Retromelon
Member
It pains me to have to make this thread. I downloaded MK8 12 AM on release night and was blown away by the graphics upon booting it up. I even came in 1st place in my first 7 races online. The more I played, though, the more it dawned on me: this is the worst mario kart I've ever experienced. The reason for the title is because super circuit and the original are the only ones I have not extensively played. My criticisms are based upon over 3,300 online races in MK8 played and a lifetime of appreciation and enjoyment of prior mario kart games.
Most Of The Tracks Are Boring
They have little in the way of hazards, unique quirks, or interesting level design. After playing as long as I have, the only two standouts I can remember are Mount Wario and the other wario one, with all the mud and speed jumps. There are like three different mario circuits/stadiums in the game and the only difference I can tell between them is that one of them takes place at night. Can you believe that they somehow managed to make bowser's castle AND rainbow road both boring? It's unbelievable. Comparatively, Double Dash's and MKWii's percentage of good tracks as opposed to all the tracks in game was like a solid 60% in both games, and even mario kart 7 and DS had a decent amount of classics to race on. They were brimming with imagination and fun. Many of the added dlc tracks were really good, but they came far after release and cost money to play. Nearly all of the included tracks in 8 are bland and forgettable, and its a fuckin' shame, man.
The Gameplay Is Conservative As Fuck
Nothing particularly innovative was added to the formula. Now, innovation is not really needed when you're working with a framework as prolific and successful as mario kart, and yet each game added huge new features: Mario kart 64 moved the series into 3d, Double Dash had 2 characters per kart, DS added wireless play, MKWii added 12 player racing, 7 added flight and underwater segments as well as car customization. In this regard, MK8 is a letdown. Antigravity is a primarily cosmetic addition. If you bump someone while in antigravity you get a small speed boost, that's about it. Furthermore antigravity negatively impacts the flow of the race because it often manifests in the form of a choice; there are two paths forward, and the player must go down one or the other. This breaks packs of players up and can halt your progression up the ranks for ten or twenty seconds as the person in front of you chooses a different route and gets away. This leads to my next point.
The Mario Kart 8 Caste System (AKA Items have been RUINED)
The mechanics of the way races occur have evolved into something foreign and disgusting. Simply put, items are not good enough to help you make comebacks anymore. In MK8, if you don't break away from the pack of other players at the first item box, you will spend the whole race fighting the same 3 players to break out of ninth place. While the poor bastards in the back keep belting each other and holding each other back like crabs, the rosalina or metal mario in first place speeds away, never to be seen again. This is allowed because items rarely catapult you to high positions like they would do in past mario karts. In MKWii, getting a star would bring you up four or five places, if you were at least ok at racing and didn't constantly fall off the trac or bump into walls. In MK8, when you use a star no noticeable speed increase happens whatsoever, it functions like a temporary invincibility shield, and you will be lucky to move up one or two places, if that. Hundreds, and hundreds of times I would spend entire laps around the same position I started in, not making progress, because 1) items don't have the potency/game changing factor they used to, like the star, and 2) you and the losers around you will keep smacking each other with boomerangs and shells while the players in 2nd and 1st place get away. If I can be allowed to speak anecdotally for a moment, MK8 allows two players to race 10 other people online from the same WiiU, locally. I played local online with an associate, estimating conservatively, 20 to 30 hours of online races before they came in 1st place ONCE. (It was funny for me to laugh at and constantly tease him that somehow he could never manage to win a race, but it must have been so frustrating for him) And it might surprise you to hear that this person was no novice to mario kart and competed against me tons of times before in the older titles.
Heavy Characters Are Overpowered
Because breaking away from the rest of the participants of the race is so important to winning, heavy characters are gifted with a pronounced advantage. They have inherently higher speed than medium and light characters. I strictly play Yoshi, a medium weight character, and no matter what wheels or car I pick my speed stat will be mediocre at best. It's even worse for light characters, who must console themselves with acceleration, which will surely help them the millions of times they will get hit per race because they cannot build up enough speed to break away from other players. Again, anecdotally, I win noticeably more on the rare occasions I opt for Rosalina (a heavy character) instead of Yoshi. She has higher speed, she goes faster, she can build up a sizable distance from other players, she doesn't get hit as much.
