Wenn man einfach mal kurz abschalten und sich in die virtuellen, knallbunten Kurven werfen will, kommt man an der mittlerweile legendären Mario-Kart-Reihe nicht vorbei. Gerade Teil 8 hat mit Abstand die meisten und zum Großteil am schönsten gestalteten Strecken aller Vorgänger. Gerade wenn man die DLC einbezieht, die in der Deluxe-Edition auf der Nintendo Switch bereits integriert sind, ist der Spielumfang beachtlich.

Auf dieser Konsole kommen dann noch ganze 48 weitere Strecken durch den Booster-Streckenpass-DLC dazu, die ich selbstverständlich allesamt gespielt habe. Insgesamt bin ich nämlich mit allen Geschwindigkeits-Modi (50 ccm, 100 ccm, 150 ccm, gespiegelt, 200 ccm) durch jeweils alle Cups des Hauptspiels sowie der 6 Wellen des Booster-Streckenpasses gefahren.

Die Steuerung ist durch das intuitive Driften extrem spaßig und jeder Mario-Kart-Spieler kennt sicher das Gefühl, wenn man sich auch ohne Bewegungssteuerung mit dem ganzen Körper in die Kurven legt. Einziger Wermutstropfen ist für mich die undurchdachte, im Nachhinein hinzugefügte 200-ccm-Geschwindigkeit, denn die meisten Strecken sind schlicht nicht darauf ausgelegt.

Letztendlich habe ich es dann aber dennoch geschafft, alle Charaktere und Fahrzeugteile freizuschalten.

It’s probably unfair of me to review this game without engaging with all its systems, yet, I've rolled credits many times and devoted a lot of hours to playing this game (1060 km and 2090 coins), so I think it’s only fair. The game needs no explanation; it's the definitive version of Mario Kart 8 with its DLC and the new DLC from Booster Course Pass. At the time I'm writing this review, the last two tracks aren't available yet. I've spent most of my time engaging with Grand Prix, I fully completed 50 and 100 CC for the base game and DLC and 150 CC for the base game alone. Firstly, I have to preface that this game is a ton of fun, and its sales speak volumes. Every map is meticulously crafted, it's vibrant and captures the Mario and Nintendo as a whole. The character roster is immense, the unlockables are fun, and it is an enjoyable experience. I've only played the single-player component, so there's a lot I can't speak for personally, but I can imagine how great playing with folks like Smash Bros is for my family. I never felt any real problems, but once you start the harder modes, some of the gimmicks become excessive. Mostly the blue shell, everything else feels somewhat fair game. Especially when trying to get gold at 150 cc, it annoyed me so much. I understand why mechanics like that exist, giving everyone an even playing field so the person at last can somehow make a comeback, but yeah, everything is fine because it's avoidable if you are skilled enough, but the blue shells just boggle my mind. So yeah, the deeper you dig, certain flaws feel a lot more apparent. Beyond that, it's a joy of a game, and I will probably play it on and off again if friends come over or something of that nature.

In Conclusion, it’s very good game and a fun casual experience!

Cara, facilmente um dos jogos que mais me divertiu na HISTÓRIA. Esse jogo é INCRÍVEL, verdadeiramente INCRÍVEL. Não zerei, faltou 5 copas pra zerar no modo 200cc (sendo que 3 delas eu já tinha terminado com 2 estrelas, e eu tava tentando zerar tudo 3 estrelas, então lol),
e provavelmente nunca vou zerar, a partir de agora pretendo jogar só com amigos de vez em quando.

Esse jogou significou muito pra mim emocionalmente, na verdade deixar de jogar ele é quase como o término de uma parte da minha vida, por isso eu posso dizer com toda certeza que eu realmente amo muito esse jogo.

obs: eu zerei o jogo 5 meses depois, jogaço

Logging because I finally beat all 192 time trials. An on-again-off-again multi-year endeavour that was, simply put, fun as fuck.

It's just one of the best of these, ever. 99.99% of arcade racers have some mechanical fumble that grates after hundreds of hours (Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed with like 10% less sliding on the drift would be the best racing game ever made), but there's just nothing of the sort here. Riding the high of beating all the time trials, I wrote a very excitable and long-winded review of this, but now that I've let myself cool down, I still find it a bit wanting. Not for story or anything lame like that, but for something more immaterial.

Shame I have no idea what I'm actually asking for. It's a tight race between this and Wii on any given day, but that game has a delightfully singular jank that makes it feel a little more special. You cannot get 'Mario-Karted' in the same way in 8, and basic front-running/bagging strats are much more consistent and effective as a result. What I'm describing here is a game with more competitive consistency sure, but I'm not sure I actually want that! Plus I really do miss the added maneuverability / required skill that inside drifting and wheely-ing added to the gameplay. Double Plus, that slightly grimier art style is more appealing to me than the squeaky-clean cartoonishness of this.

