Mario Kart 8

Mario Kart 8 is hands down the best entry in the Mario Kart series. The slight modifications and additions made to the actual racing are beneficial to the experience, the track design is consistent and creative, and its presentation is simply impeccable. It’s just a pity that it refuses to bring any new game modes to the table; being an excellent but safe sequel.

Mario Kart 8 keeps several elements introduced by Mario Kart 7 and the Wii version. The game comes almost as an amalgam of those two titles, uniting their qualities in one place. From Mario Kart 7, it takes advantage of the possibility of gliding and racing underwater with a propeller, besides kart customization and coin collecting. From Mario Kart Wii,  it brings back bikes and the larger number of racers (twelve instead of the usual eight).

Thereby, Mario Kart 8 already features a varied group of mechanics. Gliding brings an important element to the race that not only ensures a satisfying change in how you control the vehicles – by adding verticality to the mix – but also opens up the possibility for the player to experiment with the level design of the tracks, by trying to fly over obstacles creating a shortcut by yourself. The propeller, on the other hand, remains mostly cosmetic, since the underwater gameplay is imperceptibly different from the standard one, standing out only for the appropriate sense of slowness.

The customization of vehicles remains with its positive and negative points, allowing the player to decide more accurately the attributes of each kart, but significantly reducing the difference between the characters themselves. They are still separated by their weight, but within their respective groups the characters have almost equal attributes (Mario and Luigi, for example). This way, they can be considered skins in the sense that they only change the appearance of the player-controlled avatar.

Coin collecting, in turn, is an excellent mechanic that makes racing more complex. Each coin collected – up to a maximum of ten – in addition to offering a tiny turbo, increases the vehicle’s overall speed, making players strive to collect them. Also, to make the system dynamic, the player loses three coins when hit, which is something that inevitably occurs.

Mario Kart 8 also features more balanced versions of the bikes, comparing it to Mario Kart Wii. In that game, they were absolutely better than the usual karts, with an ability that increased their speed. Here, they are only an alternative to the classic vehicles: while karts are slightly better on straight lines, where they can bump on the bikes, bikes are better at making sharp turns.

Balancing all these elements makes it understandable the fact that Mario Kart 8 doesn’t bring so much new to the table, preferring to explore the mechanics that already exist. Its only major differential, however, is significant. The game introduces the concept of antigravity, allowing segments of the track to be sideways or upside down without the karts falling.

What makes antigravity go beyond a visual effect is the mechanic built into it: when the player is in a part of the track where antigravity is active – something easily identifiable by the blue markings that mark its beginning and the animation that makes the wheels spin – each time the player collides with another kart, they both get a turbo. This allows for many strategic uses: two players, for example, can come together to overtake other racers by continually bumping into each other or one of them can use the collision to get a turbo and make the opponent get off the track with their turbo – especially if they are turning without drifting – and the turbo can even make the player benefit if someone bumps accidentally into them.

With all these mechanics at play, developers give themselves enough tools to build completely different courses. It’s amazing the variety of options present in each track. A single segment of Thwomp Ruins, for example, consists of a huge valley that gives the player numerous choices of how to cross it: the player can go through the walls at both ends with antigravity; they can risk following the path with Thwomps – angry stones that can crush racers – to try to gain some time; they can go through the lake at its center, which is a slow but safe way to get to the other side; they can even chase a rolling Thwomp to a gliding ramp – the fastest and most dangerous route. All of these options in just one part of a single track.

Another outstanding course is Mount Wario. It consists of a rapid descent to the base of a mountain, falling into that select group of tracks that don’t have more than one lap. The player starts by jumping from the back of an airplane to the top of a snow-laden mountain. From there, the path follows sharp turns until it reaches a cave that culminates in a dam that leads to a forest that leaves the player on a ski slope that descends to the base of the mountain while passing by a cable car. Each part has its own peculiarities: the first part reveals shortcuts if players dare to jump over cliffs to skip a part of the road. In the cave, players can try to stay on the ice until they reach the glider part or fall into a river. The dam is the antigravity moment when players travel all over its side trying to catch turbos on devices that fall down the mountain along with the water. In the forest, players will have to use the turbo resulting from successfully jumping over logs, then dodging trees at high speed; and at the end, when you reach the ski field with its wide path, players can abuse the drift as they race past the flags until they reach a large gliding part where they have to cross floating rings to maintain height and gain speed.

The developers’ commitment to making each one of the tracks stand out is also visible in their attempt to accommodate twelve racers without widening too much the roads. On the Wii version, the sheer number of racers often resulted in the chaos of characters glued behind each other constantly colliding. To avoid this problem, here they make the tracks constantly split into two routes, spreading racers while offering significant choices to the player, as each path is usually designed differently, presenting its own obstacles. This design also allows the player to see the opponents who have gone their own way by overlapping the roads – it is not uncommon for the player to look up or down to check on their opponents – and this design climaxes on the last course of the game, Rainbow Road, where two roads intertwine, allowing players to jump from one to the other.

