Transcription
Nintendo is about to taint their most valuable franchise. How do you feel about Mario Kart? They're pretty good, right? Always fun. But what if we took that idea of fun and thinly spread it out in an empty world? I know this game isn't out yet, but let me tell you something: I don't need this game to be out for me to see how hollow it is, and neither does Nintendo, apparently, because they just had a 15-minute Direct about nothing.
So let's just see here: what is it that Nintendo wants us to pay $80 for? Let's break it down. For the first time in the series, all the tracks are connected in one giant world for you to drive around in. Now I'm not going to be negative just for the sake of being negative, but let's just open our minds for a second and remember why we play these games. And I want it to be clear that these are my opinions. If you think everything shown of the game thus far looks like it was made by God himself, by all means, leave me a death threat in the comments below. I'm not telling you how to react to this game; I'm giving you my reaction to this game.
So, one giant world to drive around in. What do you do in this giant world? Well, very little. The annoying prick narrator explains the implementation of missions. Yes, for the first time since Mario Kart DS, missions are back, and you have to drive around until you find them. I don't like the idea of that. I have no interest in driving around until I find fun things to do. The reason that works in Zelda and any other open-world game is because there's always something on screen to check out, and exploration is the foundation of those games' structure. This is [ __ ] Mario Kart: go find these missions and do them, and you can find collectibles. Doesn't that just sound like a blast? That's really why I play these games—not for the chaos and competition, but to do circles in the middle of a plane because I keep missing a ramp. This is like, for the people who find the stunt jumps in GTA to be fun. If this looks fun to you, boy, did Nintendo just make the greatest thing you've ever seen?
I play these games for a lot of reasons, but at the core, for the past 30 years, these games have been loved for the frantic atmosphere that comes with every race. Now let's take a look at these races. The big new thing, as far as on the track goes, is the ability to wall ride and rail grind. Okay, cool, sounds good. And of course, you have the rewind ability. Wait, what? The ability to rewind the race for yourself, but everyone else keeps going. This is like the dumbest [ __ ] right? First of all, let it be noted that this ability is only available in free roam or when racing solo, so any strategy you could have using this ability becomes irrelevant the second you play with other people. This is just sad. Any of the soul Mario Kart has had is just being turned into this weird, over-forgiving cluster [ __ ] of ideas. I feel like missing a jump is part of the race, right? Knowing that a shortcut is your only chance at keeping first place means pulling off that jump is all the more exciting and rewarding. So the idea of playing a cup and winning because rewinding before a jump is an infinitely better way of staying in the race over luck picking you up and putting you down is just such a lame mechanic. A giant chunk of what makes any of this [ __ ] fun is now replaced with an easy, baby ability to never lose.
In general, these easygoing modes can exist; sure, I get that. I can see how a dumb kid just keeps missing a jump over and over and over again and just wants to move on and see another level. But in this case, it's like, why are you even playing this then? Races, by nature, are competitive. The point of a race is the competition, so why not give the player every option under the sun to not only undo their mistakes but also beat the game that way? If your solution to this is just "don't use it," you're missing the point. I'll forget about the assisted steering, but the rewind is a major mechanic baked into the game. Why do I, as the player, have to avoid using a mechanic in order to make the game more fun for myself? That makes no sense. It's like if you were going to climb Mount Everest and someone offers you a helicopter ride to the top, and you just go, "No thanks, the freezing two-month hike for me please." How does it make sense to consciously avoid something that makes life so much easier?
I already talked about graphics in my last video, but like, come on, look at this. This is the next generation; this is what's been cooking for 11 years. This is not a complaint about graphical power, but rather the lack of effort put into the aesthetic. You can have a game with very limited graphical output but still make it look stunning on the hardware it's running on. Pixel art is the lowest level of graphical intensity, and you can still make a pixelated game look incredible. This is just a pathetic joke, as if Nintendo wants you to gawk at this third-party lineup of 5-year-old games but won't go a step beyond the bare minimum when it comes to their own first-party releases. The little improvement in texture detail that is in this game may be higher in resolution than Mario Kart 8, but it most certainly is not even scraping the standards of today and doesn't even attempt to push the Switch 2 to its graphical limits and take advantage of what is truthfully a significant upgrade. It literally just is the absolute bare minimum. I can't help but watch this footage and be disappointed when thinking back to how mind-blowing Mario Kart 8's graphical upgrade was. It very clearly took complete advantage of the Wii U's capabilities and was a confident slap in the face to consumers, letting you know that this is your next generation; this is what you're going to cough up $60 for. And now, after Nintendo brags about the Switch 2's crazy power upgrade, they show us this. Like, this is anything impressive? Much less than it being unimpressive, it's just a sad waste of potential and, more importantly, lazy.
