Mario Kart 8
I’ve been sitting here for some time now, playing Mario Kart 8 instead of getting on the computer to write a review for it. I guess that should tell you something; that I’d rather actually play the game than sit here writing about it. When it comes down to it, what can really be written about the 8th installment of a franchise that hasn’t changed a whole lot since the days of the Gamecube? Well as it turns out, quite a lot.
Everyone knows Mario Kart. Chances are even the Queen of England put in a few rounds on that golden Wii of hers whilst having a drunken college party at Buckingham Palace. You pick your guy, you pick your kart and you race around the track as you and your friends curse at each other because: “you wouldn’t have come in first if that blue shell hadn’t hit me!” For me the song and dance was beginning to become a little bit played out by the time we got around to Mario Kart Wii and the big innovation there became ‘using the Wii remote as a steering wheel’. Thank goodness Nintendo have backed off the whole motion control bit, whatever they were smoking at the time has obviously cleared from their heads because they’ve managed to come up with a wonderfully imaginative and refreshing entry to the Mario Kart Series.
So why is it refreshing I hear you ask, especially if you’re on the fence about buying the, so far, underachieving Wii U. Well to be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure. Maybe it’s the gorgeous HD look of the game, maybe it’s the much more intricate and epic looking tracks, maybe they’ve fine-tuned the driving controls. Whatever it is, you play the game and it feels right, it feels new and it feels exciting. Nintendo seem to have put special effort into making the races feel more fast paced; it takes less time to recover when falling off the track or when getting hit by a weapon, the drifting and boosting feels fine tuned and overall there’s more to see on the tracks. They even took some of the bite out of the mighty blue shell by putting in a weapon that counters it. Remember the old Mario Kart ad for the SNES? “Two speeds, fast and way too fast!” well FINALLY Nintendo you can say you’ve come close to living up to that particular claim.
Mario Kart 8 is a game about experiences. The tracks stand out as the star of the show in this game, my favorite track being a downhill race through the snow with checkpoints leading to the bottom instead of laps. Another favorite is the airport, where you race under and fly over airplanes. Every track seems to have some kind of set piece whether it’s planes, mountains or giant eels. The car designs look cool as well; my recent inkling is to race around with Luigi in a giant shoe or as Ludwig in a land submarine. Nintendo are of course well aware of how incredible the game looks and of it’s set piece nature and to that end supply a way for you to craft your own highlight reel at the end of a race. You can’t go too in depth, the computer takes it upon itself to decide the best bits for you, but it’s inclusion is still a fun feature and did lead to the rise of my favorite meme of the year, the Luigi death glare.
There’s not a lot Nintendo has done wrong here, any list of gripes I have with the game begin with “well I wouldn’t mind if”, though you could say that about anything, “I wouldn’t mind if you get me another drink” or “I wouldn’t mind if you stopped stabbing me”, but really, most of the problems do not detract from the experience. I’d like it if there were dedicated battle mode arenas instead of recycling the tracks, but I don’t really play battle mode so it doesn’t bother me. I’d like it if half the roster wasn’t dedicated to the Koopa kids, but who the hell else would I put there? I’d like it if the CPU players on 150cc mode weren’t butt holes, but I get the feeling that was kind of the point.
Buying Mario Kart 8 got me what I expected and that little extra spark of joy and fun that I almost wasn’t expecting with the package after the rather dull affair that was Mario Kart Wii. It’s still a Mario Kart game, you still race the cars, throw the weapons and go through 8 cups, 4 with new tracks and 4 with retro, retuned tracks. If you ask me point blank if you ought to buy a Wii U for this game I’d probably tell you that you shouldn’t buy a console just for one game; but if that was the case I’d say no. Mario Kart 8 is not a be all and end all console seller, if you love Mario Kart and were on the fence about getting a Wii U then it’s probably worth it, if you’re more into Call of Duty then you’ll never like the Wii U anyway. If you already have a Wii U on the other hand I’d recommend you buy it, if nothing else it’ll pad out the Wii U section on your shelf. One thing that I definitely took away from Mario Kart 8 though is that just when you think Nintendo’s running out of ideas they can often manage to surprise you and make you feel that little twinge of charm and excitement that you felt back when Mario was truly king.
