Mario Kart 8 - Wii U

Mario Kart 8 for the Nintendo Wii U is far and away the best Mario Kart game yet--and yes, I've played them all.EXCELLENT CONTROLSThe kart physics and handling will feel utterly familiar to those who have played the last few entries in the series. That's good news because it means the controls are still as polished and responsive as ever. Moreover, the variables that affect your kart's top speed, acceleration, handling, weight, and traction also function almost exactly as they have in the past, except that now those variables are no longer entirely tied to specific characters. Character choice now has a milder effect on how the kart performs (though it does still have an effect), while the specific options you choose for your kart (body type, tire type, and glider type) now play a greater role in determining its resulting performance characteristics.For racing, I think the Gamepad, the Wiimote with Nunchuk, or the Pro Controller all work very well. You can also use the motion controls if you want (i.e., tilting the Wiimote back and forth like a steering wheel), but I've never found that to be as responsive as using the thumbstick to steer. Of course, kids or inexperienced gamers may prefer the motion controls, especially if they're very young and lack the manual dexterity to operate the thumbstick with precision.SUPERB GRAPHICS ENHANCE GAMEPLAYBy far the most noticeable improvement in Mario Kart 8 is the substantial upgrade in graphics and detail, especially with regard to the tracks (though the characters and karts look better too). This significantly enhances the racing experience--in part, because the tracks look so much nicer, but mainly because Nintendo has added more nuances that can affect how well you race on a given track. For example, there are strategic shortcuts that will give you a slight edge ahead, or moving acceleration patches that can catapult you far ahead if you hit them consistently in a well-timed sequence, or discrete ledges that permit you access to an extra row of item boxes or a modest shortcut if you steer your glider skillfully enough to access them, and so on. Some of these kinds of nuances existed in previous iterations of the game, but never quite so thoughtfully incorporated. Moreover, nearly every track has a very distinctive theme that makes it stand out visually, far more so than any assortment of tracks from previous entries in the franchise.WELL BALANCED GAMEPLAYI especially like how Nintendo has tweaked the power items (how often they appear, how they function, and how drastically they affect the racing) to balance out the gameplay. There are still many rows of item boxes, but the items now feel more diversified and rarer to obtain so that, for example, you're not constantly getting a heat-seeking red shell or a lightning bolt. Instead, if you're at the head of the pack, you can expect to get a steady diet of bananas, green shells, and mere coins. If you fall further back, the boxes will start giving out more powerful items to help you recover, such as red shells, triple red shells, speed boost mushrooms, and triple speed boost mushrooms. And if you fall all the way to the rear, you'll start getting far more substantial help in the form of speeding bullets (you launch ahead as a giant bullet, knocking out other racers out as you go), golden mushrooms (a series of speed boosts), lightning bolts (to shrink and slow the other players), ink (to obstruct the other players' screens with splotches of ink), and blue shells (to knock out the person in 1st place). Also, there are some new items, like the music box, which can be used to knock out enemies in a close radius or, better yet, to knock out the dreaded blue shell before it blows you out of first place. All together, this makes the game feel much better balanced than any previous version, so that winning or losing depends much more on how well you drive and strategize, not merely on how lucky you are at getting powerful items to knock everyone else out.Nintendo also wisely reduced the recovery time for falling off ledges by several seconds. That's a nice tweak as well, since it means that less skillful players will not get nearly as frustrated on tracks that have a lot of jumps and gaps. In some previous entries in the series, there were tracks you simply couldn't play with inexperienced fellow players or they wouldn't be able to have fun. With this game, even young children will probably be fine on most of the tracks because the recovery from a fall off the side of a track is so much faster--almost as brief as running into a banana for a very brief spin out. This also means that if you're doing a great job racing, but make one mistake that throws you off the track, it is still possible to recover fast enough to win. In some previous Mario Kart games, one fall could sometimes set you back so many pole positions in a single race that it would potentially prevent you from winning the entire cup. Also, if you get turned around and don't correct the problem soon enough, the cloud koopa will fish your kart back around facing the right way--again, a great help for young kids who might get turned around while playing.Lastly, subtle racing decisions now add up to have a significant impact on your success at racing, ensuring that good racing skills are rewarded comparatively more here than in previous versions of the game. For instance, you can learn to drift around corners for a slight speed boost, as in the previous version. You can collide with other players (or on some tracks, strategically placed pinball-like bumpers) to gain a slight speed boost. You can take a strategic shortcut. You can tweak your kart's characteristics (body/tires/glider). And so on. While most of these possibilities existed in previous iterations of the game, they come together