Miscellaneous Hot Takes

[youre_a_squib_now]

I'm sure I'm not the first one to come up with this, but post a hot take that is not related to Splatoon. Feel free to discuss if you wish, but they are hot takes after all, so don't expect to agree with all of them. I'll start.

There are no wrong notes, you just lack confidence.

 

[isaac4]

A character in Smash doesn't need to heavily reference a lot of mechanics or other features from their games and most attempts at doing so by the devs have created extremely unhealthy characters for the series.

Edit: I'm realizing now that my description isn't specific enough. I'm mainly talking about trying to make a character as accurate to their games as possible which has led to some terrible execution with characters such as Little Mac, Steve, Kazuya, both Belmonts, and others that I don't feel like typing.

 

[sevenleaf]

so should i repost my "the language/culture of Shipping has ruined how people talk about relationships in fiction" take orrrrrrr
(yes that originated from talking about splatoon but it was never specifically about splatoon)

 

[DzNutsKong]

longer post tomorrow but i'm rooming temporarily with people who have power while my house is out and they've got a loud movie playing at 2 AM...

maybe my hottest video game take? eevee is an awful pokemon and i don't like its evolutions. it was literally designed to be extremely shallow and unremarkable but cutesy mammal thing but is carried by its gimmick that it can be whatever type it wants. okay. is that not literally the exact textbook description of a bad special snowflake oc? "my character might not look like it but is actually really special because he has a super cool power nothing else does!" people go on about pikachu, charizard, whoever else being way too popular for no reason but then turn around and tell you eevee and the eeveelutions make up their 9 favorites. why?

it literally weaseled its way into being the series's secondary mascot which it's absolutely NOT suited for. i think even if you love this pokemon you shouldn't debate that. what better way to introduce people to your series than with a pokemon whose entire identity is a gimmick that literally nothing else has! imagine if people wanted to see if there were more pokemon like eevee only to learn that there are zero out of the thousand others. arceus, castform etc do not count, very clearly different things going on there.

the evolutions themselves are also horribly limited and boring to use as pokemon because the way they're designed forces them away from having too much coverage. they are defined by the one single type they have and you could argue giving them too much coverage could distract from either their identities or possible future eevees that maybe they'll want to revisit in the future. their movepools all suck though and they're extremely one-dimensional, single typings are almost always worse to have because pokemon with them will get compared to pokemon with much better dual typings and in a competitive sense they usually are not very good as a result. look at something like vaporeon that has a fantastic statline and a serviceable movepool for what it wants to do but has consistently been placed in middling tiers at best, or something like espeon that also has great stats and has an absolute gift of an ability in magic bounce only to still be outdone by countless other psychics because those alone don't make a pokemon good.

you could totally take some other middle-of-the-road nothing burger of a normal-type, swap its life with eevee's and things would be no different. imagine if you took, i dunno, minccino and gave it the eight evolutions thing and gave eevee a more standard evolution. you cannot tell me that anyone would talk about eevee anymore and everyone would talk about minccino. the whole reason people like it is for an idea that actively makes each of its evolutions both worse and less interesting while also feeling like something out of a work of fanfiction all the same, and yet everyone loves it despite a lot of people hating a lot of pokemon for seeing less love than it.

 

[QuagSass]

longer post tomorrow but i'm rooming temporarily with people who have power while my house is out and they've got a loud movie playing at 2 AM...

maybe my hottest video game take? eevee is an awful pokemon and i don't like its evolutions. it was literally designed to be extremely shallow and unremarkable but cutesy mammal thing but is carried by its gimmick that it can be whatever type it wants. okay. is that not literally the exact textbook description of a bad special snowflake oc? "my character might not look like it but is actually really special because he has a super cool power nothing else does!" people go on about pikachu, charizard, whoever else being way too popular for no reason but then turn around and tell you eevee and the eeveelutions make up their 9 favorites. why?

it literally weaseled its way into being the series's secondary mascot which it's absolutely NOT suited for. i think even if you love this pokemon you shouldn't debate that. what better way to introduce people to your series than with a pokemon whose entire identity is a gimmick that literally nothing else has! imagine if people wanted to see if there were more pokemon like eevee only to learn that there are zero out of the thousand others. arceus, castform etc do not count, very clearly different things going on there.

