Mario Kart 8 Preview

When I close my eyes, I see a rainbow road; every noise I hear transforms itself into the backing music of Thwomp Ruins; my fingers ache from holding the GamePad. I’ve played more Mario Kart 8 than I’m willing to admit over the weekend, barely touching the single player and instead focusing on the multiplayer. Glorious, hilarious and joyous local multiplayer, in an age where developers are far too eager to move to online only.

You see, you’d usually have an incentive to play the single player with the prospect of unlocking more tracks and characters, but in Mario Kart 8, there’s a sort of co-op mode. It’s not just team battles, as instead you’re able to play every single Grand Prix with up to four players. And it’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had in local multiplayer: grab your family or some friends, and go for those gold trophies, and you’ll be sure to have a good time.

Mario Kart 8 is really just another huge improvement over the previous games – controls are refined, handling feels much more realistic, and it’s still one of the best and most refined racing games around despite the chirpy music and saccharine characters.

You’ll laugh, cry, hate your friends, hate blue shells, and even hate yourself after a few hours. You might even turn the game off, just to do something else, but it’ll be back on in no time and you’ll be falling off the side of Rainbow Road near the finish line until you want to turn it off again.

Mario Kart has an amazing staying power, and that’s down to the multiplayer alone, achieved through brilliant level design and gameplay mechanics. While the handheld titles are forgotten much quicker due to their lack of one-system, same-screen play, I’ve been playing Mario Kart Wii with my friends for six years now, and the only reason we’ve stopped is to make room for the new and improved model. With Mario Kart 8, it looks like it’s going to be the same again.

It’s not entirely balanced, but that’s part of the charm, isn’t it? I mean, if you don’t go from first to tenth once or twice, what are you going to have to moan about? The karts and bikes themselves may be a bit more balanced due to the way you can customise them and how that adds to some stats and takes from others, but in the end it’s the items which provide some of the most fun due to their imbalance, at the same time providing plenty of anger.

Even in multiplayer, it’s a beautiful looking game. Cut the screen in half, or divide by four, and the characters remain as smooth, aliased and animated as ever, as they speed through wonderful scenery. It truly is a superb looking game, and the music and effects only add to the brilliant, cheery tone.

After a while, you won’t be paying too much attention to how it looks, though – you’ll have memorised every track, found shortcuts, and picked your strategy, and in no time you’ll be fighting for first place in every race. It’s a brilliant learning curve which only builds on the previous formula, refining the gameplay and design with better control options and new track mechanics such as anti-gravity, while also bringing over features from previous games, such as bikes and gliding.

We’re not going to be too specific about the tracks and features here – we’ll save all of that for a review next week – but just know that Mario Kart 8, as a multiplayer experience, is one of the purest and most fun things you’ll find in gaming. Many developers appear to believe that local multiplayer is dead, but that’s not true – they’re just not ready to take on Nintendo.