[section_title title=Gameplay]
Gameplay
Playing a game like this brings back a lot of nostalgia to the days when Mario and Sonic were king (but we mostly played Mario). This mixed with it’s family friendly nature is why Nintendo are usually the one to buy for people with children, and this is definitely a child friendly game too. My favourite thing about Mario Kart 8 is the ability to play the entire game on the gamepad, which is always great if you have someone that’s wanting to watch TV at the same time, it really makes it a game to play at your own leisure. If you’re mostly a PC gamer like myself, but you like to have your games 60fps, then you’ll be out of luck here, as the Nintendo Wii U is mostly a 30fps console. With this title having multiplayer it opens up a ton more fun when you go up against other players who can either be better than you or worse, it always opens you up for the ability to improve at the game. There are also quite a lot of items in the game too, there are 21 items altogether in the game, the Spiny Shell of course being the most irritating of all. There are also 32 maps, 12 gliders, 18 tires, 26 vehicles and 30 drivers, all that before you even decide to get any DLC, which isn’t bad at all for a base game at all.
A nice touch is how they’ve improved the handling of driving, if you drift enough, you’ll get a boost, depending on how long you drift, the better the boost. The vehicle also changes as you go through the map, it changes from the standard kart to an anti-gravity kart, and a gliding kart, which adds variety, rather than the same old song and dance from games before. Along with all this, there are different game modes, Grand Prix, Time Trials, VS Race, Battle, Online and Mario Kart TV which gives you more to do rather than simply racing through the same stuff all the time. Something Nintendo decided to add since the 3.00 update is that you can now use Amiibo’s to add new characters to the game too, so if you decide to get an Amiibo for Super Smash Bros, you also have the option for Mario Kart 8 now too!