Tracks Are Wide As Shit
This is one of the biggest flaws of MK8. Every track in this game has the width of a god damn highway. It is an enormous contributing factor to the tracks all feeling bland and boring. It's really noticeable when you play retro tracks like peach's castle or yoshi's circuit (dlc track) and they are so much wider than they originally were, ruining the tightly designed nature of them and sapping the fun they elicit as an outcome. According to the developers, the tracks were given increased width because it needed to accommodate the space needed for 12 players racing simultaneously. I vehemently disagree with this design decision. During a race, you will never see 12 players racing side by side to warrant the need for all that additional room. Gee, the tracks in MKWii, which introduced 12 player racing, were normal sized and I never noticed a problem with space in between all the fun I was having. How did MKWii manage to do it?! Truly an answer in search of a problem.
The Roster Is Wack
Its packed with baby characters, metal reskins, and koopalings! None of these characters are particularly interesting or feel like their own original concept. They are a tremendous wasted opportunity. Let's look at all the beloved characters from previous MK games that didn't make the cut so these abominations could be included (shout out to honey queen who I forgot about while photoshopping):
Melt Pink gold Peach for scrap.
Battle Mode Still Sucks
Its been 12 and a half years since the last console mario kart with a battle mode that didn't suck. MKWii removed balloon limits in favor a stupid scoring system. MK8 brought hope back by reinstating the balloon limit system, so you couldn't just die over and over online, but promptly squandered it by lazily copy pasting entire race tracks as battle fields.
As Mario Kart 64, Double Dash, DS and 7 can all attest, the foundation of a fun battle mode are compact arenas to do battle in. By going the quick and easy route, Nintendo dropped the ball yet again with battle mode, leaving fans to play the older games and wait 5 more years to see if they will fuck it up again next time.
You Can't Knock Players Off Track Anymore
I know there will be disagreements on this one, and I can see why they did this. Having the lakitu instantly swoop in and bring your car right back onto the track minimizes downtime, and eases the burden of punishment for sloppy racing on the less skilled. Acknowledging these reasons, from the standpoint of fun I must give a full throated condemnation of this change. Some of the most fun moments I have ever had in local multiplayer were laughing riotously at friends who sailed over cliffs and careened down mountains on the final lap, as they were winning. Double Dash players, I'm talking to you now.
Magical moments like these will never happen in Mario Kart 8. Even if it scars the player its happening to, its a part of what makes mario kart special, and I will not stand to see this removed. At the very least, Nintendo could give us the option in a settings menu to disable fast lakitu recovery in local multiplayer.
In Conclusion: The Game Fails On All Fronts
The fans of this game will try to defend it by saying the graphics are amazing, that there is so much content, that they thought the tracks were great, and that I suck at it and I'm bitter.The graphics are great, aliasing problems aside, that is the one thing for which I cannot fault it. To this day I am wowed by MK8's visuals. There is a lot of content; but dlc that costs money should not be a viable defense for the base game. The tracks were not great and compared to the majesty of past ones like wario colosseum, koopa cape, wuhu Island, dk mountain, and tons more, they are PATHETIC. Compare bowser's castle and rainbow road to the ones that came before it, or don't because there is no comparison. The tracks in MK8, for the most part, unequivocally and irrefutably suck. As to whether I suck, saying it might comfort you if you disagree with me, and I have no evidence to the contrary except my word that I have been playing these games for well over a decade now and I feel quite proficient at them, having earned two star rank in Mario Kart Wii, and 1 star rank in mario karts 7 and 8. This game is the worst 3d mario kart because MK64 has unquestionably the best battle mode, Double Dash debatably has the best racing and the second best battle mode along with additional battle modes no other game has like shine thief and bomb battle, MKWii has perhaps the best collection of tracks in any mario kart game, and DS and 7 both have excellent tracks, better battle modes, and more fun and balanced racing instead of the high speed getaways of higher place players and awful item changes in 8. MK8 can at times be fun, but in light of its predecessors it is an unworthy successor.
That is all I have to say, here is a pic of daisy cruiser in MK8.
