Mario Kart 8 Reviews
Nintendo has put a lot of effort into making Mario Kart 8 the best it can be, and it almost got there with the end result being a gorgeous kart racer that innovates while staying true to its beloved formula. If there wasn't previously a reason to own a Wii U then there is now, and gamers will be hard-struck to find a more complete Wii U experience than what's offered here.
Mario Kart 8 is a fun kart racer that uses gravity-defying tracks and better item balance to build a better game.
Video game players are familiar with the law of diminishing returns. Even as new entries in a series tirelessly improve upon their predecessors, our interest nevertheless wanes; with games, improved is somehow less exciting than new. Mario Kart 8 is a rare thing, then: the best entry in a series and the most exciting yet.
Mario Kart 8 is a slick and gorgeous-looking kart racer that's perfectly solid but not always as exciting or addictive as we've come to expect from the series.
Mario Kart remains pure fun, and it's never been better
Mario Kart 8 doesn't mess with the formula much, but it left me smiling
Mario Kart 8 shifts its focus from chaotic weapons to precise driving, and that makes this one of the most rewarding entries in the series.
Excellent new courses and spectacular visuals go a long way toward negating the sense of over-familiarity that comes part and parcel with all things Mario Kart.
Much more than a dolled-up version of its predecessors, Mario Kart 8's new features and refinements make a stale series fun again.
All in all, these missing features and changes for the worse are disappointing blemishes on what is still an incredibly enjoyable game. Mario Kart 8 isn't the best game in the series, but it adds enough new visual, gameplay, and track design flourishes to its well-trodden core kart-racing gameplay to be worth a look.
A combination of fun, fairness, beauty and joy, Mario Kart 8 is absolutely brilliant. A botched battle mode and some missing online features stop it short of perfection, but it's hard to imagine any Mario Kart game looking, playing, or sounding better.
In years to come the debates over the best Mario Kart games in the series will, inevitably, feature this as a contender.
Mario Kart is typically the best racer for most people. That's no different with Mario Kart 8.
It may not be revolutionary, but it adds just enough to pique interests while keeping the core experience we've all grown up with, regardless of age. Mario Kart is one of those timeless franchises that every age group can enjoy, and sometimes, that's enough to celebrate.
It may just be more Mario Kart, but that continues to be no bad thing.
The deeper handling, pop-out arcade style graphics on a scale unseen before in the series, the social network friendly Mario Kart TV and Miiverse features and of course the heavyweight Mario moniker itself are Nintendo's best chance to date of turning round the Wii U's fortunes. Quietly underpinning all this is the best Mario Kart experience I've has since it's revelatory introduction some 22 year ago.
While I do wish certain mechanics such as two-racer teams and character exclusive specials would have made the list, and many gamers might be disappointed with the partial voice chat, 8 is still an excellent entry that should not be missed.
Mario Kart 8 is a beast: with great track design, plenty of characters, karts, bikes and power ups is the best Mario Kart of all time. Also thanks to revamped online modes and some gorgeous graphics, is the single reason you need to own a Wii U.
Review in Italian | Read full review
I've played enough Mario Kart in my life to know that this is the best version of the venerable kart-racer since the Nintendo 64 era.
The overall high quality of the game is so impressive that it doesn't really matter that much that the zero-gravity gimmick barely adds anything that's truly new. Next time around, though, Nintendo might need to come up with new tricks if it hopes to keep us coming back for more.