My brother got this game as soon as it came out. I do not own this game myself, but I have played my brother's copy a lot. I was not exactly impressed, I will tell you why in this review.

Gameplay:

Mario Kart 8 is pretty fun to play, but not as fun as some of the other Mario Kart games. Other Mario Kart games give you the option of Manual or Automatic turning. In Mario Kart 8, it is only Manual. Mario Kart 8 introduced the ability to go upside down, but they did not do a good job with it. You can't even tell if you are upside down or not, and it is completely overused. They even added it into the retro courses, which was a major "turn off" for me. And when I say "turn off", I mean it actually caused me to turn off the system is disgust. Other than those major issues, the gameplay is pretty good. Steering is good and smooth, the items in the game are pretty cool (they added a cool 8 item), and everything is pretty well done.

Graphics:

The graphics in this game are nice, but nothing special. They are very similar to the graphics in Mario Kart Wii. They look nice and are well done. But all graphics are good nowadays, so they do not really stand out.

Sound:

I can say the same thing about the sound that I said about the gameplay. It is well done, but not special. The sound effects are nice. They are realistic, but cartoony at the same time. I love the comments that the different characters make. Overall, the sound is pretty good and deserves a good rating.

Addictiveness:

This game did not really hook me at all. It is fun to play, but there are much more addicting games out there. There is not a lot of depth in the game (I will get to that later), so it starts to get boring after a while. I often consider addictiveness a combination of how fun it is and how much there is to do. There is not that much to do, and it is somewhat fun, so that means it is only a little addictive. I think you will be hooked on this game at first, but you will eventually get bored of it.

Story:

You race. That is the story. Like many sports games, there is no story in Mario Kart 8.

Depth:

There is really not that much to do in this game. One of the main challenges in Mario Kart games is trying to unlock all of the characters, but that is not a challenge in Mario Kart 8. All of the characters can be unlocked just by beating all of the Grand Prixs. You don't need to do anything special, so it gives the game a lot less depth. As always there are 8 Grand Prixs, 32 total courses to race on, and 3 battle games. There is really not a lot of depth in this game.

Difficulty:

Like most Mario Kart games, Mario Kart 8 is easy. It is easy to beat the computer players. All you have to do is not fall of the edge and you are pretty much set. You don't even have to be that good at the game to win. The only difficult course is Rainbow Road of course. Everyone's nightmare. Rainbow Road is not any easier in this game than it is in any of the other Mario Kart games. And to make it even worse, they threw in another Rainbow Road from an old game as well. So there are 2 Rainbow Roads. Yay. So if you are looking for a challenge, choose Rainbow Road. If you aren't, choose any course BUT Rainbow Road.

Mario Kart 8 was a very disappointing game for me. I was expecting it to be really, really, really good, but it was only decent. It is still fun to play, but unlocking all of the characters, my favorite part, is too easy and boring. I do not recommend buying this game. At least not yet. It is not worth $60. Wait for the price to drop a bit and then grab it.

And that is my review of Mario Kart 8! I know it was a little shorter than most of my reviews, but I wanted to try to cut out any of the unnecessary "fat" and make it more to-the-point. Let me know what you think!

Good job! You beat me to it! Nice review, Tgags. Although there is a bit more you could have done, like the fact you need to collect coins to unlock Kart pieces, or how the AI is programmed to be especially devious. (The Rival system)

All in all, I agree with you on most points, Zero Gravity was really overused, and you could only tell something is different in the replays. It's good, but I got it opening day for the free Wind Waker HD.