Mario Kart 7

[Thad]

Yeah, that's a "7" up there. Just got it. (Incidentally, if you've got a Zia Records in your area, my hunting suggests that's the best place to buy used games. I got MK7 and Super Mario 3D Land for $17.50 each. I'm still tickled by the convergence between used record stores and used game stores; they've got clone consoles everywhere.)

Anyway. You know who should be in this game? Clawgrip. Because that's how my fucking hand feels when I play it. Have I found a game that feels worse to hold on the 2DS than the 3DS, or is it actually even WORSE than this on the 3DS?

And how long's it been since I wrote an "Unforgivable Sins of Game Design" post where I brought up that it is the twenty-first goddamn century and people are still making games that don't let you set your own controls? Because guess what, the gas should be a trigger and jump should be a face button, not the other fucking way 'round. (I don't suppose there's any kind of cheat or hack to do this, is there?)

(Putting the Shoot button on the left trigger is fine, except that it makes it really really easy to accidentally crank the volume slider. Don't think I'll be playing this game with headphones anymore.)

Still working my way through 50cc single-player. Don't really have a bead on how I feel about this one yet. It sure is a Mario Kart game. In that I just got fucked out of a gold by being on the last lap of the last race and getting hit with a blue shell, lightning bolt, red shell, and another red shell right when I was hitting a jump, knocking me back to 5th place and 1 point behind the guy in 1st and my wife stumbled out of bed and asked what all the screaming was about and if everyone was okay.

Maybe I should try Mario 3D Land.

[Caithness]

Mario 3D Land is good.

[LazyDev]

So, can we talk about Mario Kart 8 in this thread too?

They got the tournament creation thingy where you put in a code and get to make a MK tournament room, and Miiverse community.
Do you guys have one yet? I'd love to be able to play MK8 with you guys. I also got a Mumble Server for in-race chat that the community I'm currently with doesn't seem to care about, so if you guys wanted to use that I could at the very least give you guys a room in it. It's also good cause you can't lobby chat in tournament mode.

[pacobird]

Stone Cold Luigi is my new favorite meme.
fixed, for the ninnies

[Grath]

Dude, notice how the link says "giant"? Link to the gfycat itself so we can choose the 1/3rd the size, better quality HTML 5 version.

[Blossom]

I, too, love that #LuigiDeathStare is a thing.

[Mothra]

[Thad]

You know, I'm not sure I like Mario Kart anymore.

I mean, the multiplayer is still fine. It's just that the single-player has become fucking garbage, and they make you play the single-player if you want to be able to unlock shit. Why the fuck can't you unlock shit in online multiplayer?

Is this problem rectified in 8, or do you still have to play through a bunch of unsatisfying bullshit just to get the full range of characters and karts?

[Niku]

The only way to unlock things is through single-player? That's kind of balls. I like single-player Mario Kart well enough (though the last one I played extensively was DS), but I'd have figured they'd at least go the Smash Bros. route of "play a stupid amount of multiplayer matches to unlock things eventually".

[Grath]

So far my roommate and I have been unlocking karts and racers and cups in local multiplayer.

[Thad]

The only way to unlock things is through single-player? That's kind of balls.

Technically no, you can unlock through local multiplayer, which is a huge step up from MKWii where you really DID have to do it all in single-player.

But of course multiplayer was a lot easier on Wii than 3DS.

I like single-player Mario Kart well enough (though the last one I played extensively was DS),

See, DS single-player was fine! I liked it!

But MKWii really increased the amount of random fuckings-over. 7 has dialed it back a bit, it's not quite as flagrantly unfair as Wii was -- but still, getting kanged by a blue shell right before the finish line is complete bullshit in single-player mode. I'm not necessarily averse to it in multiplayer -- yes, it's still unfair and random and punishes people for being too good at the game, but at least it benefits other actual human beings. If I get smacked down right before the finish line in a multiplayer game, that is fun for somebody. If it happens in a single-player game, it is not fun for anybody; nobody benefits from it.

Basically, losing a game at random through no fault of your own is okay sometimes in a multiplayer game, but it's fucking terrible game design in a single-player one. And it would be nice if Nintendo could recognize that single-player experiences should be different from multiplayer ones in a way that makes the single-player game MORE fair instead of less.

[Rico]

Short MK8 impression: if you're in 1st or 2nd the game is less punishing than previous iterations. It's now significantly more difficult to break out of the pack to get there, though. I think I might like that. I like a lot of the new courses, even if they do way overuse incredibly-banked tracks. Battle mode is pretty terrible; not sure why they made such a drastic change.

[sei]

Battle mode is pretty terrible; not sure why they made such a drastic change.

How did they ruin it? Used to be fun enough in the SNES and N64 iterations.

[Rico]

It's now on a selection of normal racetracks instead of designed battle courses. There are a couple other major changes that I thinkmi ght be good: there's a time limit, andthe ga me keeps track of when you get hit for scoring/ranking; dead players can still collect and shoot items as a ghost.

But normal courses are just uninteresting to battle in, and the engine isn't really built to display racers coming at you full speed from the front so it's just a crap shoot of driving as fast as you can spamming green shells.

[zaratustra]

[Niku]

The time limit on battle mode is what fucking killed .. Double Dash? Is that when it started? Battle Mode has always worked best as a last man-standing cat and mouse game, especially when it was just two people both being cats. N64 remains the platonic battle mode ideal as far as I'm concerned, especially with the bomb-karts giving players their Mario Kart ordained last ditch effort to dick over the winning player.

[sei]

It's now on a selection of normal racetracks instead of designed battle courses. There are a couple other major changes that I thinkmi ght be good: there's a time limit, andthe ga me keeps track of when you get hit for scoring/ranking; dead players can still collect and shoot items as a ghost.

But normal courses are just uninteresting to battle in, and the engine isn't really built to display racers coming at you full speed from the front so it's just a crap shoot of driving as fast as you can spamming green shells.

You may have just un-sold me on MK8.

[Lyrai]

Bought MK8

Very fun

Love Rainbow Road

Did Multiplayer. Wii U Gamepad & Wii Mote can both be motion controlled or normal controlled. Everything is amazing.

[Thad]

Dear Nintendo,

Having already selected Gilbert Gottfried on helium as the voice of Toad, was it entirely necessary to also make him laugh like Nelson every time he passes you?


Kisses,

Thad

[Rico]

Bought MK8

Very fun

Love Rainbow Road

Did Multiplayer. Wii U Gamepad & Wii Mote can both be motion controlled or normal controlled. Everything is amazing.

No remapping while using a classic controller (FFFFFFFFFFFF) but I really like wiimote+nunchuck. Won't own a wiiu til Smash Bros, but MK8 is definitely good enough to buy then. Really loving Star Cup but only Mushroom feels anything less than very good.