Mario Kart 8 (Nintendo Wii U) (NTSC)

It arrived in perfect shape. I enjoy playing couch games, and this is hands down one of the best to spend time with wife and friends.
It has 8 cups and you can buy another 2.
I didn’t like much that you can also buy racers, though it has a good 16 of them included, most of them are baby versions of the others. Regardles the tracks are superb and you will spend days trying to master the vehicles, speeds, and tracks.

Llego en perfecto estado, me gustan mucho los juegos locales, no hay nada como un juego local sin lag, sin dificultad de conexiones y además divertido, este cumple con todo, gran variedad de pistas, de corredores y de dificultades o velocidades. Incluso puedes comprar mas pistas y corredores si eso no es suficiente. Tiene mucha diversion y rejugabilidad. Altamente recomendado.

Mario Kart 8 for the Nintendo Wii U is far and away the best Mario Kart game yet–and yes, I’ve played them all.

EXCELLENT CONTROLS
The kart physics and handling will feel utterly familiar to those who have played the last few entries in the series. That’s good news because it means the controls are still as polished and responsive as ever. Moreover, the variables that affect your kart’s top speed, acceleration, handling, weight, and traction also function almost exactly as they have in the past, except that now those variables are no longer entirely tied to specific characters. Character choice now has a milder effect on how the kart performs (though it does still have an effect), while the specific options you choose for your kart (body type, tire type, and glider type) now play a greater role in determining its resulting performance characteristics.

For racing, I think the Gamepad, the Wiimote with Nunchuk, or the Pro Controller all work very well. You can also use the motion controls if you want (i.e., tilting the Wiimote back and forth like a steering wheel), but I’ve never found that to be as responsive as using the thumbstick to steer. Of course, kids or inexperienced gamers may prefer the motion controls, especially if they’re very young and lack the manual dexterity to operate the thumbstick with precision.

SUPERB GRAPHICS ENHANCE GAMEPLAY
By far the most noticeable improvement in Mario Kart 8 is the substantial upgrade in graphics and detail, especially with regard to the tracks (though the characters and karts look better too). This significantly enhances the racing experience–in part, because the tracks look so much nicer, but mainly because Nintendo has added more nuances that can affect how well you race on a given track. For example, there are strategic shortcuts that will give you a slight edge ahead, or moving acceleration patches that can catapult you far ahead if you hit them consistently in a well-timed sequence, or discrete ledges that permit you access to an extra row of item boxes or a modest shortcut if you steer your glider skillfully enough to access them, and so on. Some of these kinds of nuances existed in previous iterations of the game, but never quite so thoughtfully incorporated. Moreover, nearly every track has a very distinctive theme that makes it stand out visually, far more so than any assortment of tracks from previous entries in the franchise.

WELL BALANCED GAMEPLAY
I especially like how Nintendo has tweaked the power items (how often they appear, how they function, and how drastically they affect the racing) to balance out the gameplay. There are still many rows of item boxes, but the items now feel more diversified and rarer to obtain so that, for example, you’re not constantly getting a heat-seeking red shell or a lightning bolt. Instead, if you’re at the head of the pack, you can expect to get a steady diet of bananas, green shells, and mere coins. If you fall further back, the boxes will start giving out more powerful items to help you recover, such as red shells, triple red shells, speed boost mushrooms, and triple speed boost mushrooms. And if you fall all the way to the rear, you’ll start getting far more substantial help in the form of speeding bullets (you launch ahead as a giant bullet, knocking out other racers out as you go), golden mushrooms (a series of speed boosts), lightning bolts (to shrink and slow the other players), ink (to obstruct the other players’ screens with splotches of ink), and blue shells (to knock out the person in 1st place). Also, there are some new items, like the music box, which can be used to knock out enemies in a close radius or, better yet, to knock out the dreaded blue shell before it blows you out of first place. All together, this makes the game feel much better balanced than any previous version, so that winning or losing depends much more on how well you drive and strategize, not merely on how lucky you are at getting powerful items to knock everyone else out.

