LogFAQs > #967375629

azuarc posted...

Coming from someone who didn't really play any Mario Kart games after 64, I found MK8 very hard to get into. Not only do I have no idea what all the different driver/kart combos do, but it seems like the track is constantly just throwing random mechanics in my face with a distinct lack of predictability. I'm sure it's a great game if you play the tracks more than 3 or 4 times each, but for a sit-down-and-go experience, I was not enjoying it as much as I would have hoped.

Oh, I'm not sure if this is the problem you ran into, but I have a very related complaint:

There is a huge problem with the onboarding process for all Mario Kart games, starting with Double Dash. That problem is this: drifting is required to play most of the tracks, and yet, the game does not explain drifting whatsoever.

It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in AAA games, that they don't explain how important drifting is in MK8. You literally just run into the wall on most turns, if you don't know about drifting.

And yet there's no reason to expect it would be important. Most racing games don't hard-require drifting, in my experience. So you would think a "super-casual-friendly" one certainly wouldn't require it either.

changmas posted...

the one criticism i have for MK8 is that it feels like there's less opportunity to create your own shortcuts with mushrooms compared to older games like mario kart wii. most of the tracks are pretty tight and don't even have like corners to cut or anything which is something I miss a bit. there's like one or two designed shortcuts for each track and that's it. the level of creativity you can show in using mushrooms just really isn't there and that's a bit sad to me.

otherwise it's great fun though

Hmmm good point, y'know, I bet this was intentional, since casual online play is such a big component of the game, I bet they didn't want people with unfair prior knowledge to get too much of an advantage.