POSTED 9/6/14


MARIO KART 8

Nintendo

Oh to live a plumber’s life.

What a bludge! You get to play tennis, golf and get Olympic, rescue princesses and party the rest of the time. Except when you’re fanging a vehicle around tracks of varying shades of insane. Plus you wear funky plumber’s crack-proof dungarees. It’s all win!

As was the most perfect videogame ever, the original Super Mario Kart was way back when on the SNES. Since then, of course, Nintendo have elaborated upon that winning formula – numerous times, as is their tendency. So, all manner of vehicle customisations, new weapons, AI tweaks, wussier scoring and vehicles other than karts are added. This really should be called Mario Kart Bike ATV Hang Glider 8. But that’d be unwieldy...

A criticism that, mostly, we can’t level against this latest recipe fiddle. It looks rather natty, the soundtrack sometimes borders on phenomenal, and between 16 new ones and 16 remixed classics there’re 32 tracks to get your hoon on, erm, on. The staple three strengths of GP return, as do time trials. There’s also battle mode, but not the good battle mode that we used to have. Then there’s online racing, which works really well – except that you have to race scunge from all over the planet who’d rather play dirty than try to win.

Probably the biggest new thing is the introduction of antigravity in certain sections of certain tracks. Your wheels fold up, and you just keep on racing. Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads. Well, until the antigrav bits end.

Ultimately, as we’ve come to expect after so many evolutions, this latest Mario Kart’s slick-as despite lots of unnecessary stuff, but is still one of the best multiplayer couch games ever (make sure to nab the Pro Controller).

The best bit though? The only bends in sight aren’t jammed with poo.

CLICK THIS!



CLICK THIS!