everyone has forgotten about other great items such as the Ghost that steals another players items and makes you invisible to other players, you could go through other players and made red shells go through you and the High Jump Feather item that made you jump really high so that you could access shortcuts only available to you if you had that item.

I like the new items they added but they removed some pretty impactful ones. I'm sooo glad they brought the coins back though as they helped balance out the game in the original.

I mean if they are going to add Lakitu as a playable character (which I'm glad they did), they should have added Spinies as an item that acts like a spike strip.

"-Controls"

I agree they aren't the best but Nintendo basically went with the traditional setup. A to go, B to stop, R to Jump/Drift, L to use Items. It's always been this way since the original SNES version. I would have preferred Sonic Racing's control setup but I am used to the traditional Mario Kart controls anyway so it didn't hinder my experience at all.

"-Visuals"

The visuals are fine.

"-New Features such as Kart Customization"

This is a feature that I never cared about in Mario Kart honestly. It's nice to have it but I only need 1 kart to race.

"-Battle Mode"

This is one of the MAJOR areas that felt like an afterthought. They just removed laps on already created race stages. While this does work, it is NO EXCUSE as to why Battle Specific stages weren't created. Mario Kart 64 is pretty much the staple of Mario Kart games when it comes to the battle mode but even that game is faaarrrrr outdone by Diddy Kong Racing 64. DKR64 had the best Battle Mode of any Kart Racing game ever. THAT is what Nintendo should have used as a template for battle mode on this game. They really were lazy with the battle mode on this new one. They will HAVE to correct this with DLC.

So they have quite a bit to fix with Patches and DLC but I am enjoying it so far.

Battle mode was dead after snes version. We had GoldenEye so I dont know who would play battle mode on MK64.

Waa waa waa, need the ambulance? It's fine that thats your opinion, but you are in a VERY small minority. Yes a few small issues with MK8 like Battle Mode stages and such but its still the best MK game to date.

Outside of the gutted battle mode litterally nothing in your posts holds any weight and comes off as a desperate attention grab

I played through every track with some friends last night and it's one of the best in the series. The item balance is much better than other games in so much that it actually takes skill to win.

Nah, he actually went easy on it

He didn't even bring up things like the map or the awful music in the game

@starwolf474: what would you say made some of the old tracks better compared to the ones here which are nothing more than visuals as you say?

@Jaysonguy: of all the things to call crappy you chose the music?

0/10 apply yourself

Even that's not as important as the omission of local 5 player support that I COULDN'T DO yesterday because it wasn't in the game so one of my friends had to sit back and watch.

I mean I can understand this in 3rd party games but this was a FIRST PARTY GAME from the people that PROMOTED 5 PLAYER LOCAL PLAY on THEIR CONSOLE and the OPPONENT gets it right and THEY DON'T.

It was absolutely stupid on Nintendo to omit that feature.

Lame, and lesser known characters? Clarify, because this has got to be one of the most classic casts in the entire Mario Kart series.

Imo these are some of the most inspired settings to EVER grace a Mario game, period. The music that graces these settings truly shows that a lot of work went into this game. Shy Guy Falls--epic on a 1990s disney proportion.

...worse/fewer weapons? I think it was a design choice to let players focus more on the actual racing. Personally I like this much more.

You keep saying they omitted it as if they had it working then took it out.

My guess is that they couldn't get it running well. As it is now, the WiiU is simply outputting the same video from the TV to the gamepad when you play splitscreen. To have a fifth player on the gamepad would mean rendering everything an additional time to put it full-screen on the gamepad. Split-screen already causes a huge performance hit, so adding an ADDITIONAL render of the game would kill it.

Sonic and All Stars Racing can pull it off because it isn't at the graphical level of Mario Kart.

So we could either have an amazing looking Mario Kart game with splitscreen only, or we could have an average looking Mario Kart game with five players. I think it was in Nintendo's best interest to make it look prettier.

The game's not that good looking.

Also are you trying to say that Nintendo is focusing more on how a game looks rather than how it performs?

Out of those 2 choices, I would have taken a 5 player "average" looking Mario Kart. Especially on a console where 5 player local is the ONE thing you actually do have over the competition. In your comparison, they sacrificed gameplay for graphics and you think that is a GOOD thing?

You're also talking as if Sonic transformed just looks horrible compared to Mario Kart when in reality Sonic transformed STILL looks fantastic and is actually Still a better racing game than Mario Kart 8 in alot of ways. The Dynamic changing stages of Sonic transformed beats out the Antigravity stages on Mario Kart hands down also.

Why even have the gamepad if it takes that much to output the video from the gamepad to the tv? They may as well had the Pro controller as the normal one. Also Mario Kart is only pushing out 720p resolution, the WiiU SHOULD be able to handle that so not having 5 players is no excuse especially from the first party studio.

Exactly. It looks good, I'll give him that, but it's not mindblowing or anything.

Also he's talking as if he believes shinier graphics is a Better option than better gameplay. No, 5 player local multiplayer is more important than shinier graphics. Especially when that is one of your console's Strengths over the competition. It would have been in their best interest to get 5 player coop working instead of having prettier graphics.

Kind of? I mean, in single player and two player, Mario Kart 8 looks fantastic AND performs flawlessly. The framerate drops in half above that. Maybe they just didn't have the time to optimize the graphics (i.e. downgrade them manually) to handle all those renders at once. Or maybe it was impossible to.

I'm not saying it's good or bad. Nintendo needed a game that could wow people at a glance. If you have to weigh the two options, it's probably more beneficial to grab people with graphics than to offer one extra player for multiplayer, a feature that isn't nearly as easy to advertise because it won't instantly get people's attention and make them say "OMG I WANT TO PLAY THAT!"

All I'm really saying is that there ARE actual reasons for not including the option. Same thing goes for battle mode. The game's director didn't just wake up one day and say "ah, I don't feel like putting this crap in so let's not, it's too much work." They were calculated decisions. If the feature were easy to implement and worked well, it would be there.

Please, just don't.

Lol all I had to do was bring up some legitimate reasons this game is one of the worst in the series and that's all it took to bring the Nintendo moo cows out of the woodwork. Nintendo finally releases one single mediocre game that sells decently and immediately the fan cows get ready to land on their knees and suck. A classic example of angry fanboyismm with no argument to counter why I'm even wrong. Nothing i mentioned is factually untrue and if you disagree with what I've said then I'm sorry to hear that you all have the worst taste in video games possible. With fans like this its no wonder nintendo continues to milk pathetic sobs.

I love when people are honest enough to reveal their true nature on forums. It makes it so much easier to ignore them.

i love the maps. i just think battle mode blows now and the character selection could have been way better

the music is nice too. let's hope for some N64 battle maps DLC

Don't listen to that guy, he was just trying to get a rise out of Nintendo fans.

nah...let her not buy it....she couldnt handle the online competition anyway.

she seems soft.

You're saying women shouldn't play games?

what do you know about women jason? lol

this aint mario kart wii....you have to more skilled in this game to get 1st place.....sometimes luck will get you 1st place...but to keep getting it you definitely need more skill in this one.

so its better for people like you to not even try.

Wow.

MK 7 had pretty uninspired maps. Mario Kart 8's courses are awesome.

Still waiting for my copy to arrive, I figured i'd just get it because hey, Mario kart is always fun and i've never missed a console release. It's something to play while I wait for Bayonetta, and i'm getting WW HD for the free game.

I know it's going to be a crap ton better than MK Wii :D