Party Game Sundays: Mario Kart 8

Yes, it's been quite a while since I've written an installment of Party Game Sundays. I think I've missed three now, but I'm not too positive on that. The main reason I haven't written anything is because for two of the three weeks we've played the same two games. One of those games being the hot new Wii-U exclusive Mario Kart 8. I'm actually on a vacation right now, but I have a bit of time to myself, so I might as well tell you all about it right now.

Mario Kart 8 came out on Friday, May 30th. Much like Sportsfriends I wanted to play it immediately, so Noukeo and I went to Landers' as soon as humanly possible. In a few hours time we unlocked every character, and it was super fun the entire time. 

Dear Nintendo, baby characters are terrible. Please stop adding them to your games.

I wish that I could tell you that Mario Kart 8 is a revolutionary title that's going to change the course of the Wii-U, but I can't. It's another Mario Kart game. While I think it's a damn good Mario Kart game it's still the same thing you've played for years, but this time it looks much prettier. For a lot of people, like me, that's enough. What's weird is that I actually got to play Mario Kart 8 at a Best Buy last summer. Nintendo was doing there weird demo tour, and Noukeo and I went to play Mario Kart. Much as I had expected, it was some Mario Kart-ass Mario Kart.

What makes Mario kart 8 different is that your car can ride along walls, and go upside down. The karts and bikes can do so by transforming quickly mid-race. The wheels turn into some kind of crazy anti-gravity discs. This allows for the new courses to get all kinds of crazy. In one of my favorite courses you're literally driving straight up a waterfall. The retro courses also incorporate the anti-gravity mechanics in ways that make the old feel new once again. It helps that Mario kart 8 retains some of the new features of 7, like being able to drive underwater and glide through the air. 

The anti-gravity aspect of the game makes the courses super interesting.

One thing I noticed immediately about this Mario Kart is that it's harder to control. In the Wii version, I often drove automatic, because I didn't want to have to deal with all the power sliding shenanigans. In Mario Kart 8 there is no choice, so you have to power slide if you want to do well. Without power sliding it seems like most karts have little to no turning ability. It takes a while to get used to, but now I'm able to drift around corners like a pro. 

As you may have seen from footage of this hot new Mario kart product it looks incredible. Nintendo continues to use art direction to their advantage to somehow have their games look better than everything on higher spec platforms. Never before has Mario's mustache looked so incredible. The game doesn't look quite as amazing in multiplayer though, because they need to keep the frame rate up. It's still fun as all hell to play with friends though.

This is a hot highlight reel I uploaded. I was Rosalina.

Normally Nintendo seems as if they're painfully out of touch with what most people want or look for in video games, but in this game they actually did some really cool stuff. At the end of each race you can watch a sweet highlight reel of all the best moments from the race. You can even watch the entire race if you want, but that's just crazy. What's really crazy is that you can upload the 30-60 second highlight reels straight to Youtube for everyone's viewing pleasure. It's not the most exciting thing ever, but I feel like it shows that Nintendo is trying to get more in touch with what everyone in the modern world is doing. Another part of that is that the online multiplayer in this game works competently, which is pretty shocking to me. 

Describing Nintendo games, especially iconic ones like Mario Kart is getting increasingly weird for me. I love them, but they've been largely the same. It's easy to see that Nintendo is trying to change things up, but they're doing it incrementally. All I know is that Mario Kart 8 is a super fun game. If the Wii-U keeps getting titles like this it might actually be worth owning at some point in the future!