Topic: Mario Kart 8 roster starting to feel like a Joke.. Is Nintendo going in the right direction?

@GreyMD This thread is...... STUPID AND TERRIBLE!

First of all, Nintendo is going the right direction and Mario Kart 8 is not becoming A JOKE. Second of all, Mario Kart 8 may not have the best MK roster, but I'm fine with it. Do you see me complain about the roster? No, you don't. Third of all, DLCS are OPTIONAL. You don't have to buy the DLC. If you don't like it, don't buy it, simple as that.

I'm done.... Just done...

I'm going to abandon this thread.

(Crud, my English just became so terrible....)

Here's why Mario Kart 8 sucks:
1. Battle mode.
2. No character costumes or no option to change the color of your kart.
3. Abysmal character roster filled with recolors and babies.
4. Awful jaggy shadows.
5. Terrible item distribution.
6. Mario Kart TV and highlight reels are underwhelming.
7. You can only download 16 ghosts.
8. Frequent communication errors online.
9. Can't use gamepad as a 2nd screen in multi-player
10. No mission mode.
11. You can't carry items behind you.
12. No adventure mode (Diddy Kong Racing can have one, so why not Mario Kart?)
13. Getting 3 stars in the Grand Prix mode is way too easy.

Pros:
1. It's... fun.
2. The graphics look nice.
3. The music is great.
4. The controls are excellent.

6/10 - "Mario Kart DS and Wii are a lot better."

@R_Champ I'm so glad someone else noticed that! It's not just that, it makes it less fun to try out different character/kart combos like lighter weight classes, because it's too difficult to do well with them.

Characters are split into several weight classes: Babyweight, Featherweight, Lightweight, Middleweight, Heavyweight, Metalweight, and Superheavyweight (that's what I call them, anyway). Each character in a class has the same stats. The characters don't all have unique stats, and if they added more they would have just chucked them into the existing imbalanced weight classes.

You could've just said "It lacks enough content for a 60 dollar game". Because that's literally all you need to say instead of pretending you know things.

1. Battle Mode is not a con.
2. Ok, fine. Not really a deal breaker in my book.
3. Again, not really that big of a deal when this is Mario Kart, not Character Selection.
4. Are they really that awful?
5. Item distribution is different, but not bad.
6. I like it....so because MKTV sucks, does that mean that every Mario Kart sucks because it doesn't have MKTV.
7. Eh...ok.
8. Only had one so far. I've played online quite a bit. Communication errors were prevalent in other games, so again, do those Mario Karts suck as well?
9. I agree. But oh well.
10. Mission Mode was only in DS. It was good, but do I really want to collect a certain amount of coins and hit restart over and over? I'd rather race.
11. This is not a con. I like this decision, because it prevents the first place player from holding their position because they're holding an item behind them.
12. Adventure Mode with DKR as an example? I like DKR, but it had a weak adventure mode....Leave the overworlds to the 3D Marios.
13. Find other ways to challenge yourself.

This game is a lot better than Wii. DS was fantastic, though.

The endless Kart whine:
Mario Kart DS: "The game was fine but then people discovered snaking which ruined it. Worse still the game was hacked fairly early on and with no patching? The best mode in the game was completely ruined within a couple of years. Worse still people are always quitting half way through a match when they find out they're losing. So you're either getting hammered by a cheater or you're winning and the guy quits. That ain't fun. Worst Mario Kart ever."
Mario Kart Wii: "Items are broken, when you get second you're thrown the cloud thing which is no help. Plus the Blue shell is a load of BS that you can't avoid. Worst still the bikes are seriously overpowered, all of the records are with the bikes and it's just cheap. And still they haven't been able to patch the game to kill the cheats and hackers, there are some tracks with game breaking shortcuts. They really need to fix this in the next version. This game is an outdated piece of standard def garbage in the enlightened HD era. Nintendo dropped the ball. Worst Mario Kart ever."
Mario Kart 7: "The Blue Shells are still broken and they nerfed the bikes. How dare they balance and patch the game. And lets not forget the fact that it's on the 3DS which is going to bomb like the Virtual Boy. What a joke, 3D? These guys don't know what they're doing. They don't even use the bottom screen for anything other than a map. Plus I bet that there's never going to be any DLC for the game because Nintendo never does that sort of thing. What a joke. Worst Mario Kart ever."
Mario Kart 8: "Items are broken. The Blue Shell used to do something but now it's avoidable if you hold onto the horn thing. That's no fun. Plus they killed the ability for people in the lead to hoard shells and bananas to balance the game a bit more. People are actually using their items now. WHAT? How dare they change the game. Worse still I can no-longer use my seriously overpowered bike. Dudes in Karts are actually competitive online. I can't even hack the game anymore and instead of pirating it I'm forced to buy completely optional DLC for a whole bunch of extra content. Worst Mario Kart ever."

No, Nintendo is not going in the right direction.

Mario Kart 8 isn't a bad game, but its lack of progression and content is unnecessarily disappointing. You see, good developers enhance the quality of their sequels. Developers want to top their latest offerings with improvements, not drawbacks or a lack of content. (i.e. Sims 4.)

Mario Kart 8 could have been fantastic and/or definitive but it's not due to, well, being developed by Nintendo. Sure, we're finally receiving two DLC packs in the near future (pretty awesome content; Nintendo is doing a fantastic job with that), but what's the point when Mario Kart 8 is simply a copy and paste sequel of its most recent predecessor?

realy bad game yet fun game play? wut? you can dislike anything you want but how can something really bad be fun to play? doesn't this by virtue make something fun?