This is a far better game for time trials, much more approachable and it has the best online experience ever in its genre. I play it a lot more than MKWii! But for everything it does right, it's all just that little bit smoothed over. The price we pay for mechanical bliss is a dulling of the spark that makes this series so unique. It's a price I'm willing to pay for this game, but it shouldn't have been such a surprise when Tour was what they did with the property next. In many ways, this is the Mario Tennis Aces of its series, in that it has otherworldly-strong game feel (and that's the part I care about the most), but it's just a little too shallow for me to get over the moon about. Fortunately, this has like 80+ hours of deliriously fun single-player content as well as a great multiplayer experience, while playing that game solo is one of the saddest things you can do with a Nintendo Switch.

This review needs to end before I talk my own rating down any further. Great game that makes me concerned for the future of the series. Literally Elden Ri-

Not only a brilliant Mario game but an outstanding racing game.
You and many friends will have fun playing the races and then never speaking to them again when someone loses.
People of all ages from young children to old adults will enjoy racing on some basic to advanced tracks.
Highlight tracks for me are Rainbow Road (Wii U/Switch), Hyrule Circuit, Waluigi Pinball and Mount Wario.
I'm not a big fan of the tour tracks they added in for the booster course packs but that's just me.
Highly recommended for racing fans. But, they already own it.

IMO this game really excels in 200cc. The high speeds are thrilling on nearly every track, and it sparks this desire to master the way it moves and nail every turn perfectly. Short of 200, while there's a lot to love in the visuals, music, courses, etc., it mostly feels so slow to the point of boredom. The A.I. even on 150 is so incompetent that you will have a monstrous lead 95% of the time.

And while I'd never slander this game on amount of content, especially with the Booster Course, shockingly few of the nitro courses feel like series defining staples to me. I jam with Mount Wario, Toad Harbor, Wild Woods and Animal Crossing, but most of the rest all hover around an equal level of good that it's hard to get attached to them like with many courses from games past.

I'm tired of spinning my wheels.

Mario Kart 8 has been the pack-in, the default Nintendo game, the Wii Sports of our era, for nearly a decade, for the entire time that I've been an adult. I think it's the last game I first played in a store at a demo kiosk. At this point it's a bizarre amalgam of years of Nintendo iconography and design principles; the online menus featuring Mii avatars and the sort of skeuomorphism of online communication being represented by all the players standing on a globe feel like a relic of the original Wii era, we have widgets on the main menu for Amiibo and Labo. Tracks now range from remakes of the SNES original's tracks, to the brand new courses made for this game, everything in between, and levels from the more recent mobile game. Mario Kart 8 feels completely anachronistic.

Minutes before writing this I finished 3-starring every cup in the grand prix mode, finally clearing those few DLC cups I didn't quite perfect the first time. There's something absurd about playing this game single-player, and something perverse about getting good at it. Despite the fact that I have probably played more local multiplayer of this game, and with a wider variety of family and friends, than any other game released since, I can't help but feel utterly alone in playing it. Maybe it's because when I was a kid everyone I knew played games, everyone had a Game Boy, several families on my street had a GameCube, everyone had a Wii, when I was starting college everyone had a 3DS and a few people even had a Wii U. Despite now outselling most of those systems, the only Switch I've ever seen that wasn't mine was one I gifted to a family member. The sheer amount of content in this game makes me feel how a certain Minecraft developer must have felt when all his candy started rotting.

With my passion for Mario Kart being at a all time high as of August of last year, it's finally brought me to revisiting Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. How does it hold up to me? Well, I'd say that I love it just as much as 7, if not slightly more. Because it has a mix of things that I think it does better and things that I think it does worse.

For the improvements, it's undeniably with the general gameplay. Drifting now feels even smoother, faster and tighter than it did in 7 while maintaining everything that made it work, with the cherry on top that makes it even more joyous being the addition of a third drift boost you can pull off It adds so much more to the gameplay than one could ever imagine as you now gotta find perfect opportunities to turn long and hard enough to get that juicy purple spark, and I know I'll have a blast with Time Trials because of this.

The returning mechanics from 7 are just as great as ever, barring gliding which feels more stiff and less free-flowing than in 7, but it still feels good overall, so it's not a huge dealbreaker. Underwater driving feels just as great as it did before, and tricking is even more improved upon, as there's now an even bigger sense of timing to pulling them off, making them more satisfying to do as a result. Kart customization also makes a return, but now with more karts, wheels and gliders to work with, so it's essentially more expansive.

Then we have the newest addition to the gameplay; anti-gravity, which literally flips Mario Kart on its head as now it opens up huge opportunites for the courses to go crazy with layouts. Because you can now drive on walls, ceilings and miscellaneous other things you can access that you normally couldn't in previous titles.

Speaking of the track design, at its best, its easily some of the best course design in any Mario Kart, giving us bangers like Thwomp Ruins, Shy Guy Falls, Sunshine Airport, Dolphin Shoals, Electrodrome, Mount Wario, Cloudtop Cruise, Bowser's Castle, Mute City, Super Bell Subway and Big Blue. All of these tracks make amazing use of the existing and newly introduced mechanics to provide some truly exhilarating courses. Although it is less consistent with how many bangers it provides compared to the previous 3 entries in the series, on top of providing one of the most pathetic Rainbow Roads since 64's. Like, seriously, imagine having a Rainbow Road be themed around a fucking space station, that literally goes against the entire point of Rainbow Road's appeal.

