Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) Review

May 29th, 2014 by

Mario-Kart-8

Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Kart Racing
Players: 1-4 locally, 1-2 per system online, up to 12 per lobby online
Console: Wii U
Hours Played: 13 hours and 38 minutes
Progress: Placed first in all 50cc and 100cc cups (unlocking all characters), earned more than 1200 points in online multiplayer

The Wii U is unarguably in need of a killer app to drive sales and really get the ball rolling on the current generation of Nintendo home systems.  Pikmin 3, Wind Waker HD, and even a brand new Super Mario 3D World, while excellent games in their own rights, all failed at accomplishing this task one-by-one in recent months.  Even the two most recent entries in the Mario Kart series were fairly disappointing in many respects, with broken battle modes that skewed greatly toward the unskilled and rather tepid graphics.  So, with the weight of past missteps and a dire need to move systems looming over its head, is Mario Kart 8 the light at the end of the tunnel that will push the Wii U out of its slump and into the hearts and living rooms of the world?  Read on to find out wherefore kart thou Mario.

The first thing that strikes you in Mario Kart 8, other than its fashionably red box, is the quality and simplicity of its presentation.  Unless you’re in a mode (like VS Race) that affords customization options, there’s absolutely no way (or need) for you to go in and tweak anything.  This “get to the race” mentality is apparent throughout the game, from the surprisingly fast-loading tracks to the brevity of extraneous introductions and menus.  Even the usually remarkably well-generated “MKTV” highlight reels available at the ends of races can be sped up or slowed down on command to keep things moving along.  All things considered, I think in this way Mario Kart 8 is the first game Nintendo has produced that can really be called “next gen”.

Running the game at 1080p (upscaled from 720p) on your modern HDTV at (reportedly) 59 fps, the in-game graphics and menus just sing with crisp vibrancy and colour. The primary graphical complaint I have is that any time Nintendo uses pre-rendered footage like on the sides of menus and after you beat the final cups the video compression is extremely apparent and it makes it feel more like you’re viewing a YouTube video that hasn’t loaded properly than a modern HD game.  Also, if the camera ever gets too close to racers during the MKTV replays the graphical cracks start to show a bit insofar as shadows, shading, and anti-aliasing are concerned.

The music, which Nintendo is very proud to have largely recorded live, is just as great as the graphics, but falls into the background all too easily in my opinion and is therefore very unlikely to end up on your iPhone or in your “top video game music tracks” list.

With the very high frame rate and wide selection of control methods from the GamePad to Wii remotes to the excellent Wii U Pro Controllers, Mario Kart 8 controls as good or better than any one before it.  I don’t think it’s possible to have a qualm with the controls with so many varied and versatile options at hand.

The new items and MKTV highlight reel functionality easily top the list of great additions to the Mario Kart formula.  My favourite new item is a red/yellow loudspeaker called the Super Horn that shows up fairly rarely when you’re in first (as well as more frequently in other positions) but can explode any incoming projectiles including blue shells.  This has saved me on a number of occasions and is easily my favourite addition since bikes were added in Mario Kart Wii.  The MKTV mode is quite versatile and while it lacks the complete controls of some of its predecessors in the video game world like the replay features in Call of Duty games, it still gives you a ton of options to watch, edit, and save your greatest karting moments, and even share them directly to YouTube like I did here:

You can save up to 6 “top” replays to your account and they are seemingly stored in the cloud for you (or just take a good long while to load unlike the rest of the game) too.

A couple of more neutral changes in Mario Kart 8 are item handling and the inclusion of a new vehicle type, ATVs.  I was angry at first about the changes to item handling, but I’ve grown to accept them as apt (while still not better than they used to be).  The change is that when you’re dragging an item like a shell or a banana peel behind you it still counts as in your inventory, so if you hit another item block you can’t get a new one until you’ve used the one you’re dragging.  I’ve often relied on clever item banking to give me an edge, but now that it’s gone I don’t miss it nearly as much as I thought I would.  The ATVs, while providing decent controls for Battle Mode, don’t really mix it up very much at all and during a race you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between their performance and that of any other four-wheeled kart.