In addition, the courses also share some similarities in their design. Many have the same specific U-shaped curve – which starts with a steep climb in antigravity and ends in a dizzying fall – but each one has subtle differences to not make it repetitive: if in GBA Mario Circuit this curve appears in its purest form, Mario Kart Stadium makes the descent culminate in a gliding sequence, while Shy Guy Falls goes a step further and, on the descent, places a waterfall to increase the speed of the kart. This means that developers have given each of the tracks their own identity while still making them familiar enough to not distract the player with their flashy look.

After all, they are all remarkable from an aesthetic standpoint as well. Sweet Sweet Canyon is built of candy, with a caramel river; Electrodrome is a nightclub made of neon, with huge pulsing speakers and globes of light; Cloud Trop Cruise begins on top of the clouds, surrounded by beanstalks, and soon takes the player to a flying ship and through a thunderstorm; and Rainbow Road has players racing through a space station.

The game’s presentation is simply beyond reproach. The animations are fluid and expressive – Luigi’s constant angry gaze became a meme – and the settings have striking details like the “Peach of Liberty” in Toad Harbor and the koopa-shaped mountains in the background of Sunshine Airport. The impact this has is evident: when the player realizes that there are Boos commanding the statues trying to attack them in Twisted Mansion or that it is the Super Mario 3D World gold train flying over N64 Rainbow Road, throwing coins at the track, their immersion is significantly increased.

Mario Kart 8 is just as careful with its soundtrack. The music tracks are dynamic and catchy and get faster with each lap to increase tension – in Mount Wario it continues to grow dramatically – and the instruments even change in certain segments to suit their unique identities – in Cloudtop Cruise its trumpets are replaced by an electric guitar when the player passes through the thunderstorm and shifts to the triumphant Mario Galaxy theme the instant they escape the storm. Similarly, the instruments change whenever the player is racing underwater, where the melody gets softer, usually being produced by flutes. In Dolphin Soals, when the music is softer and lower, the flute almost disappearing, if the player emerges from the waters, towering saxophones will invade the soundscape in a dazzling effect. In addition, the music is often integrated into elements of the setting, such as in Shy Guy Falls, where the sound of them working in mines is added harmoniously to the music.

There are also new items and modifications to old ones. The infamous blue shell, for example, got nerfed, no longer removing the victim’s item, while the lightning is more powerful, hitting all players and not just those in front of the user. There are four new items: the boomerang can be thrown three times; the Piranha Plant tries to eat everyone in front of the player, including items, while giving a small turbo; the Super Horn hits anyone close to the user, breaking even the blue shell; and the Coin delivers three of them to the player when used.

Surprisingly, the latter is the most important addition to Mario Kart 8‘s balance. Coins are often handed to those who are leading the race to leave them unprotected. Previously, even the most common items, such as the banana and the green shell, could be placed on the back of the kart to defend it from enemy projectiles. The Coin only increases the kart’s speed, giving a small turbo as a bonus. That is, as soon as the first place gets a Coin, they know that they can’t help being easily hit from behind and that they will need a lot of skill to use elements of the course as protection.

And so Mario Kart 8 continues to reflect society. Those in front get richer and complain about it – the usual criticism around the blue shell never goes beyond the “why should I be punished for being better?” – while those far behind are trying desperately to cling to whatever incentive the game offers them. And those in the middle hope to get to the first place – however unlikely – but fear more those who occupy the last positions, being constantly afraid to fall behind them. Is it insane to use Mario Kart as a little parallel to the class struggle? No doubt. But it is fun nonetheless.

Despite doing everything right, however, Mario Kart 8 doesn’t make much effort to explore its great ideas through inventive and challenging game modes. One of its predecessors, Mario Kart DS, was the only title in the franchise to feature a kind of campaign mode that developed the game mechanics in unexpected ways. The absence of this game mode in all subsequent games, therefore, is simply unfortunate. Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed is a brilliant example of what to offer in a single-player mode, having a long campaign full of distinctive and rewarding challenges. Mario Kart 8 only offers normal races, time trials, and a battle mode, which is disappointing.

The battle mode in the Wii U version of Mario Kart 8 is also terrible, using regular courses instead of battle arenas – thus allowing players to lose sight of each other constantly. To add insult to injury, when a player loses their three balloons/lives they become invisible and can still hit other players – who, in turn, will feel like they’re being hit by ghosts without warning. The Switch “Deluxe” version of the game, fortunately, corrects all that.

It’s true that Mario Kart 8 could have presented some kind of campaign mode or any different challenge than usual. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that the developers have crafted a stellar racing game that is complex and balanced, with creative racing tracks that never fail to impress the player. In other words, Mario Kart 8 is brilliant in what it does, but it could just have tried to do a little more.

November 14, 2019.

Review originally published in Portuguese on November 14, 2014.