As for the retros, again, at its best, it provides some of the absolute best remakes ever seen in a Mario Kart game as much like the previous game, it really goes all out with revamping many of them to fit the modern gameplay mechanics, such as DS Cheep Cheep Beach, 3DS DK Jungle, DS Wario Stadium, GCN Sherbet Land, 3DS Melody Motorway, N64 Rainbow Road, GCN Yoshi Circuit, GCN Baby Park, GBA Cheese Land, SNES Rainbow Road and GBA Ribbon Road. But much like the nitros, it's less consistent with providing phenomenal retros like 7 did, and two of them are just straight up bad remakes that miss the point of the original courses. N64 Toad's Turnpike rips away the difficulty of the original track by widening the course while not adding more cars to compensate, and literally having anti-gravity walls that allow you to drive over all of them, which a design choice so stupid that you'd expect Mario Kart DS to pull it off (look, I know I have MKDS ranked as my favourite Mario Kart game, and it still is, but some retros in that game really blew). And GCN Dry Dry Desert just rips away everything that made the original great, with tornadoes being replaced with an oasis portion (in a track called DRY DRY Desert), and making the quicksand portion easier to get out of if you end up closer to the hole.

Now for the new items, which are quite the mixed bag. On one hand, you have the Boomerang Flower and Piranha Plant which are great items that add a lot to the trademark Mario Kart chaos, with the latter being one of my favourite items in the series, but on the other hand, the Coin makes a return as an item from Super Mario Kart, and it's just as worthless here as it was back then, and the Super Horn is good for taking out incoming items around you, but serves as a pathetic "get out of Blue Shell free" card.

Although speaking of, I'm not exactly fond of how the game handles some of its recurring items. All the Shell and Banana variants now work so you can't collect other items while you have Triple Shells or Bananas activated or single Shells or Bananas behind you. It's somewhat alleviated by Deluxe in particular bringing back the double items from Double Dash, but still. What it doesn't alleviate for, however, is how Triple Bananas now circle around you instead of being able to hold all 3 behind you. That really doesn't make anty sense to me when they do not function like either of the Shells. And the Blue Shell got nerfed hard as it now does as much damage as any other item compared to the devastating blow it caused to the player in 1st place in pretty much every other entry.

So yeah, that's essentially the few things that I think 8DX did undeniably worse than 7, and when comparing this to everything I think it did better, I think it's understandable why I don't think it's better or worse than 7 overall. However, there are two things that give 8DX more of an edge, and those are the return of the VS. Race mode and the battle mode.

7's biggest and most baffling drawback is that it didn't have a VS. Race mode like DS and Wii, which heavily killed replayability if you didn't love the game enough to want to go through a whole cup every time. Personally, I have come to appreciate 7 a lot to the point where I have no issue replaying these cups in their entirety, but it was still a baffling thing to not include for a handheld title. 8DX not only brings this back, but brings its customization in full force, with the addition of even being able to customise which items are in a race Granted, this was in a much later update during the BCP waves, but it's an amazing addition nonetheless, and it's available for anyone to experiment with even if you haven't bought the BCP yet.

And for the battle mode, it's easily the best one the series has had since Mario Kart DS. The Mario Karts between DS and 8DX fumbled in one way or another with how it handled their battle modes. Wii had the addition of Coin Runners and some really based battle tracks, but was held back by the fact that it forced you to play in teams, and you couldn't choose how long to play for, nor how many rounds you can do. 7 had most of the same issues, but it doesn't force teams onto you, and then vanilla 8 just had nothing of value, only giving you the most limited Balloon Battle ever, and only 8 normal tracks as battle maps, none of which were fun to battle on. But now, wth 8DX, it now provides 5 amazing modes for you to pick between; Balloon Battle, Coin Runners, Renegade Roundup, Bob-Omb Blast, and Shine Thief. All of these modes are a joy to play on, and have as much epic customization as VS. Race as you can finally customise how many rounds you can do and the amount of time allotted among other things. And to top it all off, you have 8 amazingly designed courses to battle on, oozing with creatvity and charm, including Dragon Palace, Lunar Colony, Luigi's Mansion, the return of Wuhu Town and Urchin Underpass.

So, overall, while it defnitely has its own drawbacks compared to previous titles, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is an absolute gem of a game that has a lot to offer and can definitely be considered the definitive Mario Kart experience with how it refines so much of the formula, and whatever issues it may have are far from enough to detract from the joyous experience anyone can get from it. All this without even taking the Booster Course Pass into consideration that we got between 2022 and 2023, which is definitely something I plan to check out at some point in my life. For now, though, I'll just indulge in the fantastic base game and the huge amount it has to offer.