Game Details Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Platform: Wii U

Release Date: May 30, 2014

Price: $60

Links: Official Web site Nintendo: Nintendo: Wii UMay 30, 2014: $60

It's too easy to dismiss the Mario Kart series as a past-its-prime throwback that's holding Nintendo back, a family friendly nostalgia-fest that becomes more of a pale echo of the company's golden era with each passing year. I'd argue instead that Nintendo has done a great job keeping the franchise fresh over the years, adding enough new ideas and tweaks to the solid core with each release to make Mario Kart a must-play rite of passage for each new piece of Nintendo hardware. Sure, some games in the series have been more revolutionary than others, but Mario Kart games are far from the phoned in, more-of-the-same, semi-annual sequels that they could be.

Mario Kart 8 keeps this pattern going for the, um, eighth time, providing a deceptively solid racer beneath its candy-colored exterior. The changes might be relatively slight this time around, and some of the alterations have bafflingly made things worse, but all in all, this is still the kind of game that gets people to buy Nintendo consoles.

Hover in HD

The most striking improvement this time around, truth be told, might just be the HD graphics. That might seem like an odd thing to stress as a vital new feature for a series in 2014, but loading up the game for the first time, it's easy to wonder how the series got by without the increased resolution for this long.

It's a credit to Nintendo's visual design chops that games like 2008's Mario Kart Wii didn't look completely awful for the time with just 480 lines of vertical resolution. Without that limitation this time around, though, the designers have really been able to go to town. Mario Kart 8 fills each course with a cavalcade of rich colors and crisp incidental details and runs everything at a silky-smooth frame rate even during split screen matches. Some courses skirt the edge of looking a little too visually busy, but overall this is the kind of fantastical wonderland you may have dreamed about diving into when playing the original Super Mario Kart oh so long ago.

As far as the gameplay, the major new twist this time around is the addition of "hover-kart" racing sections that allow most tracks to twist in corkscrews, swoop in dramatic upward and downward arcs, or turn at dramatic sharp angles without much notice. Your ride automatically transforms into a special hover-mode when the course requires it, though the actual mechanics of racing change very little, whether you're on solid asphalt or racing along the side of a brick wall. Oddly enough, hover-karts go into a brief, weird spinning dash when they bump into each other or into special posts dotted throughout the track. It's a confusing new feature that comes with an annoying lack of control.

The hover-mode does allow for some crazy course extensions into the third dimension, though for the most part it's hard to fully appreciate these crazy twists and turns during the race itself. With the camera remaining welded solidly behind your kart the whole time (and tilted only slightly from normal flat racing), driving with your kart at some weird angle to gravity feels a whole lot like driving with the wheels appropriately pointed toward the original "ground."

The developers take pains to make these sections a bit more exciting—forcing players to drive up a waterfall, for instance, or looping a track around so what used to be a retaining wall becomes an orthogonal raceway later in the lap—but for the most part it feels a bit forced. The primary exception is when the hover-mechanic is used to allow for optional shortcuts, letting racers dodge up walls to avoid hazards and find speed boosts and items.

New items, new balance

Aside from the hover gimmickry, the 16 new courses in the game follow the series' reputation for quality. Each one features plenty of unique twists that make each course feel fresh and packs in plenty of well-hidden shortcuts and secrets.

The new Bowser's Castle is a particular standout, featuring a gigantic stone statue that rains down fiery blows on different portions of the track, but practically every track has some grin-inducing bit of incidental design. Whether it's driving alongside dolphins in a clear blue sea, dropping down stairs that light up and play noise as you progress, leaping over a cable car with a well-timed jump, landing on the wing of an airplane and power-sliding through the expansive cabin, or taking an extra-long, single lap race down an ever-changing snowy mountain course, there isn't a single new course that isn't memorable in some way.

Most every item you can name from previous Mario Kart games is here, from offensive staples like shells to the screen-obscuring squid ink introduced in Mario Kart DS (oddly enough, the explosive fake item block first introduced in Mario Kart 64 is now absent). The most important returning item may be the coins that litter the course, which have been mostly absent in home console Mario Kart games since the original. Rolling over up to ten of these coins grants incremental boosts to top speed, while getting hit spews a few of those collected coins across the course to be picked up later. Effective coin management can be a crucial difference in a close race, and being forced to aim for the coins littering the tracks adds some crucial positioning strategy to laps that might otherwise feel a bit repetitive.

The handful of new items are a mixed bag; my favorite is the boomerang, which can hit unsuspecting opponents as it returns to you or allow for another attempt after a miss. The giant piranha plant item can automatically snap at opponents and coins as you speed by, giving you a small boost with each lunge. I was less interested in a new speaker-box item that causes a shockwave in the immediate area surrounding your kart, but it is notable as the only item that can actually nullify an incoming blue shell when you are in first place.

Speaking of the blue shell, this is as good a time as any to talk about that scourge of the skillful and the great white hope of the novice: rubber banding. Like every previous Mario Kart game, MK8 does give a leg up to players who are lagging behind in the standings, primarily by giving trailing racers much better items that allow them a chance to catch up (previous games have also given computer opponents an incremental speed boost when they are behind, but this effect seems less pronounced this time around).

There's nothing more frustrating for Mario Kart players than to be cruising along with a solid lead, only to be hit by a shrinking lightning bolt, followed immediately by a red or blue shell, followed by a starman-equipped competitor that knocks them right off the course without a chance to recover. These situations do still happen in Mario Kart 8, but they definitely felt less frequent than they were in Mario Kart Wii, which may have been the zenith of rubber-banding ridiculousness.

I don't have any hard statistics on this or anything, but anecdotally, I managed to get through many more first-place laps (and sometimes entire races) without being waylaid by a blue shell in Mario Kart 8. Red shells are also easier to escape this time around; a quick power slide dash or zig zag pattern is often enough to lose their slow-moving homing signal when it appears on your tail.

That's not to say the game is forgiving. Well, it is forgiving in the 50cc difficulty—so forgiving that even complete racing game neophytes will be able to stay competitive without ever letting go of the accelerator. The 100cc mode is slightly more competitive, but will pose little challenge to anyone who is experienced with racing games and power-sliding around turns to get those boost-inducing blue and red sparks.

It's the 150cc mode that remains absolutely merciless. The slightest mistake on a turn here is usually enough to drop you back at least one position (and often more) as item-equipped opponents unleash their payload on you. If you're not exploiting every shortcut and grabbing every boost, it's tough to finish in first. Yet even when you fail in this mode, it's more often than not your own mistake that opened you up to the retribution, not simple luck of the item draw from your opponents.