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Mario Kart 8 Discussion (Nintendo Wii U) [game]
 
Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U
9.14/10 from 37 user ratings

Welcome to the official discussion thread for Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U!

To start, please add this game to your log, add it to your collection (if applicable), and (when you are ready) rate it using the link above!
This May, one game will define MULTIPLAYER FUN on Wii U. That game, is Mario Kart 8!


Mario Kart has been a Nintendo staple since it's SNES debut over two decades ago. Only two Nintendo products neglected to have an entry and each entry that has existed is a charming title in someone's eyes. Entries like Double Dash on Gamecube helped push the boundaries of creativity and uniqueness, while more recent titles have continued to refine a core experience. Mario Kart 8 seeks to continue that trend with it's jaw-dropping HD visuals, Anti-gravity racing, and incredibly well-designed tracks.


With all the characters known, the deep customization possibilities to each individual racer, the classic 32-total track count... there's so much to discuss and share and debate. Reviews are just coming in now and while I'll post a few below but they're not all gushing with pride. User Stephen recently made a thread aiming to have a more comprehensive list of reviews available. So... Are you impressed with the Mario Kart TV feature, excited for the Super Horn, or bummed at how battle mode has changed? Share your thoughts on the game below, now, upon release, and well after! Below you'll find a list of Nintendo Network IDs as compiled by our own Mop It Up! Be sure your friends are added to your console!

Mop It Up's NNID List of Mario Kart 8 Players

(Negative World Username) - (NNID)
Abdooooo - Abdooooo
Anand - AnandX
anon_mastermind - Mastermind85
Brick - Brick20
Brook - Ice-Insignia
canonj - canonj
chrisbg99 - chrisbg99
chrisguy - chrisguy
Cooliocuneo - Cooliocuneo
Cryojin - Cryojin
Cubed777 - C77777
DeputyVanHalen - DeputyVanHalen
DrFinkelstein - a00link
Earendil - Ear3ndil
EagleC83 - EagleC83
gamewizard65 - gamewizard65
Guillaume - Pandareus
Hero_of_Hyrule - Deku_Scrub
Jargon - Hendrik
-JKR- - JKRiki
kgtennispro - kgtennispro
kriswright - kriswright
legendofalex - Alistair
ludist210 - Ludist210
Mop it up - Mop_it_up
Nate38 - VictorVonPlugman
Octorockin - NoseyTengu
ploot - Realploot
PogueSquadron - PogueSquadron
pokepal148 - pokepal148
Rebonack - rebonack
Scrawnton - Scrawnton
SeVeN CDN - SeVeNCDN
Smerd - Smerd20
Stratos - Chronocast
stephen - stephen087
Super_Conzo - Super_Conzo
thefly - LeaveLuck2Heaven
TheOldManFromZelda - OldManFromZelda
TK_Thunder - The_Trish
Tranquilo - Arponare
VofEscaflowne - VofEscaflowne



Reviews
Eurogamer - 10/10

Game Informer - 9.25/10
Destructoid - 9.0/10
IGN - 9.0/10
Joystiq - 4.5/5
Nintendo Life - 9/10
Polygon - 9.0/10

GameTrailers - 8.6/10
Gamespot - 8.0/10
Giant Bomb - 4/5

NintendoWorldReport.com - 7.5/10


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05/16/14, 03:52    Edited: 06/28/14, 23:37
 
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@Zero Because items are what cause us to fall behind, so shouldn't we get items to help us get back to even things out?

Have you played with 4,000+ rated players yet? That's when things really get hectic.
06/16/14, 07:04   
I feel like I always get an item to put me within striking distance of the next racer.
06/16/14, 07:54   
@Mop it up That to me is a reason to scale back the effect of items so they won't knock you from 3rd to 10th and such, not try to balance the brokenness with more crazy items to get you from 10th back to 3rd. Because it really doesn't balance things at all, it just creates a situation where you end up yo-yoing all over the place the whole race. In 8 I feel like there is at least more consistency in my racing and the place I end up in makes more sense to me than it did in all of the other online Mario Kart games.

