Mario Kart 8 has a now included Roy as a playable character, that in itself is the best reason to buy it right?

So we waited a little longer before throwing out our review, we wanted to test the busy servers on release day and give you a full review of how the game really works.

So the Wii U hasn't been Nintendo's best selling point over the recent months, however I've seen a few more people pick up the console since the wonderful Super Mario 3D World reviews. And hopefully Mario Kart 8 will do the same (Also Nintendo are doing a free game promotion, if you buy the game and register the code with a club nintendo account you could nab a free game - and the choice is good!).



As usual the game has 32 tracks - I was secretly hoping for more in this Mario Kart game as I do get bored of the same track pretty easily. They are split into 8 different cups, Mushroom, Flower, Star and Special Cups are all exciting and beautifully crafted. The other 16 tracks are all from Wii, DS, N64 and SNES which have been beautiful remastered and some made 3D for the game (including 2 Rainbow Road tracks, an old and new). ALL tracks use the new anti-gravity feature which allows you to ride your vehicles along walls etc, this is an amazing fun feature and as most tracks have various paths you won't find yourself getting fed up of the seeing the same scene too quickly.

Another little addition is when you are on the anti-gravity parts of the track and you bump into competitor (or the glowing billiards) you get a small boost, so definitely go crazy during these parts.

Battle mode was the biggest let down for me, normally you have specific tracks to play on, but instead you're put in the regular linear tracks from the game and left to fight there. Also you can go circling round the track for minutes without seeing anyone. I feel like Nintendo just forgot about the battle mode a little bit, I'll just stick to racing online.



Characters/Karts: 

I'm not going to lie and say I was worried about them re-adding motorbikes into the game, as myself and many others did not like how hard they were to control in the previous game. However Nintendo have made the bikes really easy to use and you won't find yourself flying off the edge of the tracks too easily this time! The karts themselves seem a lot more fun this time, you even have cat shaped ones which you can attach tails too.

There are plenty of characters to choose from in this one too, mine as many others favourite is Yoshi - however I found myself playing as baby Rosalina and Roy much more this time round. Including many others that I had no idea were included in this game ( I didn't want to ruin too much for myself so I only watched one trailer).

All picture credit to Nintendo

Weapons: 

Nintendo have added some new weapons to our old favourites in this game, you have your typical Red, Green and Blue shell - alongside our favourite Superstar, Mushroom and Banana skin. They have also included Piranah Plant, Super Horn, Crazy Eight and Boomerang Flower I won't tell you what these do as they're pretty fun to go and find out when you get one!

They have also kept in the coin collection, you can collect 10 coins per race (these unlock items) and once you get more than 10 you gain a tiny boost.

Online: 

So Nintendo have now given you the option to start your own tournaments, which can be all against all or teams tournaments - you can also set the time in which it starts, make it a recurring tournament, and also make is private by code invite only. This is an awesome feature if you are a small company looking to run competitions via gaming tournaments.

They have stuck to the points based racing system, where you start with 1000 and lose/gain points depending on where you come in the race. Now  I have not seen any hackers/cheating racers yet - I found this intolerable with Mario Kart on DS, instead just friendly close competition so you never know how well you're going to do!

I played online instantly from the morning on release and the servers were smooth as butter, I did not struggle to find a match, had absolutely no lag whats so ever and was never booted from a game. This is pretty impressive from Nintendo, especially as the long awaited new Smash Bros game is out soon.

The final new feature is Mario Kart TV which allows the player to upload their best bits from races to Youtube and even edit out the bits you don't want to feature - I tested it out here;

Now you're probably wondering how the game looks? Well Nintendo have finally made a game worthy of a 'next' gen console, it looks beautiful. It's how Super Mario Galaxy 2 should have looked, even the lens flare looks awesome. This just proves that Nintendo can make a pretty game which runs smoothly for the Wii U so why haven't they put this into action more as of yet?!

When playing single player you can really see how the game runs smoothly at 60fps and doesn't ever falter even when being hit repeatedly by 3 Red Shells and a Blue Shell to top it off. And it also runs at the same level when playing single player online. However the frame rate dips when playing two player local and you can definitely see a change in quality and control as soon as you link another player up to your console.

I would definitely compare this Mario Kart game more to the liking of Mario Kart Double Dash. I loved it, and haven't put it down as well as many others.

Will you be purchasing this game?