more effectively here so that, if you really master all of these subtle elements, it adds up to a substantial competitive edge over less experienced or less skillful racers. It's hard to explain the effect this has on the gaming experience, but it just makes the racing feel more solid, with clearer benefits for skill progression, whereas previous entries in the series always felt haunted by a "luck" factor that had little or nothing to do with skill, and also often felt as though there was a little too much mayhem happening too often from too many powerful items being constantly churned out and used against you.SOME DOWNSIDESAs you've likely seen in other reviews, Battle Mode is the main disappointment here because there are no arenas included. Instead, you battle on the tracks. Although this means there is more variety in where you battle now, it is disappointing not to have at least a few large arenas that concentrate the battle in a central area, instead of requiring you to roam (and sometimes "hunt" for others) around a closed circuit track. I suspect Nintendo will resolve this in the future by offering downloadable stadiums for purchase. If they do, I know many fans will be pleased. Regardless, this isn't a deal breaker. There's plenty here to enjoy--and enough to still make this the best Mario Kart game yet. But unless Nintendo releases some arenas, Battle Mode will remain a disappointment that most players simply ignore.The other big disappointment here is no split screen option. I thought for sure that when racing with two players, one would be able to use the gamepad while the other person enjoys the full television screen. Nope. Even if you're only playing with two players, you have to play it split screen on the television. It's not a big deal, I guess, but it would be so cool if I had the option to put one player entirely on the gamepad's screen, leaving the entire television screen for player two. Oh well. The good news is that you can play solely on the gamepad in 1-player mode if you want to free up the television for another family member to watch TV. For 2 or more players, though, the gamepad screen gets split just like the television, and thus, feels too small to be useful, so I switch it to a map view and watch my character on the larger (split) television screen instead.CONCLUSIONThere is a lot more I could say, but really it boils down to this: If you like Mario Kart or simply enjoy racing and you own a Wii U, go ahead and buy this game! There are dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of fun to be had here. And it's family friendly entertainment that adults and young kids alike will enjoy. It also features competitive racing online, which will extend the playability of the game quite a lot. But the biggest treat is the beauty and detail of the tracks, which are so much more distinctive, creative, vibrant, and nuanced than ever before. Trust me, if you like Mario Kart, you want this game!

First time giving a review here. I started playing the Mario Kart series since Mario Kart 64. I played a little bit of the SNES Mario Kart and I never played Mario Kart Wii, however, I played Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash extensively. Now onto the review.Graphic wise, the game is absolutely gorgeous. It's kinda hard to tell when you're racing because you can only see soo much when you're focusing on the road in front of you but before you start a race, it shows a preview of the race and you can even watch the highlight reel after the race as you can watch yourself race through the beautiful track. A fun tool to see any WTF, LOL, or any epic moments. I really liked the track choices, my favorite is the n64 Rainbow Road and Twisted Mansion. There are a lot of tracks I flat out hated but that's very subjective, some people might like those tracks and some might hate the tracks I really like. One thing to note is a lot of the remake courses, some do not utilize the anti-gravity mechanics introduced which was odd to me. It could be because Nintendo didn't want to change them too dramatically that they're not noticeable. I wouldn't mind seeing Yoshi Valley have anti gravity but it felt new and nostalgic at the same time so I still enjoyed the non anti-gravity courses.To me, they fixed a lot of the problems fans complained about the previous Mario Kart, which is the Wii ver. In the Mario Kart Wii, the blue shell was WAY too common which affected the skill vs luck aspect of the game. In this game, the probability of the blue shell appearing has decreased dramatically. I could go for an entire cup and maybe I will encounter 1 blue shell or sometimes none at all. However, I played the game extensively and sometimes I will encounter the blue shell maybe once every 2 races. Very rarely there will be more than one blue shell in a single track race, however, it is based on chance and from my experience, it's very rare to encounter more than one blue shell per race which to me, it decreases the luck aspect of the game and it allows for more skill since you don't have to worry about getting hit and be dead last. With that being said, in the game, they introduced a new item which is the Super Horn. This is a very rare item but it also helps combat the blue shell problem as, it is the only item that counters the blue shell. Whenever the blue shell gets near you, you use the Super Horn and it blasts the blue shell away. So if you're usually in first place and you get the Super Horn, hold on to it for dear life. Lol.Biggest change they made is the fact that you can't use more than one item. When you have a green shell, you can't hold the item button to put it behind you and get another item. You can put the green shell behind you to protect you but as long as you have that item, you can't get another one. So one item at a