And nah, haven't played uber high ranked people yet. I'm not good enough to get set up with them. If your argument is that once you are playing with the best of the best things get bad then well... I'm not in the position to agree or disagree. And I probably never will be, because I'm like slightly above average at best. Most people will probably not be playing at that level though.
06/16/14, 08:17   
@Zero, @Mop it up - how weird that'd happen by random then! No I haven't tried the friends options yet. I need to make sure everyone here is added to my list soon. :)
06/16/14, 11:00   
@pokepal148
These are some good ideas.
Although I'm pretty sure people can't steal your mushrooms. They do get a speed boost if they run into them, however.
06/16/14, 17:51   
Zero said:
@-JKR-

Still, it's interesting that Mario Kart has trained us to think that we deserve to come from behind. Like, why should that naturally be the case? In most every other multiplayer game I play (besides Mario Party), if you fall behind, you're probably going to lose.

But the problem is in Mario Kart 8 "falling behind" is so much a matter of luck. If you start out and aren't in first, and the people around you get 3 shells and you hit them, you're suddenly in the rear-middle of the pack. Then if the last place person got something to hit you, you're in dead last. And what could you have done about that? Nothing. No skill will stop that from happening.

So now you're in last, and what can you get to help you out? Not a star, for sure, because that thing is GARBAGE now. Mega mushroom might get you back into 9th or 10th (where, by the way, you're back in range of the people who have close-range death weapons so you're probably getting hit). I've gotten a Bullet Bill once in the weeks I've owned the game. Mostly I get mushrooms.

The issue I have is that before it was like you were wrecked if you got in first. It would be blue shells out the wazoo and people hated it. But now the people in 2nd and 3rd and 4th are so busy fighting the person in 1st just zooms away. The "pack" is the most dangerous place to be, not first. But that makes no sense to me. You shouldn't be punished for doing poorly when so much is based on luck. What sort of backwards nonsense is that?
06/16/14, 18:12   
@-JKR-

Now you see why I was doing so great the other night. I got ahead early, raced a tight line to build my lead and nobody really messed with me (aside from the occasional blue shell, but I was able to get away from one of them) and I only lost one race (to you actually, and I finished in third place out of twelve racers). It is strange, it's hard to break out of the pack sometimes, but other times, you get lucky.

I don't care for luck as much as I do skill. That should set people apart, not the fact that second place got three red shells.
06/16/14, 18:16   
@ludist210

How do you get ahead early, if I could ask? I wonder because I get the boost thing at the start like everyone else, but I always always always ALWAYS seem to get less of a boost than 50% of the other players, and instantly start the race in the back 3rd of the pack. And there seems to be nothing I can do about it. (Though I don't play with Bikes, is that why?)
06/16/14, 19:03   
@-JKR- Falling behind has always been a matter of luck though. Except now I feel like it just... happens less to me? Because I'm not in the middle of the pack getting bombarded by lightning bolts and chain chomps and bullet bills and everything now. I can actually get into a decent racing groove. In fact, it seems like Nintendo did something I've been saying they should do for years... made the items you get near the back of the pack more focused on giving the player an advantage without actively screwing everyone else over. Which is to say, you get a lot of mushrooms and such now, which can help you get back in things a bit without knocking everyone in front of you out all the time.

I come back from the back of the pack all the time though. The only time I don't is when I'm racing with a group that is consistently better than me. And I'm fine with that, because why should I be able to come from last place to a decent place racing against people better than me? That's whacked out Mario Kart logic.
06/16/14, 19:15   
@-JKR-

Getting a boost is one thing. Getting a BIGGER boost means having your timing be very precise. Hit A as soon as the second beep comes.
06/16/14, 19:21   
I, too, have only gotten the Bullet Bill in the weeks of owning the game. The bottom third of the pack is almost impossible to get out of due to poor item distribution. One mushroom in last place? What is that going to do? The star is also worthless.
06/16/14, 19:28   
So...kind of a funny story. I was playing this game with my wife last night, and she kept swerving back and forth across the track, and occasionally (read: mostly always) ended up driving off of the track and into the walls. Obviously, she never placed well in any of the races, and on top of all that, she complained of her hand getting sore while playing. After about three tracks in the Mushroom Cup were through, I was curious as to how this was all happening. I mean, Mario Kart isn't exactly the hardest game to play (we were doing the super-easy 50cc mode, too) and I had no idea why she was having so much trouble. This isn't even her first time playing this franchise.

So, I decided to do some investigating. We backed out of multiplayer mode and I had her run a Time Trial by herself so I could see what in the world she was doing wrong.

