This game is just a chore. A chore you need to do every day, or you will fall behind and never be able to recover. I'm not having fun in casual races, nor competing for the highest ranks in a fair environment. I'm just farming every nook and cranny, every possible gamemode for the scraps of progress I'll be able to make. The only reason I haven't stopped playing is that once I do, I will never come back since I will have missed characters and resources with no option to find them again.

I am scared of what the future holds for this game. If you start playing right now, you may be able to complete most of the season objectives/races. It is impossible, however, that you will be able to complete all of them, since some races ask for an specific character that was given during a previous event or season. As the game progresses, I believe that the level requisites for characters from previous seasons will be increased across the board, so as to not leave them in a useless state with no incentive to invest in them. And so new or returning players will be unable to participate in the fun. The other option is that the game losers players and starts giving out loads of resources for free.

Putting the progression aside, the driving is uninteresting at best, terrible at worst, and I'm tired of people saying the game is just brought down by the microtransactions. There is no way to fix this game. Most of the time you just spam drift boosts, while getting interrupted by any small bump (being in the air stops your drift) and getting destroyed by items. You don't even need to know the track, the amount of control you have over your kart is so big you could be drifting the wrong way, start another drift in the opposite direction, and keep driving as if nothing happened. Getting hit can send you towards the wall, where you get stuck with no way to drive away. If you go flying for some reason, you suddenly gain immense speed towards any direction you are holding. And the whole aerial space is filled with invisible walls that get in the way of the route you would like to take. Finally, the items are an unbalanced mess, and by farming the legendary passives you can start a race while holding an item, instantly hitting everyone at the start. Very cool. Hope your character has a shield or invulnerability, otherwise you will be having a bad time.

Anyway, the game is terrible and not worth your time. Check my Mario Kart 8 Deluxe review for other stuff this game does NOT do, such as allow you to use the "speed boost" item while drifting.

While I could say this is the best kart racing game ever made and leave it at that, given the recent influx of half-assed kart racers that have received favourable (or not negative enough) reviews I'm actually going to explain what is so perfect about this game.

Kart racers in general are a game genre that was defined by Mario Kart back in the SNES days, but what we look for in one has changed a lot along the way. MK8 goes further than ever before by putting the focus in having the best driving physics of any game that came before it. While other MK clones stagnated in the idea that a kart racer should simply consist of crazy tracks and crazy items, things that MK8D also does perfectly (of course there are some exceptions with the tracks), MK8 goes a step beyond in the gameplay department.

Landing from a jump into a drift, holding your drift in the air and keeping your charge, landing from a glider into a drift and skipping the start-up, using mushrooms while drifting without it messing up your line, tricking off a ramp while drifting, catching some air due to a bump and losing traction upon landing, bumping into other drivers in any of these situations. Other games cannot even dream of handling these scenarios, but in MK8 everything is as smooth as butter. What's more, in MK8 your kart has weight to it. Turning may feel hard, as if you are fighting against the trajectory you were previously following, making it extremely satisfying when you can accompany your kart into following the route you want it to go.

And then, there's the sense of speed. 150 cc already looks great, thanks to the extremely detailed tracks that blaze past you. But on 200 cc it's just on another level. Honestly, the booster pack courses almost made me lower the game's rating, because their flat textures make half the game's tracks look boring and slow. But there are still some great ones in there.

Anyway, this is a must-have for all switch owners and I'll personally slay anyone who says Disney Speedstorm is better.