MarioKart 8, Wii U ... SCORE: 8/10 8.5/10 would be pushin' it

PROS:

- The new levels are great, the revamped oldies are good picks as well

- The graphics, colour, menus, styling of this game are top notch for Nintendo. It's a good looking game & pleasing to the eye. The game does it's job in the "brain stimulation" category

- A new innovation is the point-to-point races, Mount Wario is amazing!

- You can control what type of trick you do off a jump - a step in the right direction

- A few new items in the Item Boxes (minus the worthless coin)

- Online racing is great

- Vehicle customization is better than it's ever been

- Awesome unlocking system, you're always earning stuff

- Splitscreen is great, however no option to have the original "top/bottom" splitscreen view is ridiculous

- They ditched "Automatic" & "Manual" mode, probably after realizing that half of the world didn't even know you could powerslide in MarioKart Wii, because they chose "Automatic"

CONS:

- NO BATTLE ARENAS, they replaced these with circuit tracks that were already in the game anyways. Possibly the worst idea in MarioKart history, considering they had the new Wii U to work with to create new Battle levels. Now the Battles are exactly what you'd be doing in a race anyways. They could have at least copied old tracks from SNES & N64 (like they're already doing). The online battles suck, there's a 5min time limit which ensures you'll never actually finish off your opponents. It's all head-to-head & head-to-tail combat *SNORE*, like we weren't already doing that in the other half of the game... Good arenas could have been such a dynamic element to this game. It looks like Battle Mode is written off from here on out though, good job Nintendo! *** They don't get a 9.5/10 when they devastate Battle Mode like this, I'm sorry. Zero mention of that in your review on national tv too, what's that about?***

- No wheelies?! I realize it was advantageous for bikes, but c'man! They could have just left them in for fun without the speed boost, or made cars do *new* burnouts that are equal to the wheelies' speed boost

- There are quite a few new characters, however the choices are poor. They basically brought in the 7 bosses from the Mario games (Larry, Wendy, Morton, etc.) and then made duplicates of people who were already in the game (metal Mario, Baby-everybody, Pink Gold Peach??!!) I realize that the game would begin to look more like "Nintendo Kart" if they put characters like Link, Diddy, Kirby, Samus, etc. in it, but come on! They even took out Big Boo. What's strange is that Nintendo actually created each of the character models from scratch, as opposed to recycling the same body & putting a different face on it 10 times (the lazy way), so some actual work went in here... You can barely tell Larry, Lemmy, and Iggy apart (or Babies: Peach, Daisy, & Rosalina for that matter), yet they all needed their own custom character models? Why didn't you keep one of each of the mentioned characters, scrap the other four, and instead spend that time creating cool characters like Link & Samus, instead of Larry & Baby Daisy? I mean, Donkey Kong needs some pals too...

- Blue shells. They're punishment for doing good. Nintendo would keep these around... If you ever need to ask yourself, "Is MarioKart really even a racing game?" then look no further than the wonderful creation of the blue shell. The answer is: Not really (due to the blue shell totally robbing 1st place all the time - the true winner), it's more of a fun kart-battling game. Which begs the question: WHY THE HELL DID YOU TAKE AWAY THE BATTLE ARENAS?!?!?!

- Coins in the Item Boxes. This game might as well give you a big middle finger instead. A flaming bag of feces on your doorstep would be better than recieving a coin. When you're in 1st place & about to win a race and you recieve 3-5 coins in a row from Item Boxes (rendering you defenceless), it's Nintendo's way of saying, "Brace yourself bud, cause you're gonna be hucking your controller through the wall in 5-4-3-2..." WHAAM!! BLUE SHELL, 2 RED SHELLS, LIGHTNING BOLT, OIL IN THE FACE, etc. all at once. It's a pretty typical scenerio

- MarioKart 8 is still cheap as all hell. At first I thought it wasn't as cheap as the Wii version, but I was wrong. To be fair, I'd say its about 2/3 as cheap as MarioKart Wii. They still kill you on purpose. Usually the game will wait until you're on your 4th race of a Grand Prix before unleashing it's professional assassination team on you & stripping you a triple star trophy. A mixture of pro hit squads, blue shells, and useless Item Box coins (when you need green shells & banana peels to defend yourself with) is the screwball cocktail that Nintendo serves up in MarioKart 8

- You can't pick up 2 Item Boxes at the same time anymore. That sucks. That was kind of a skill thing, where if you could learn to hold down the "attack" button & drive simultaneously then you were rewarded. It dumbs the game down a little. I dunno, maybe there was widespead outcry of it being cheap on Wii online races or something. It sucks now though because it's 1 more thing working against you in Grand Prix races - you get nailed when you're empty handed, and when you do finally get an Item Box it's usually a useless coin

- No pause menu options whatsoever (other than "tilt" & "classic" controls) and no real options of any kind in this game at all (no sound, hud, custom controls, brightness, etc.)

- Minimap isn't shown on the tv screen. It's uselessly shown on the gamepad even when you you use the controllers to play.Isn't this what we're trying to teach kids not to do? To not take their eyes off the road? How pointless is it to have to look at your crotch every time you want to see what type of curve is up ahead? What do you want me to do, whip out my little stand and position my Wii U gamepad so I can see it & the tv at the same time? That's dumb. Especially considering there's more than enough room anywhere on the tv screen. There's really no on-screen display of any kind, other than what place you're in & how many coins you have *YAWN*. Nintendo could have at least made some fancy new headsup display, and options to take things off the screen if you didn't want them there. A speedometer that goes by mushrooms instead of kmph/mph or something, anything...

- Mario Kart TV. Just stop with that social networking garbage in gaming already, what a waste of time, licensing, & resources. Take a video and upload it to YouTube if your life depends on showing the world cool you are for beating someone's lap time. Let these companies focus on what really matters as opposed to wasting time on making in-game apps & live streaming video capabilities for everything