Let me get this straight.. Mario Kart Wii is considered better, yet it:
1. Has a horrible battle mode.
2. Has no character costumes or no option to change the color of your kart.
3. Has poor character roster filled with babies.
4. Have awful low-poly shadows.
5. Has the worst item distribution in the whole series.
6. Does not have Mario Kart TV.
7. Isn't in HD.
8. Has absolutely horrible rubberband AI.
9. Has no chat options for the online.
10. Had unbalanced vehicles.
11. Removed drifting.
12. Has poor visuals, even for the Wii.
13. Had no missions mode.
14. Had no adventure mode.
15. Had no orchestrated music.
16. Has no vehicle customization.
17. Has no gliders.
18. Has no underwater sections.
19. Makes it take forever for you to get back on track if you fall in to the water or drive of stage.
20. Has retro tracks that don't look anywhere near as polished as those of Mario Kart 8.
etc.
etc.

It's funny how time changes things. I remember when Mario Kart Wii came out and after the near-universal praise for the DS version the Wii version got blasted by the internets. I remember reading the comments under stories on Digg (wow, so long ago) which always seemed to devolve into rants about how crap the game looked. Or how they made it too "kid friendly" by doing a lot of the hand holding with the automatic mini-turbo boosts and the Wii Wheel. How apparently the game "peaked" with Mario Kart 64 which, IMO, was a load of BS given how broken Mario Kart 64 was by comparison.

And the thing is all that BS I remember? For a lot of it people were pretty close to what was actually wrong with the game. That didn't make it horrible, it was still the best game in the series to that point IMO, but it was far from perfect. Either way, compared to what Mario Kart Wii was? Mario Kart 8 is miles ahead of it. It addresses every single thing I had a problem with in Mario Kart Wii. The tracks are more technical and more interesting, the game is more balanced, there is generally more skill involved. Plus it looks fantastic and runs at 60fps with a pretty snappy online system. So if this is the wrong direction and Mario Kart Wii was the pinacle of the series? Then wow, I'm glad they're going in the "wrong" direction.

@skywake I disagree that Mario Kart 8 is more balanced and has a better online system. The item balancing is a step in the right direction but gives a ridiculous advantage for 1st place, Mario Kart Wii on the other hand was extremely fair as there was no middle pack nonsense that allows 1st place an easy no skill win. As for the online, Mario Kart 8 made the huge mistake of only allowing you to choose from 3 races and random of which those races were repeated choices very often (maybe the DLC tracks will fix this?), Mario Kart Wii allowed you to choose any race you wanted. To me the main facts that makes Mario Kart 8 better are that you can't play online on Wii anymore and there is DLC so instead of 32 tracks, we will have 48.

How exactly is including Link in MK gonna effect the Zelda series? Is the inclusion of Animal Crossing characters gonna harm their game series as well?
I fail to see the reasoning behind this statement.

Also, regarding MK8, I think it's a great game and now due to the ability to deliver patches, they can address most of the issues with fixes and DLC (such as battle mode and so on)

Are you for real bruh? I can list a million things wrong with this post.

And I can list a million other reasons why MKWii is worse than other games in the series.

He'll do it, too! He's crazy!

Well for a start the track selection thing is really nit-picking. If anything the only thing it does is make people spend less time pondering what track they should select. It's not a big deal and more often than not some other guy picks the track anyway. Plus it means that you can't end up in a situation where people keep voting for the same tracks over and over again. Like when that exploit in Mario Kart 7 came up and you'd always end up playing that track. I'm glad they changed it if anything.

As for the player who takes the lead being able to maintain it. Well if you're good enough to take that space then why not? The way it is you're still at risk of getting hammered by blue shells and because of the way they restricted item holding Red Shells are more dangerous. A dude in second with 3x Reds? They're going to hit you unless you're really, really lucky. Probably twice. You need to gain quite a lot of ground before it becomes an "easy win", and it isn't always easy. Plus everyone has the same chance to claim it.

In terms of levelling the playing field there's less punishment to falling off the edge. In a lot of the previous games a well placed lightning bolt on some tracks could completely ruin someone's race. In this one? I've won quite a few matches after "game breaking" falls. That never happened in earlier games.

Let me put it this way, metacritic....
Mario Kart SC: 93%
Mario Kart DS: 91%
Mario Kart 8: 88%
Mario Kart DD: 87%
Mario Kart 7: 85%
Mario Kart 64: 83%
Mario Kart Wii: 82%

I think given that, objectively, you could say that they're all pretty good games. You might say that Mario Kart Wii is marginally worse than Mario Kart 8. At most you could really push it hard and say that over time these games don't age well and therefore Mario Kart 8 is quite a bit better. However I don't think you could reasonably make the case that Mario Kart 8 is horrible and Mario Kart Wii is the best game ever. Well you could I guess..... but you need to accept that it won't be a popular opinion.

Considering how Super Circuit is 1st, that's not the best proof of anything. I mean it wouldn't be anyway but still...

To be fair it was a GBA game and it was quite a while ago. It hasn't aged well but what it offered at the time was pretty good. I remember seeing it in a store demo and being floored by the fact that a portable console was doing as good a job as the SNES did with Mario Kart. IMO it was as impressive as seeing the original DS run Super Mario 64 for the first time. It's not a 9/10 now... but I can see how it could have been at the time.

The audience reaction to this game is driving me crazy - for the most part, I've heard only two kinds of major criticism:

50% of people say first place is too invincible
50% of people say first place is too vulnerable

now I'm going to deliberately ignore all the people who bashed this game for featuring an element of luck, the same way they ignore this game is part of the Mario Kart franchise and it's NOT Gran Turismo. But beside that. I have no idea how could people be divided over two extremes. How can it be "too something" for one group and too much of the exact opposite for the other? It leads me to believe that people are not thinking straight when it comes to commenting this game and they are just influencing each other with unjustified criticism.