time folks. When in first place, the items you will most likely get is coins, banana or green shells. You can still get other crazy items but the probability is low. This can be viewed negatively but to me, it could be viewed as a positive since the blue shell has been basically nerfed, red shells is the next threatening item so by having bananas or green shells, it encourages using more defensive strategies by holding them behind you instead of mindlessly hoard items and trow them behind you.Next subject is where people have different opinions which is the existence of coins. Coins have existed in the SNES Mario Kart and Mario Kart 7 in the 3DS if I'm correct. Personally, I dislike the fact that coins is now an item you can get when you run through an item box, especially when you can easily get coins in the tracks. In a competitive race, when you're running through an item box, out of all the potential items you could use to attack or defense yourself, you can get a coin which can be useless. However, coins do play a role in the game. Coins actually increased your top speed, the most you can carry is 10, this could make a difference in a very close race but sometimes it doesn't matter at all because we're hardly in that position since other items exist like a mushroom or shells which make a bigger impact in a race compared to coins. If the AI has a red shell behind me and all I have is coins and I'm maxxed out on coins, the shell easily changes the tide. Another thing coins do, is something long term which is, unlocking vehicle parts. I currently have 2,700 coins, so I unlocked many vehicle parts but I still have many more left to unlock. I'm trying to unlock the Gold Kart. There is a lot of replay value if you wish to 100% the game. This can be very repetitive but I really like the game so I don't mind. However, if you wish to just race and not 100% the game, then coins are useless since coins make the smallest amount of impact in a race.Another thing which fans have mixed feelings about is the battle mode. Honestly, Nintendo dropped the ball on this, there is no track/arena dedicated for Battle Mode. All your battles take place in a regular track used for racing. The tracks are exactly alike the ones used for racing, there is no difference but to hunt down your enemies and take down their balloons. It felt more like a race than an actual battle. Tracks are pretty big so you can ride aimlessly looking for enemies to attack, thankfully, we have a gamepad which tells us where everyone is. Another thing to help make things easier is there is a new control was introduced dedicated specifically for battle mode which is tight turns. Basically you drift and you let go of the gas button while holding down the drift button and your character will make a quick turn which is very useful when you're hunting down AI's in opposing teams. I honestly had fun in battle mode, mostly because I played split-screen with my girlfriend so we hunted down AI's for funzies but I feel like the battle mode experience would be better if we had actual tracks dedicated for battle, not race tracks.Lastly, things I did not like about the game. I did not like the roster that much. They did introduced a lot of new characters, like the Koopalings but besides that, we have the generic characters and their baby version. I'm fine with baby mario but to have baby luigi, baby peach, baby daisy, baby rosalina. What's next? Baby Wario, Baby Waluigi? This is very notable since there is so many baby characters, it adds more to the light class of characters. There is 11 light weight characters, 7 medium and 9 heavy. To me, it feels unbalanced. I'm tired of Baby characters, I wish they would bring in new characters or bring in returning characters. It feels very weird to not have Diddy Kong or Birdo or any other classic character that was popular after Double Dash's release. Mario Kart Wii has a better roster. Nintendo can easily redeem themselves by releasing DLC including more characters which I would be sold.Another thing I did not like is the vehicle parts. Like I said earlier, I collected 2,700 coins so I unlocked a lot of vehicle parts but the more you look around and compare, a lot of the vehicle parts make no big difference, in fact, some do the exact same thing as others. I think there are like 3-4 motorcycles which have the exact same stats but I had to collect over 5k of coins to collect. Doesn't feel very rewarding to me. They look different if that matters but stat wise, they're desame.Another thing is short cuts. Some tracks have no shortcuts, a lot of tracks have a lot of shortcuts but they felt useless because it requires you to get off course which slows you down a lot. So you take a shortcut but you're slow at doing so because it's off track. The best way to fully utilize shortcuts is to have mushrooms which to me, someone who is usually in 1-5th place, mushrooms are VERY rare. Not all shortcuts require mushrooms so you can use them but they can be hard to use because you can easily slip off and fall. So it is more of a risk vs reward type of deal which I like.In conclusion, I REALLY like the game, I actually recommend getting this game at full price if you're a fan of racing games, if you like Mario Kart, even if you like LBP Karting. If you have a Wii U, there are some games you just have to have because they're good exclusives and Mario Kart has been replicated in other games like LBP Karting and even Modnation for the PS3 but to me, Mario Kart 8 triumphs them all despite its own flaws. If you're planning on getting the game soon, I highly suggest now since you can get a free game if you register the game on Club Nintendo. So for 60 bucks, you get 2 games but the offer is only available until the end of July. Other than that, hope you understand and enjoyed my first review. :)