The most absolutely unforgivable and detrimental to the game’s value as a whole change is of course the hotly debated Battle Mode.  Yet again Nintendo decided to go off the deep end and mess up battle mode to a basically unplayable point.  What makes it infuriating is that they fixed what people have been complaining about over the course of Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 7, when you run out of balloons in Battle Mode you once again become a ghost and are basically consigned to messing up others with what (to them) appears to be floating banana peels until the match ends.  With this mechanic back in place, Mario Kart 8 could have had the shout-it-from-the-rooftops best battle mode ever in a Mario Kart game, but this time Nintendo decided to be the most blatantly lazy I have ever known them to be and simply recycle actual (mostly) full-length racing tracks instead of making any attempt at custom battle mode ones.  By placing players piecemeal throughout the course to start with and not having the Lakitu reprimand you for going the wrong way down the track, Nintendo basically slapped a sticker on this mode that said “DONERINO” and went about their merry way.   I tried several times to have even an ounce of fun in this misplaced and castrated mode to no avail.  No one I played with could even believe that Nintendo would have been so stupid as to not even have spent the time to draw a simple medium-sized untextured circle where we could have had a proper battle or just copy/paste recycle some of the excellent battle courses from games past.  I may have to go to therapy to get over just how much of a betrayal Mario Kart 8‘s battle mode is, there is no excuse for Nintendo doing that to its fans.

Other less wanted changes in Mario Kart 8 include the worst character roster in recent memory and uninspiring new courses. When I heard that Nintendo was padding the limited space in Mario Kart 8’s character roster with all freaking seven koopalings I was hoping that I had heard wrong, or was having some kind of a stroke.  Unfortunately, neither was the case and Nintendo used up precious space that could have been filled with any number of more imaginative characters like any other Kong, any Mario & Luigi or Mario RPG character, or better characters from past games like King Boo, Dry Bones/Bowser, Pac-Man (in the arcade versions), and other enemies.  The 16 new tracks are hit and miss, but I’d say there are only maybe 6 tops that are liable to become fan favourites and be in the running for inclusion in the inevitable next entries in the series.

The unsung hero of Mario Kart 8, though, definitely has to be its online multiplayer.  If this is how Nintendo is handling online multiplayer now, I expect very great things indeed when Smash Bros. 3DS/Wii U come out later this year.  When you go into online multiplayer either with one or two local players it connects almost instantly and there is very little wait before you’re getting beaten badly by people in other countries that are too far away for you to punch when they hit you with a blue shell.  You can even create exceedingly easy to search/join custom tournaments with custom rules to an even greater degree than in past Mario Kart games.  One problem that I faced when there aren’t many lobbies open, though, is that the game has a tendency to want to force you to spectate an entire match in some other less full lobby before letting you join the race than just giving you your own so you can wait for players to join you or prioritizing matches that haven’t begun yet.  This could be fairly easily fixed with a patch, so here’s hoping Nintendo gets on to refining its match-making that one extra step to propel it into “better than COD” territory.  After playing more than 30 online races I never once experienced any lag or latency to speak of, even when using a wireless Internet connection.

At the end of the day, the great graphics, slick design, and best-ever Nintendo online multiplayer (easily on par or exceeding other current gen consoles’ offerings) just make up for the painfully obviously lacking battle mode to make Mario Kart 8 contender for one of the best Mario Karts ever (#1 is still Mario Kart DS with its excellent original tracks and spot on battle modes).  Hopefully the shiny graphics and new console/game bundle will be enough to draw more people into the Wii U fold so that we can start to get more original and creative 3rd party releases going on the system.  Mario Kart 8 is the game the Wii U deserves, and I can only hope that it’s the first of many steps in the right direction for Nintendo and their unique home console.

[taq_review]