So you get this muddy, foggy plain, uninspired-looking, pastely, as basic as it gets, cartoony art style. This is your upgrade, and this time around, you're going to pay $80 [ __ ] dollars for it. In Mario Kart 8 and 8 Deluxe, the game runs at a silky smooth 60 frames per second, which, believe it or not, is something Nintendo games used to always do without question. But once you throw in more than two players, the frame rate noticeably gets kicked down to 30 FPS. Okay, whatever, I can believe that a Wii U and maybe even a Switch isn't capable of 60 fps four-player; fair enough. But here we are once again, and Nintendo proudly displays the frame rate going to complete [ __ ] the second that third player pops in, just right there for you to see in the Direct. Here we are, 11 years since then, in the year 2025, and here's what you got. Now I am aware that last generation's consoles weren't capable of running most racing games at 60 fps with three or more players either, but these games very, very clearly are much more graphically demanding, and when every dick writer on Twitter won't shut up about the Switch 2 being more powerful than a PS4 or Xbox One, it's pretty [ __ ] sad to see a game so unimpressive-looking run like this in the year 2025. Nintendo just couldn't be [ __ ] to optimize their game any further. Why not? Because you'll buy it anyway. Oh, and that'll be $80, by the way, a month and a half before release, and this is what's going to wow you.
As far as tracks go, it looks like this is what we get. That's not a whole lot. Of what we know of this game, there are at least seven cups and 29 courses. I think it's fair to assume that the final game will have at least eight cups and 32 courses standard, but even then, that's just an assumption. And as we can see, some of these tracks are reused; there's a pretty old standard. This game comes out in a month and a half. As a consumer, you can only go in expecting what is explicitly shown to you by their own staff. If Nintendo is trying to convince us that this is an $80 value, they're doing a pretty [ __ ] job. Why am I to believe that this is an $80 value? I'm not convinced by what seems to be less content than Mario Kart Super Circuit, nor am I convinced by a 15-minute presentation about [ __ ] we already knew.
I don't know about you guys, but I hated Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's DLC: Nintendo charging you money for tracks they ported from their shitty mobile game; tracks clearly not on the same graphical prowess as the original Wii U ones; new tracks that were built in the mobile game engine because it's cheaper than putting effort into another track that's as impressive-looking as this shitty Tour tracks that are obviously designed for the auto-steer gameplay of the mobile game, so you constantly have no clue where you're supposed to be going; and you got charged for this—already paying $60 for a Wii U port from 2014, but we're still going to charge you more. How is it the Wii U's DLC looked like this, but the Switch's looked like this? How does that work? So, looking at this, I can't help but wonder if most of this game was designed with that cheap mobile engine in mind. I'm sure this game will get DLC eventually, but don't expect anything anywhere close to this in visual quality. Retro tracks return and are implemented into the map; that's cool. There are no retro cups, however. New tracks and retro tracks are all mixed together in the cups, for the most part. Your Grand Prix is going to be a bit new and a bit old. And also, for the first time, you'll need to drive yourself to the next course in Grand Prix. How is that like a good thing? For the first time in the series, we found a way to turn the loading screen into boring, monotonous gameplay—all the fun of driving on a highway for 3 minutes.
I feel like this game is just full of ideas, and that's it—as if anyone on the team could just throw an idea out there, and the game directors didn't know how to turn them down. What if you drove to all the courses? Wow, okay. And then you think about it, and it's like, that's not what I'm playing for. You just think about it for more than 5 seconds and ask yourself, why would I want to do that? You end a race, game loads, you start the next one. What about that didn't work? I get trying new things, but maybe they should make sense instead. You do one lap on a track, then go off-road and drive to the next one, the in-between driving counting as the first two laps of the next track. Good god. So basically, instead of just doing three laps of four courses, you play one lap on each but also drive in between them. Ah yes, replace the actual gameplay of a track with the nothing gameplay of driving to the next one. Granted, you can disable this and change it back to the traditional three laps each with no driving in between, but it defaults to the first option. It's like even the devs were iffy about this one. I don't understand this. It's not like a relaxing break because you're still racing; you don't just kick back and chill. People are still throwing items at you, so why continue the gameplay but just somewhere else with either basic or no obstacles at all? Who thinks of this [ __ ]? Replace fun with nothing.
