Review #579: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

 Easily comes in first across the finish line.

 It's a weird occasion when the latest in a long-running series also manages to be the best. But Nintendo did it, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best game in the franchise they have released yet, mixing fine-tuned mechanics with a meaty amount of content that makes other Mario Kart offerings seem paltry in comparison.

 If you've ever played a Kart racer before you know what to expect: It's you against 11 other opponents on a track, and you can grab power-ups throughout the track in order to make your way to the first place. As per usual you get 50cc, 100cc, 150cc and Mirror Mode(A harder 150cc) which translates into how fast the vehicles will move and how challenging the CPU will be. But there's a new 200cc mode, which, in my opinion, is little more than a novelty, since karts move so fast it's almost unplayable. But, hey, it has its fans! The usual game modes also return: Grand Prix, in which you compete in 4-course competitions, Time Trials, in which you try for better times in a single track, VS race(Yes! VS CPU returns, so you can play random courses against CPUs) and Battle Mode. Battle Mode consists of different sub-modes: The usual balloon battle, in which you try to explode your enemies' balloons by hitting them with items, Coin Runners, in which you attempt to grab the most coins while under a time limit, Renegade Roundup, AKA cops and robbers, in which a team of cops tries to capture the other team(It's really fun!), Shine Thief, in which you try to hold on to the Shine for the most time, and Bobomb Blast, which is exactly what it sounds like. Lastly, every mode but Time Trial can be played with up to four players. Nifty!

 By now, you're probably used to having 4 cups and 4 retro cups, for a total of 32 total courses. But Mario Kart 8 Deluxe includes all the DLC from the original release on the Wii-U, which adds 4 more cups for a total of 48 different courses. That's a massive amount of stages, but you also get a massive 42 character roster to pick from. And then there's the fact that you can customize your kart, or bike, with a ton of different bodies, tires and gliders. There's a ton of stuff to see and do in this game, so it should keep you busy for quite a while. That said, almost everything but a Metal Mario variant and most kart customization parts are unlocked from the get-go, which might disappoint a few people, albeit I'm sure I'm not the only one that found it boring to start from 50cc and work my way up.... that said, I'll admit that I went all the way up through 50cc in order to amass coins to unlock vehicle parts.

 Now then, as for the tracks themselves, I'd say that pretty much every new original track is fantastic. Retro tracks however... weren't the greatest of picks. I think it's understandable, since Mario Kart 7 pretty much got the best retro tracks and there weren't as many good picks left. That said, it's not like the retro tracks are bad, far from it, and it's got a few great ones, like DS' Cheep Cheep beach. Plus, every single SNES/GBA rework is a 10 outta 10.

 While Mario Kart has always flirted with crossovers, like featuring the Blue Falcon as a customization part, but 8 went full-in. Link, the Villager, Isabelle and the Inklings are playable characters, there are Zelda, Animal Crossing and Splatoon vehicle parts alongside tracks representing them. There're also one Excitebike track and two F-Zero tracks as well as the mandatory Blue Falcon vehicle part. I didn't know I wanted it, but it's about time Nintendo went the way of Smash Bros. with Mario Kart, bring in Kirby, Pokemon, what have you!

 I went on and on with what's in the game, but not how it plays. Basically, it builds upon Mario Kart 7. Underwater racing is still a thing, albeit I think they did a better job this time around, with many tracks having two routes to pick from, gliding is back again, and there's more of it than before, so it doesn't feel as gimmicky. The new 'thing' is gravity-defying racing, every now and then you'll go over skyblue marks over the track, upon which you'll stick on the track, whether it twirls or twists. Honestly, they got gliding and underwater SO good in this game, since most of the time they amount to alternate routes, that the gravity thing felt fairly underwhelming. Most of the time you won't even realize that you are driving over other parts of the track, that said, this mechanic doesn't add or subtract from the game, it's just there.

 The item selection is pretty similar to the one in Mario Kart 7, but they did away with the raccoon tail, which arguably sucked, and added a piranha plant, which is a less-sucky-but-still-sucky version of the tail and the Horn, a power up of massive destruction.... that can actually destroy the blue shell. As per usual, holding a drift for a while will reward you with a turbo, and in Mario Kart 8 it can go up to a third level. This version of Mario Kart introduces a few more optional tweaks for newbies, such as auto acceleration and an option that slows you that does it's best to keep you on-the-road. It's a good helper, and I actually used it to finish 200cc, but it prevents you from using shortcuts, so it's a good trade off so that you can't rely on it.

 If there's one complaint I have with the game, and it's one that carries over from Mario Kart 7, is that there's no 'Retry' option. While this game doesn't feel as luck-based as previous Mario Kart games, it's still possible to have a bad-luck streak in which you get hit by everyone and their dogs, so the ability to retry a race mid-Grand Prix would've been a blessing. But there's not. If you get screwed out of first place, and thus out of the three-star ranking, you have to retry the entire Cup, which is a major downer. This was an option in some of the previous games, so it's baffling why they haven't addressed it yet. Mario Kart Super Circuit had a 3-retry limit, and it'd be a fair option.

 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the perfect mix of quality and content, featuring the largest amount of tracks, characters and modes in a Mario Kart games, as well as some of the finest tuned mechanics the series has ever had. It also features tweaks so that even people that aren't very good at racers can have fun with it. If you ask me, this is the best mascot racer you can get.
 9.5 out of 10