been playing a lot of mickey’s speedway usa and coincidentally happened upon this article:
i would really like to hear other people’s opinions on this piece if at all possible
I’m getting too old for that shit I think
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I feel like a majority of the complaints offered in that article extend back to MK64 and exist in every mainline entry (read: not Super Circuit), ignoring the fact that the handling of the karts has had at least 3 different iterations throughout the series (the last of which has been going on since Double Dash and has more in common with the arcade racing progeny of Sega and Namco than the model most off-brand kart racers seek to emulate, which are more similar to the original SMK and which Rare and Naught Dog ran away with)
with that said, as long as people start realizing MK64 was bad, I’m cool with whatever opinions, even the ones I disagree with (200cc is pure 
)
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Crash Team racing and Sonic Kart 2 are still my gold standards for kart racing feel and controls. MK8 just needs to let me be able to let go of the gas during power slides and still stay in a sliding state letting me pepper the gas as needed to adjust my angle during turns and it just might usurp that spot from me.
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trying to get a feel for people’s impressions without biasing it with my take first. so, that out of the way, i have no idea why any of the points they bring up are relevant to anything. seriously, this:
What business transpires when there aren’t races scheduled in the Super Bell Subway or at Sunshine Airport? What kinds of lives do people lead in Neo Bowser City or Toad Harbor? Why have these people come out to cheer us on as we race through their home towns? As far as the game is concerned, these stories aren’t worth acknowledging. After all, they’re just props for our entertainment; don’t look too much into it.
idgi
mk8 would be better with this shit? game r bad? what am i supposed to take away from this piece ;_;
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As I detailed before, this basic formula can be used to express a large number of things, which is why I’m so intrigued by what Mario Kart 8 chooses to express through it. Permeating the game are subtle and contradictory inflections that code the play process as an underdog story (at least from your perspective) while building success directly into the experience. We begin with a broad point: a racer’s performance in a race derives wholly from their skill, meaning any success/failure they encounter is entirely their own. This claim is then supported by racers at the back of the pack consistently flubbing their Rocket Starts while those at the front consistently pull them off. Finally, we turn to the player, who is both portrayed as a paragon of skill, one who easily zooms past even the most seasoned racers on the track, and placed in a position where they can appreciate this, IE at the back of the starting line. “Don’t worry”, the game says, “your being placed here is a temporary accident. It won’t take you long to return to your rightfully earned place at the front.”
this is almost farcical to me, honestly
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Drift around that curve; hit that boost pad; avoid that banana peel; follow the clearly marked shortcut; feather your brakes (if you’re playing on 200CC); turn off your brain; become a process of responses to on-screen stimuli.
This is a fucking facile point. You could make a verb inventory for most games and conclude that you’re just “respond[ing] to on-screen stimuli.” Fuck off.
The article completely ignores that the best use of Mario Kart is as an accessible social activity. 8 Deluxe makes better progress toward letting novices participate than the motion controls in Wii did.
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oh, well if we’re tearing this apart
news flash writer: video games have been aping theme parks aesthetically and mechanically for 30+ years
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By that I mean the more you play the game, the more you get the sense that the simple business of being human is completely alien to Ryo. The way he picks up objects demonstrates a strange lack of familiarity with them. Even if he’s seen the object before (a toy he’s won several times from a capsule machine), even if he should already know quite a bit about what he’s holding (a book of matches), Ryo is going to pick up the object like there’s some mystery behind it that he just has to figure out. And if his relationship with everyday items is this awkward, then his relationship with other people must be even more strained. Ryo can’t just converse with another person. He has to put significant effort into every sentence that comes out of his mouth. An awkward silence hangs in the air as he waits for the player to move the conversation forward with an A press; for himself to commit to what he’s about to say.
Why is Ryo like this? Shenmue the game isn’t prepared to answer that question.
I think the author has some very idiosyncratic peeves, so they’re the only person alive who’s bothered by toads in a space caboose throwing coins and cheering you on.
What cosmic entity created the rainbow road? Mario Kart 8 isn’t prepared to answer that question.
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one of my absolute least favourite genres of overwritten new media critique is “absurdly sweeping series of judgments which are common enough to entire medium as to be totally unremarkable (or much more easily explained by design limitations that some doofus treating everything as a found object has to do enormous intellectual lifting to avoid), inexplicably applied to one single game with great prejudice”
I want to make a game that pisses that writer off so bad they quit playing and writing about games.
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but I thought you were already making DDD
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wow, uh I didn’t realize that it was that bad
I guess my very slight defense will be that I think the whole “the game is artifice” schtick works better when it’s approached from a sense of intentionality (on the part of the game devs) than with an outright dismissal of it
like, the author essentially says the same thing about Lieve Oma but then concludes that the escapism works because it’s the “point” of the game
but who’s to say that the “point” of MK8 doesn’t lie in whatever “artifice” it exhibits? you can just as easily come up with examples as to the theme park nature of the game being a conscious decision on the part of the devs as you can to the opposite
I like what the author says about MK8 referencing itself and refusing to challenge the player to explore the spaces differently; I don’t like the conclusion that this somehow makes MK8 disingenuous
like, I do actually think that there’s something here in terms of a really self-referential video game calling forth affirmations by “the culture” of pre-determined values mostly rooted in nostalgia, but maybe there’s a different game to do it with
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this isn’t even accurate lol
mario kart games are famous for people using unintended and unmarked shortcuts (e.g.)
does anyone remember the online ghost leaderboard for mkwii
[quote]Lieve Oma (Dutch for “Dear Grandma”) strikes me as the kind of game that would be hastily dismissed as “not a video game.” I say “hastily” because claims like these tell us more about the narrow range of experiences many enthusiast circles value than they do the nature of the medium at large. They’re convenient in that they justify our refusal to engage with these games by saying the ideas they explore and the conclusions they arrive at don’t hold any relevance to us. The irony, of course, is that Lieve Oma never strays too far from the fundamental mindset underpinning most popular video games. Play is centered on the self and its unfettered ability to sate its own desires; that self is forced to act within tightly defined boundaries it isn’t able to question; and the basic premise represents an escapist fantasy. Lieve Oma shows no interest in critiquing these points.
Again, though, I don’t see the value in dismissing the game out of hand. Its strengths lie not in critique, but in requalification; preserving the use of a specific convention, but removing the attitudes typically associated with it so that we might value that convention along a different axis.[/quote]
like, remove the name of the game from this and you could just as easily be talking about MK8, except you do see the value in dismissing the game out of hand in your very first sentence
the whole reason I liked MK8 was because of this recontextualization
Gonna need a bigger budget so I can hire some Indian content mill to crank out hundreds of gachapon and super long animations of Laura reacting to gachapon.
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Having played a lot of Mario Kart 8 with my wife, I can say two things:
1: It’s a real good game
2: You can win without using power slides, but not as often as if you do use power slides
Oh another thing:
3: Power slides on motorcycles are fucking sick
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imagine writing some wannabe videogames dissertation on fucking Mario Kart
it’s fucking Mario Kart
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mario kart 8 rules hard, it’s beautiful and it feels great all the time. i think that piece means well but it’s definitely just a dorky misfire
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I think p. much all the MKs except the original SMK kind of suck including 8 but what this piece is is someone discovering the ABDN Method about seven years too late, and not being able to handle the high.
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