I like the idea of Knockout Tour; I think it sounds pretty interesting, but there's some [ __ ] I don't like about it. First of all, I don't understand the mentality of "more racers equals better gameplay." At what point does it start to feel less personal with the other racers, especially when you take into account that these courses are designed with 24 players in mind? So just limiting your game settings to fewer players isn't solving anything. Going from 8 to 12, that's not too crazy of a jump, but going from 12 to 24 is literally game-altering. It sounds and looks like there's just a lot of really wide-open roads with nothing in them. I can see this working for Knockout Tour, and I think it seems fine in that context, but generally, I just don't see 24 racers necessarily being more fun, especially when the majority of the roster is a bunch of meaningless characters no one's going to use. I feel like having eight main characters on a track allows you to be more engaged in the cup, and you start to keep track of who's your biggest problem, who's a pain in the ass, and who's sneaking up behind you. I really couldn't give two shits if a [ __ ] bee is in 17th place, but that's just my opinion. Knockout Tour looks cool, and the game compiles tracks for this mode into rallies instead of cups. I think this one will be interesting, but I can't help but be a bit concerned when the Treehouse guy is just driving through courses with no one anywhere close to him for minutes at a time. Yeah, you're both kind of out of the pack right now, but you know that's not a that's not a permanent state. That just looks boring—like the opposite of the point.
Before I whine like a [ __ ] about this game's roster, I just need to say this: the people Nintendo gets to do their voices nowadays are the most annoying-sounding [ __ ] on the planet. These extended races take you from one end of the world to the other: "Reach places like the… Ah, so close! Hey, there's a P-switch over there! Wait, who just passed me? Have a spirited showing at the ghostly movie theater!" Please shut the [ __ ] up! I don't know if they understand how isolating it is to use people who sound like dildos with lungs to do these voiceovers, but if you want your entire audience to feel like three-year-olds listening to a pre-K teacher, you're doing a fantastic job making them embarrassed to watch this [ __ ]. Nice, that one's a winner. I wanted to kill this guy. I almost switched to the Japanese stream because this guy was so [ __ ] annoying; I wanted to blow my brains out. This game's roster is just sad. I don't know, let's get everyone in the office to put in a name of a new character they want. You know what? Just screw it, use all of them. Remember when unlocking characters was a big deal? Like how mind-blowing it was to see Rob or Petey show up in the roster? What is this [ __ ]? A goddamn fishbones? Are we just rolling the dice on the Mario Wiki to get these? Who cares about any of these? Sure, as silly as it sounds to have Stroll and Stew drive a car, who's actually playing as him? Compared to previous newcomers, it's just not exciting at all; like the excitement is just not there. If you go through this Yoshi drive-thru thing, you get food; you eat the food, and you get a costume. Wow, finally, the mechanic I've been waiting for.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with adding a silly little clothing option in a game, but I can't help but roll my eyes when nothing I've seen up to this point has been impressive, and every new idea just seems like a useless addition the devs came up with and have been wasting their time on instead of making actual meaningful content for a game that's been in anticipation for 11 years. And you got to love how each costume is its own slot in the character select menu. Who was the senior director who let this one slide? Don't forget about them accessories: just $80. No, no, no. You would look like a [ __ ] loser if you didn't buy the $20 plastic wheels for the fourth generation in a row. Want to play with some friends? Don't forget several sets of our $90 controllers or that $50 camera. That $50 camera gives you the privilege of not only eating a hot dog for dinner but also dying alone. Hook it up and see your friends' faces. I don't mind this feature, but boy oh boy, would Nintendo really like it if you bought that camera. Please buy that camera. It reminds me a lot of Star Fox 64 3D when you could see people's faces flying around, except that was free and made more sense in context. I don't care about this, but Nintendo really wishes I would. We learned that the camera can detect up to four faces at once, but I mean, no one's using this. I don't know how many groups of rich [ __ ] friends exist that are all corny enough to use this, but it can't be many.
I watch this gameplay from the Treehouse event and I think, "Wow, I wish I was holding the controller." But then I just keep watching and watching, and I can't help but wonder: if I was holding the controller, what the [ __ ] would I be doing? This looks like a long, plain track with nothing in it. For every interesting asset, there's 3 minutes of empty roads. And then I look at previous games, and there's always something exciting happening. The least memorable tracks in the series are those ones that just really have very little going on. Certainly, there are moments that look exciting, and those moments make me want to pick up the game. But take into account all that doesn't excite me and surround this one moment where there was an item flying and the sky looked cool and there's a filter on this one and bring yourself back to reality: that all the courses that this is happening on have a lot of wide-open straightaways. Some of these tracks have the most uninspired themes. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a decent theme here and there, but nothing very detailed at all. I don't know if the devs realize that you can put obstacles on a road, but maybe they should play any previous game where there's always something to react to that's more than just a right turn.
