No, I don't own a Wii U. One of my friends bought one recently and we played it a lot yesterday. So yeah, my impressions.
It's... really underwhelming. I mean just everything about it seems really lacking.
So first things first, the roster. How goddamn boring is that. I mean they cut characters like Birdo, Dry Bones, and Dry Bowser, but it's fine to get Metal Mario and Pink Gold Peach? What the fuck is Pink Gold Peach? It's literally fucking Peach with a Metal Mario-type skin over her that's pink. That's all it is. Then we get like 8 Koopa Kids. There's no Diddy Kong, no Funky Kong, no Birdo, no Dry Bones, no Dry Bowser. Also Lakitu is now a racer so who the fuck does the starting alarm?
Then there's the weapons. It seems really shallow. Like the amount of weapon boxes in the game are few and far between, instead there's fucking coins everywhere which I don't see have any purpose outside of unlocking stuff in-game. Hell one of the possible weapons is a coin. All it does is give you a coin. Not even a magnet for collecting coins, not a false coin that would trip someone up if they went for it, it's literally just a goddamn coin. I mean you have your banana, red shell, green shell, blue shell, etc, but the rest is unexciting. There's the horn or whatever that just damages people around you and the 8 which gives you 8 random weapons at once. But since the weapons all kinda suck, it usually ends up being pretty fruitless. And with so few weapon boxes on courses, there feels like no way to get from that second to first place. I can just trail a banana or shell behind me and the next red shell will just be negated. Some races will be really neck-in-neck, some will just be a boring joke.
The new courses are alright but I just don't get the whole "transform" mechanic that they clearly stole from Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed. In Sonic Racing each mode felt different. How you handled in water was different from how you handled on land. Here, they all feel the same, minus gliding, but those segments last a couple of seconds at most and most of them are streamlined, like getting shot out of a cannon. This also means getting knocked off the map is not really a huge punishment any more, since some maps you'll just fall into the water and the water is just part of the track anyway. Even the fetching is pretty stupid too. If you fall off a map because of a well placed banana at the end of a jump, they'll just put you at the END of the jump. You'll lose your momentum but it's not the royal fuck-over you got in the older games. I dislike it personally since it takes away the satisfaction of knocking someone off with a well-placed bump or weapon and it doesn't feel like a huge punishment any more.
Another thing I don't get is that they have the "retro" courses, like every Mario Kart game in recent years, but they're heavily redesigned to fit these new stupid "transform" mechanics, so some of the parts are roughly the same but most of them are not. So it's not really "retro" as much as "retro-inspired".
For praise though, the game looks good, runs smoothly, and you can use the Wii U Pad or a regular Wiimote and nunchuck so getting a party going is fun. However we were doing splitscreen and my friend was using the Wii U screen to play but still took up half the screen on the small television we were using. It was also split vertically for some reason. Maybe there's an option to change this.
The custom race is also nice, there's a variety of options which are pretty good to have and can make for some crazy races.
There's still a promotion where you get a game free from purchasing it so I'd say buy Mario Kart 8 anyway even if it's not the best Mario Kart in the series. Really though, just buy Sonic Racing Transformed, it's boatloads of fun.
It's... really underwhelming. I mean just everything about it seems really lacking.
So first things first, the roster. How goddamn boring is that. I mean they cut characters like Birdo, Dry Bones, and Dry Bowser, but it's fine to get Metal Mario and Pink Gold Peach? What the fuck is Pink Gold Peach? It's literally fucking Peach with a Metal Mario-type skin over her that's pink. That's all it is. Then we get like 8 Koopa Kids. There's no Diddy Kong, no Funky Kong, no Birdo, no Dry Bones, no Dry Bowser. Also Lakitu is now a racer so who the fuck does the starting alarm?
Then there's the weapons. It seems really shallow. Like the amount of weapon boxes in the game are few and far between, instead there's fucking coins everywhere which I don't see have any purpose outside of unlocking stuff in-game. Hell one of the possible weapons is a coin. All it does is give you a coin. Not even a magnet for collecting coins, not a false coin that would trip someone up if they went for it, it's literally just a goddamn coin. I mean you have your banana, red shell, green shell, blue shell, etc, but the rest is unexciting. There's the horn or whatever that just damages people around you and the 8 which gives you 8 random weapons at once. But since the weapons all kinda suck, it usually ends up being pretty fruitless. And with so few weapon boxes on courses, there feels like no way to get from that second to first place. I can just trail a banana or shell behind me and the next red shell will just be negated. Some races will be really neck-in-neck, some will just be a boring joke.
The new courses are alright but I just don't get the whole "transform" mechanic that they clearly stole from Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed. In Sonic Racing each mode felt different. How you handled in water was different from how you handled on land. Here, they all feel the same, minus gliding, but those segments last a couple of seconds at most and most of them are streamlined, like getting shot out of a cannon. This also means getting knocked off the map is not really a huge punishment any more, since some maps you'll just fall into the water and the water is just part of the track anyway. Even the fetching is pretty stupid too. If you fall off a map because of a well placed banana at the end of a jump, they'll just put you at the END of the jump. You'll lose your momentum but it's not the royal fuck-over you got in the older games. I dislike it personally since it takes away the satisfaction of knocking someone off with a well-placed bump or weapon and it doesn't feel like a huge punishment any more.
Another thing I don't get is that they have the "retro" courses, like every Mario Kart game in recent years, but they're heavily redesigned to fit these new stupid "transform" mechanics, so some of the parts are roughly the same but most of them are not. So it's not really "retro" as much as "retro-inspired".
For praise though, the game looks good, runs smoothly, and you can use the Wii U Pad or a regular Wiimote and nunchuck so getting a party going is fun. However we were doing splitscreen and my friend was using the Wii U screen to play but still took up half the screen on the small television we were using. It was also split vertically for some reason. Maybe there's an option to change this.
The custom race is also nice, there's a variety of options which are pretty good to have and can make for some crazy races.
There's still a promotion where you get a game free from purchasing it so I'd say buy Mario Kart 8 anyway even if it's not the best Mario Kart in the series. Really though, just buy Sonic Racing Transformed, it's boatloads of fun.
