What made 7 great with some added stuff from Wii that makes this feel like the definitive Mario Kart, which is obvious, but still. There's a reason it's been the standard for 10 years now, there's not much else you can do that this game hasn't done. Great roster of maps both base game and DLC, remakes are consistently good to great (Coconut Mall is a rare exception), character lineup is good but definitely some weird choices (zero people wanted 5 Babies and also WHERE IS CAPTAIN FALCON), but the obvious winner here is the gameplay. Every bit as smooth as you'd expect from a 7 follow-up, plus anti-grav allowing for much more dynamic map layouts and the return of ramps just make this so much fun to play. I went through the entire roster of non-remakes with my friend and it was some of the most fun we've had in a while. A+ game, even if there are a couple aspects from the older games I prefer. Only slightly.

Unless 8 blows me away, this is the best one, for sure. All 16 new courses are all fantastic, not a single dull moment among the bunch, and the retro tracks aren't snoozers, either. The trick system is, of course, brilliant, combined with the focus on drifting thanks to the easier controls and new bikes, and you've got one of the most consistently fun games I can think of. Anyone who writes the praise for this game off as nostalgia is being intentionally pig-headed, you can feel how great this is as soon as you start your first race. The only Mario Kart game so far where I've actively wanted to unlock everything manually, rather than begrudgingly acquiescing or just cheating it in. Absolutely deserves the hype.

Manhunt is a game that's always really interested me. I've always had a grim, morbid fascination in the transgressive and controversial, the way the media can make people fear a film or game more than the actual work itself could. When I was younger, I probably had the entire Rockstar history memorized and would spring into a hearty speech about how "games aren't really the problem, it's the people", but you'd never really find me playing any of Rockstar's games; in an ironic reversal, I was just as fixated on the controversy of the material rather than the material itself. Of their entire catalog, Manhunt was the game that piqued my curiosity the most, since the very concept was so boiled down: you just kill people in gruesome ways, no morality tests, no philosophical questions. I played the first few levels when I was 13 or so, and thought I was a real scary edgelord for loving a game where brutality was so rewarded (guess what my favorite fighting games were), but I never really got far in it. I felt satisfied with the couple hours of exposure I got, and I think that feeling hasn't changed for me now, years later.

Manhunt lays its cards on the table early, and lets you know what you're getting into quite clearly: a dark, almost noiresque atmosphere, aided by the gritty PS2 visuals and clearly Carpenter-inspired soundtrack, and the sneering voice of Brian Cox cheering you on as you brutally murder the people in your way. For the first hour or so, it really is effective. The camera angles and quality of the Executions, along with the fluid mocap work, provides a grisly realism that works to unsettle even the most grizzled of horror vets. Combine that with some high-level sound design, and the end result is a spectacle of potently macabre entertainment, but it's not something that lasts.

As with most horror-adjacent media, exposure and desensitization are its Achille's heel. Not only is the arsenal of weapons surprisingly limited, a good third or more of that arsenal aren't available for Executions, and some of the weapons even reuse their Execution animations, which leads to even the most effective kills feeling dull after a couple levels of repeats. Unfortunately, rather than try to "up the ante" and make the game progressively more disturbing, it feels as though the developers completely throw in the towel somewhere around the third act, and turn the game into something more like Max Payne (sans bullet time) or even a "3D Hotline Miami"; the difficulty spikes, stealth is thrown to the wind, and guns become your primary tools against enemies, drying what remained of the atmosphere out completely, and turning it into a repetitive chore as the game gets closer to the finish line. And once you get to that finish line, is there a grand revelation waiting for you? Something that completely changes the context of the game, and perhaps even gives an "explanation" of the savage bloodthirst that you willingly took place in?

No. The antagonist dies, and the game ends with a brief news montage giving a slight bit of depth as to what happened, but never any concrete answers or commentary, which leads me to ask: what was the point? Was this a meta-commentary on how the elites are the real monsters, how police are just as cruel as the sadistic gangs you've been victim to, but society still finds a scapegoat to blame rather than looking at root causes? Is there perhaps an ironic connection between me, the player, never finding out any reasoning for why this all happened, leaving me in the same shoes as the protagonist? Could Rockstar be criticizing themselves, using the antagonist as an obvious stand-in for game developers who revel in the controversy garnered from subjecting the world to gruesome imagery?

Then I remember that this is a game that actively applauds you for performing more sadistic kills, with no cartoonish overexaggeration or a detached "silliness" to the bloodshed, just a jagged realism to everything you see. I believe there is no deeper meaning to be extracted from it. The game is sick, and I'm sick for playing it through to the end.