Nintendo also wisely reduced the recovery time for falling off ledges by several seconds. That’s a nice tweak as well, since it means that less skillful players will not get nearly as frustrated on tracks that have a lot of jumps and gaps. In some previous entries in the series, there were tracks you simply couldn’t play with inexperienced fellow players or they wouldn’t be able to have fun. With this game, even young children will probably be fine on most of the tracks because the recovery from a fall off the side of a track is so much faster–almost as brief as running into a banana for a very brief spin out. This also means that if you’re doing a great job racing, but make one mistake that throws you off the track, it is still possible to recover fast enough to win. In some previous Mario Kart games, one fall could sometimes set you back so many pole positions in a single race that it would potentially prevent you from winning the entire cup. Also, if you get turned around and don’t correct the problem soon enough, the cloud koopa will fish your kart back around facing the right way–again, a great help for young kids who might get turned around while playing.

Lastly, subtle racing decisions now add up to have a significant impact on your success at racing, ensuring that good racing skills are rewarded comparatively more here than in previous versions of the game. For instance, you can learn to drift around corners for a slight speed boost, as in the previous version. You can collide with other players (or on some tracks, strategically placed pinball-like bumpers) to gain a slight speed boost. You can take a strategic shortcut. You can tweak your kart’s characteristics (body/tires/glider). And so on. While most of these possibilities existed in previous iterations of the game, they come together more effectively here so that, if you really master all of these subtle elements, it adds up to a substantial competitive edge over less experienced or less skillful racers. It’s hard to explain the effect this has on the gaming experience, but it just makes the racing feel more solid, with clearer benefits for skill progression, whereas previous entries in the series always felt haunted by a “luck” factor that had little or nothing to do with skill, and also often felt as though there was a little too much mayhem happening too often from too many powerful items being constantly churned out and used against you.

SOME DOWNSIDES
As you’ve likely seen in other reviews, Battle Mode is the main disappointment here because there are no arenas included. Instead, you battle on the tracks. Although this means there is more variety in where you battle now, it is disappointing not to have at least a few large arenas that concentrate the battle in a central area, instead of requiring you to roam (and sometimes “hunt” for others) around a closed circuit track. I suspect Nintendo will resolve this in the future by offering downloadable stadiums for purchase. If they do, I know many fans will be pleased. Regardless, this isn’t a deal breaker. There’s plenty here to enjoy–and enough to still make this the best Mario Kart game yet. But unless Nintendo releases some arenas, Battle Mode will remain a disappointment that most players simply ignore.

The other big disappointment here is no split screen option. I thought for sure that when racing with two players, one would be able to use the gamepad while the other person enjoys the full television screen. Nope. Even if you’re only playing with two players, you have to play it split screen on the television. It’s not a big deal, I guess, but it would be so cool if I had the option to put one player entirely on the gamepad’s screen, leaving the entire television screen for player two. Oh well. The good news is that you can play solely on the gamepad in 1-player mode if you want to free up the television for another family member to watch TV. For 2 or more players, though, the gamepad screen gets split just like the television, and thus, feels too small to be useful, so I switch it to a map view and watch my character on the larger (split) television screen instead.

CONCLUSION
There is a lot more I could say, but really it boils down to this: If you like Mario Kart or simply enjoy racing and you own a Wii U, go ahead and buy this game! There are dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of fun to be had here. And it’s family friendly entertainment that adults and young kids alike will enjoy. It also features competitive racing online, which will extend the playability of the game quite a lot. But the biggest treat is the beauty and detail of the tracks, which are so much more distinctive, creative, vibrant, and nuanced than ever before. Trust me, if you like Mario Kart, you want this game!

La nueva forma de levitación y andar bajo el agua son tan buenas como uno esperaría. Las nuevas pistas, karts, y los personajes son todos buenos agregados además de que hay favoritos que regresan. Si te gustó Mario Kart en el pasado, esto es otra entrada en la serie fantástica.

Además, el juego se ve hermoso en Full HD con 1080p a 60f / s. Hay pequeñas atenciones al detalle en cada esquina.

La curva de aprendizaje es muy rápida y los controles se integran bien en el juego.