Turns out she really didn't know how to play. To start things off, she wasn't using the analog stick to steer on the Gamepad - she was using the d-pad. (!) And the pain in her fingers/thumb was due to the fact that she wasn't just pressing left or right to steer; she was also pressing the 'up' direction. Why? She thought it would make her go faster. Constantly pressing up was not only putting undue pressure on her thumb, but also made driving in a straight line nearly impossible since the d-pad is sensitive enough that even a slight rock to either side would register as a turn. And of course, the digital input of the d-pad made those turns HARD turns, rather than a subtle drift that can be done with the analog stick.

So...yeah. After I explained that she should probably use the analog stick to steer instead, that pressing up didn't affect speed, AND to drive in a straight line she can just let go of the analog stick...she finally got the hang of it. She placed much better in the following races, and even got the hang of pressing the right trigger to do tricks off of ramps.

Guess it just goes to show that we (or at least, I) can't expect anyone to just be able to pick-up-and-play Mario Kart. Apparently there are some things that we (as "gamers") just take for granted...but for those that wouldn't identify as a "gamer" there is still a learning curve.

I felt we both learned something from the experience.
06/16/14, 19:42   
@TheOldManFromZelda
Star is worthless speed wise, it's best used to cut across grass and other shit but if you aren't on a track with a lot of hazards it won't do anything. You can't catch anyone while using it normally.

For Bullets, I had a couple friends over a week ago and I told them I had never gotten one. They mainly stayed 6th and 11th the entire night, but around 10-11 it seems like you'll get it. Last place seems to be entirely screwed with items.
06/16/14, 19:56   
@Zero The issue is that there still are items that knock players from 3rd to 10th, but now there aren't items that can take players from 10th to 3rd. Having one but not the other is less balanced than having both or neither. If you prefer neither, that's fine, but not how this game typically works in 12-player races.

My point about player rank is that, if all players in the room are close in skill, the balance issues are a lot more apparent than if there is a big skill gap. If you are still finding players who are in the 1000s and low 2000s, you probably are more skilled than they.

For the record, I don't think this game is 100% luck or even 50% luck, I simply feel there is more luck involved than in previous games.
06/16/14, 20:08   
@-JKR-

My boost is almost maxed out with my configuration (Biddybuggy kart, button tires, cloud glider) so I get a pretty big boost off the line.
06/16/14, 20:11   
As for the Bullet Bill, it's really rare in this game, which I don't think is a good thing for the 9-12th guys. I have gotten three of them, two when I was in 5th and one when I was 3rd. All three times, there were 12 players. That's insane! I plowed through the guy in first with the bullet, though I also got hit with it once in first meself. That is whack, I never got hit with a bullet when in first in other games.

@GameDadGrant Yeah, I do find people tend to go for the D-pad first if I don't explain the controls. I guess its shape make it look more like something that controls the character on screen? But yeah, I've realised many years ago that we as longtime players tend to take our experience for granted, and don't realise that some things which are obvious to us due to our thousands of hours of playtime, are not obvious to newer players. In the case of Mario Kart, I find people having trouble grasping the concept of holding a button to drift. Nintendo must've figured this out when they added the auto-drift option to Mario Kart Wii, and people appreciated it. But now they've taken it out for some odd reason, and people are struggling to adjust.
06/16/14, 20:18   
@Mop it up Yeah but like I said, it just seems way less rare to me now to get knocked back that far. And I haven't had trouble racing my way back up either. Generally speaking when I race with the same (general) group of people for multiple races now, I tend to have a somewhat consistent finishing place. This was definitely not the case in the older games, where I'd finish in 1st and 12th with the same exact people. And it wouldn't even be like "man I raced so well, I deserved this first" or "man I raced so poorly, I deserve this twelfth". It was almost invariably the result of nearly unavoidable items.

I'd say I'm generally playing with people at my skill level? I finish near the top more than the bottom, but I'm rarely dominating or anything. My average finish is probably like... 4th or 5th place. And there is consistency, which I love. I get with a good group, it actually feels competitive. It doesn't feel like the races are all determined by which uber items I got hit with and when.
06/16/14, 20:22   
@Zero All right, well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. When it comes to any game with a luck element, people will have different experiences, and it's clear I have bad luck (which I often do) and you have good luck. I don't think me getting a coin and the guy behind me getting a red shell shell is them beating me with skill, though.