So much about this game is everything I hated about Mario Kart Tour: tracks that get used multiple times just with different paths given; they feature some new areas on the map; it's the same place, same theme. Then there's times of just ignoring the road, you know, the only thing you're supposed to be following. Like, I don't get it. There needs to be structure in a race, and there's just no consistency; it's confusing. What happened to just a race? There's different times of day and weather conditions change, which is cool. Seeing the time of day change over the course of a Grand Prix is a pretty neat idea; I can get behind that. For every one bit of polish, there's 40 instances of not giving a [ __ ]. Watch these hammers flicker because we didn't give them any animation. Watch DK clip through his car during the result ceremony. Sit in awe as some courses don't cast any dynamic shadows at all. But I do love some of the little details, like the comical text that pops up, like in Mario Kart 64. I love the new advertisements all over the world, and I appreciate the little references they threw in the trailer. But good god, if this doesn't hold a candle to this.
I can genuinely see the fun in picking this game up and [ __ ] around in this world, just looking at all the little buildings and stuff. But I can't see that being fun beyond my first time doing it. And years from now, when I come back to this, I don't want to deal with all the annoying [ __ ] wasting my time; I want to play the game. It's easy to ignore a lot of this because the game is new, and it's exciting to see what's here. But once you see it—unless it's an action-packed race like the ones this series exists for—I don't see it being very entertaining, especially when it's coins and missions that, once beaten, aren't going to have nearly as much replay value as traditional racing or battle mode. It just all comes off to me as a strong foundation with a cheaply built mansion on top with nothing inside of it. At the end of the day, there's quite a bit this game has to show that looks interesting. I can see new mechanics like driving a boat being interesting, and I can see new modes like Knockout Tour being fun. But there is just so much empty space filled with a big, hollow, worthless idea that isn't anything I play these games for.
I do not care that I can change clothes. I do not care that I can drive around in a bland-looking world, and I do not care that I can put my face in a lobby and watch other people have mild reactions to uninteresting things. I do care that I can sit on this screen, pick any option, and know that what the game is about to load will be fantastic: four races, three laps, fun items, recognizable characters, catchy music, appealing visuals, and a game I can come back to forever and ever and still find fun. No dumb [ __ ], no open world with basic missions that could have just been a side mode, no driving in between races instead of just loading the next one, no cosmetics that make the setup screen 50 pages long for some reason. Nothing here is wasting my time, and it's all just solid. Everyone working on these games knew what they were doing, and they knew they were doing it right. No need to change what has been working flawlessly for 30 years because, at its core, Mario Kart is a racing game. It's not an open-world exploration game; it's not a wardrobe collectathon, and it's not an MMO. It's four tracks, three laps. You want to change it? Good luck; I hope it works out.
I don't see the series through rose-colored lenses. I know some entries are weaker than others, and I have my gripes and criticisms with all of them. But something I can still say about all of them is that, even though they've been out for years, I still want to play them. This comes out in a month and a half and is brand new, and I have no interest in spending $80 for this sad, hollow corpse of what could have and should have been the most mind-blowing game announcement in years. Maybe the game comes out and it's great. I don't doubt at all that people will have fun with it. If I played it at a kiosk, I would probably have fun too. The Mario Kart formula at its core is just fun. But if you look at this compared to everything that came out over 11 years before it, do you really think this is going to be a bottomless source of entertainment in the same vein that all these other games did for you? Every Mario Kart is just absolutely timeless because they're all made exactly how the designers wanted them to be made: no cluster [ __ ] of ideas and other [ __ ] thrown in just for the sake of saying there's something new. And I don't think this is going to be in that same camp. Questionable mechanics, graphically unimpressive, bland and often boring-looking design, and you're going to pay $80 for it? If your cup of tea is buying whatever Nintendo vomits out, by all means, enjoy it. But regardless of your stance on this game, do the entire industry a favor and don't pre-order it. If the game comes out to raving reviews and has a bunch of extra content Nintendo just didn't bother to tell us about, then that's fantastic. I hope it turns out good; I don't want this game to be [ __ ]. But whatever it is, just ask yourself: is it worth $80 to you? Because if it is, then you just gave Nintendo a new set of standards. If a $60 port of an 11-year-old Wii U game can sell 75 million copies, just imagine how little effort it would take to charge $80 for a whole new one.
I'm Bear Man, and I've been wasting your time. Oh, and by the way, I'm not going to be lingering on this subject. I've said my piece about the Switch 2. Unless something major happens, I think I'm good on yapping for now. Thank you for what is now 82,000 subscribers. That's kind of ridiculous. I know a lot of you subscribe from that Switch video and have no clue what I actually do, but if you love negativity and are full of hate, then you're in the right place. See me on Twitter, Reddit, Patreon, and Discord—the most disgusting collection of words on the internet. Thank you, patrons and channel members, and…
As always, thanks for watching.