I know this wasn't the game I teased in my Banjo-Kazooie
review. But I'm a victim of circumstance!
Here's the story. I have been dying to get a Wii U for probably 2 years now, but didn't want to pay a lot for it. So when one came up on craigslist for $150 with a Wii fitness board, a bunch of Wii games, and
Mario Kart 8 (!!!!), and I negotiated it down to $80, I was over the moon.
But then I got home and found that despite what the seller had told me, Mario Kart 8 wasn't in the system.
Leaving me with a Wii U with no Wii U games. Ugh.
But then I was cleaning and testing the other Wii games he'd sold me a few months ago, trying to sell them for a tiny bit of cash, and out dropped Mario Kart 8 from the manual of one of the games.
I was THRILLED!
I love Mario Kart. I have so many fond memories of playing Super Mario Kart at my cousin's house, and Mario Kart 64 is one of the best party games ever (future top ten list?). I even love Double Dash. But the Wii game was kind of boring, honestly. The additions weren't that fun, and the courses looked kind of drab and colorless, and it was a graphical downgrade from Double Dash, in my opinion. Which is embarrassing. So I skipped Mario Kart 7 until I could find a dirt cheap price on it, which I still haven't. But Mario Kart 8 had gotten some superb reviews, and a lot of people I know had it and love it, so I wanted it pretty badly.
And it lives up to the hype, big time. It's the most beautiful Mario Kart game I've seen, and one of the most visually attractive video games I've ever played, period. The colors are gorgeous, the environments are varied and wonderful, the backgrounds seem to go forever and are meticulously detailed, even when you can't interact with them.
The courses are fantastically designed and super fun. Many feature the new anti-gravity idea, and let you drive up walls at certain points of the course, which is very fun.
The cast of characters is enormous, and there is a ton of unlockable content, including characters, new cups, and new items to customize your karts. Pretty much every Mario character you could want is here, although I would have loved to see some deep cuts like Wart (Super Mario 2), Geno and Mallow (Super Mario RPG), and definitely Fawful (Mario and Luigi). But the DLC also included some characters I didn't know I wanted, including Link, Tanooki Mario, and Cat Peach!
Awwwww!
Speaking of the DLC, talk about reasonably priced! For $12, I got 4 new cups (the same amount as Mario 64), and a bunch of new characters. That's almost an entire game's worth, and the new cups and the courses in them are excellent.
Nintendo frequently gets no credit for this, so I'm going to give them tons now. God bless you, Nintendo, for making all of the Wii controllers work on the Wii U. Even though I only have one game pad, with a few wiimotes and nunchucks I had laying around, the whole family was able to have fun playing. Oh, and you can now do 4 players cups (I'm not sure if you were able to do this in Mario Kart Wii or 7, but regardless, I love the idea) as opposed to the 2 player cups you were able to do in 64 and Double Dash.
It's hard to find things to criticize in this fantastic little game, but I must. Some of the retro tracks they include from previous games are just bad and totally miss out on the things that made those tracks great. They all look pretty, but sometimes strip the original concept from the course.
For example, in Toad's Turnpike (N64), there are huge swaths of the track that just let you use the anti-gravity to ride of the sides of the wall, or launch you over the traffic with your glider. 95% of the fun of Toad's Turnpike was in the fact that you had to weave in and out of traffic, and this completely misses the point. The course is also super short, making this weakness even more exacerbated.
Or, take the Donkey Kong course from the N64 version. The original cleverly made it so that there were several branching paths to take in the course, and so that you couldn't tell what place you were in, until the very end. This made exploring the course and finding the optimal path critical, and filled with mystery, while you were driving blind against other drivers taking alternative courses. I can still get in arguments with people on what the best path is. In 8, the course is recreated flawlessly, but now it tells you what place you are in, taking away the tension and mystery from the course.
On the other hand, one of my favorite tracks Baby Park (Double Dash) is included and is a fantastic recreation of the tiny purveyor of chaos. So they don't always muff it.
Generally speaking, Mario Kart 8 is a phenomenal game, and a return to form for a series I had (probably unfairly) given up on. Go check it out! I hear the Nintendo Switch version is excellent as well, but I can't afford it, so I'll enjoy my Wii U version for years to come. I'll give it a 9.7/10.
-TRO