Honestly it sounds like you just never learned item management skills in previous games. I never experienced your troubles once I learned the best way to utilise items.
06/16/14, 20:37   
No amount of item management can protect you against waves of blue shells, bullet bills, stars and lightning bolts though. Still, I'll just have to disagree... I think I was pretty good at item management. Actually, whenever I played battle mode with NW people, I did much better than I did racing NW people. I think it might have been the NW Chicago meet-up where I dominated battle mode? I'm not saying battle mode item management is the same as racing item management, but I have the basic concepts down. And really couldn't I just throw that argument right back at you? I'm not experiencing the troubles you are, so you must not have learned the best way to utilize items in the new game? Not that I think that is the issue here.

I dunno. Generally speaking, I don't really buy into arguments that go along the lines of "you're not good enough to realize how bad this is", like how Brawl was considered terrible by some just because it wasn't as good for people at the highest levels as Melee was. In part because I don't think a game that is clearly meant to appeal to the mainstream has major issues if it works fine for the masses of gamers and only has serious issues at a high level of play. There are very few games that can be seriously competitive on a higher level out of box, which is why serious tournaments tend to have to set up specific rules to make things more balanced for higher level competitive play. I'm really not too concerned about whether a game is super balanced at a level of play that only like 2% of gamers will ever be at anyway. I just want something that works for me and my friends and family and such, as well as the people I get paired up with online who, it seems, are mostly at my level (I'm assuming Nintendo tries to pair you up with people at your level in some fashion?)

Then again, a lot of the issues involved in how different people feel more comfortable with different balances could be fixed if Nintendo would give more options for play in Mario Kart. This is one of the flaws of Mario Kart next to say... Smash Bros., the fact that you're mostly just stuck with the default item balance whether you like it or not.
06/16/14, 21:06   
@Zero I think people exaggerate how common blue shells were, but there were a couple ways to dodge them, such as using a mushroom or going into a cannon. Bullet Bills travel in the middle of the road, so stay out of its predetermined path and you won't get hit by it. You can dodge stars pretty easily, they even come with a warning siren. The appearance of lightning can be predicted as well, though since it hits everyone, it isn't very damaging to any one person unless they were jumping over a gap.

Not that previous games didn't have issues, I'd never argue that, but I felt there were more ways to deal with things in them. The blue shell is the only real item I felt needed some major tweaking, but even that felt better than this new game.

You're right about my item management comment, that was a bit rude of me and I apologise. And it's true, you could say the same thing about people claiming this game has bad item balance. Even so, I don't feel like there is as much item management in this game. However, of course everyone's different, but I don't think it's just high-level play where people care about balance. Even my sister and friends have commented about how they feel the items aren't as good in previous games. They didn't talk about balance, but they said things like how the game is less exciting because there are less items, how they get hit more often because they have less defense, how coins are pointless, etc. So yeah, I think it's more than the top 2% who have issues with this game (I'm certainly not in the top 2%, ha ha), but it's a matter of preference of course.

There is still some item management in this game but it has been reduced by the one-item system and the item distribution being almost completely random. There's no longer a reliable way to predict what item you might get from a box, nor what your opponents might get. There are less shortcuts to use with speed-boosting items, and the speed items themselves have been reduced in power, or even removed in the case of the Mega Mushroom. Lightning no longer appears on a timer and so it is a lot tougher to predict when it might appear. Trapping by placing bananas and green shells on boosters, ramps, and sharp turns is greatly reduced, since these items are better served as a shield.

Typically, I find the best use of items is to play defensively. Gotta use the shells and bananas to block attacks, and once my item gets destroyed from an attack, I have to pray to the item gods that I don't get a coin as my next item and become completely defenseless. And if the guy behind me gets triple red shells, it's a guaranteed hit on me, if not two hits, assuming they don't suck at using them. Triple reds are this game's real blue shell.

All that said though, I think the game's biggest balance issue is the coins. A player getting combo'd by a bunch of items results in losing all their coins, which then means their top speed is greatly reduced. It's a lot tougher to catch back up when everyone ahead is faster. Plus, the coin item is beyond useless, and is typically a death sentence.

And just to make clear, I don't think the game is all luck or half luck, just more luck than previous games. I'd probably say previous games had about an 80/20 or 75/25 skill/luck ratio, and this one is about 70/30 or 65/35.
06/16/14, 21:25   
Edited: 06/16/14, 21:28
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