the evolutions themselves are also horribly limited and boring to use as pokemon because the way they're designed forces them away from having too much coverage. they are defined by the one single type they have and you could argue giving them too much coverage could distract from either their identities or possible future eevees that maybe they'll want to revisit in the future. their movepools all suck though and they're extremely one-dimensional, single typings are almost always worse to have because pokemon with them will get compared to pokemon with much better dual typings and in a competitive sense they usually are not very good as a result. look at something like vaporeon that has a fantastic statline and a serviceable movepool for what it wants to do but has consistently been placed in middling tiers at best, or something like espeon that also has great stats and has an absolute gift of an ability in magic bounce only to still be outdone by countless other psychics because those alone don't make a pokemon good.

you could totally take some other middle-of-the-road nothing burger of a normal-type, swap its life with eevee's and things would be no different. imagine if you took, i dunno, minccino and gave it the eight evolutions thing and gave eevee a more standard evolution. you cannot tell me that anyone would talk about eevee anymore and everyone would talk about minccino. the whole reason people like it is for an idea that actively makes each of its evolutions both worse and less interesting while also feeling like something out of a work of fanfiction all the same, and yet everyone loves it despite a lot of people hating a lot of pokemon for seeing less love than it.

SO TRUE!!! GOD SOMEONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS!!!

 

[Cephalobro]

The Minecraft Mob Votes should've never existed in the first place and all of the options should've been implemented instead.

I just hate the current Mojang in general, they make stupid changes like not allowing players to type whatever they want to type in their own single-player world. I can understand multiplayer, but really, single-player too? They've gone too soft and brittle and justify any and all sorts of laziness, I'm glad the mob vote is gone, give the players the content you've promised, and don't give any excuses on why you can't simply add all of the choices eventually. Oh and stop trying to impose bans on groups of friends just because they made a joke amongst themselves that you don't like.

The old Mojang was better, they took their time with each Minecraft update and it paid off, there was no mob or biome vote either, which was great, and players got what they had been promised (most of the time). Plus, they were a lot looser with jokes between friends.

Oh, and the current Mojang takes down 18+ Minecraft mods (completely understandable, children shouldn't be exposed to 18+ content) but they don't go after servers that has lootboxes? Just do both instead of only doing one of them, enough with the double standards, Mojang.

 

[Catloafman]

I am not a super big zelda fan anymore but I think if... oh wait lemmie put this in spoilers

Spoiler: The legend of zelda: tears of the kingdom BIG spoilers

Ok I think Zelda should have stayed as a dragon at the end of totk
First off there really was no reason why zelda was able to transform back into a human besides the whole oooh a deeper magic from the beginning of time or something which works way better in NARNIA (this is also narnia spoilers btw)
Draconification is permanent PERIOD FULL STOP
And besides it would have been a really cool ending for the goddess's bloodline, I imagine the end where Link slays the demon king dragon and returns to the outpost thingy place (its been many months since i've played this game if you cant tell) and celebrates the end of the demon king and the discovery of Zelda... but its bittersweet because their princess will not reign again
Hyrule must rebuild but this time without the bloodline of Hylia and while evil in hyrule is never fully rid of next time it rears its ugly head they will have a dragon on their side

This would have been a lot better than the actual ending where her sacrifice basically gets retconned because "we can't have zelda basically be dead by the end of a zelda game!!!!"

Also another zelda hot take (less spoilery this time) is I think live action for the movie is the right play sure animation could look cool but I much prefer the idea of a live action movie

 

[isaac4]

I am not a super big zelda fan anymore but I think if... oh wait lemmie put this in spoilers

Spoiler: The legend of zelda: tears of the kingdom BIG spoilers

Ok I think Zelda should have stayed as a dragon at the end of totk
First off there really was no reason why zelda was able to transform back into a human besides the whole oooh a deeper magic from the beginning of time or something which works way better in NARNIA (this is also narnia spoilers btw)
Draconification is permanent PERIOD FULL STOP
And besides it would have been a really cool ending for the goddess's bloodline, I imagine the end where Link slays the demon king dragon and returns to the outpost thingy place (its been many months since i've played this game if you cant tell) and celebrates the end of the demon king and the discovery of Zelda... but its bittersweet because their princess will not reign again
Hyrule must rebuild but this time without the bloodline of Hylia and while evil in hyrule is never fully rid of next time it rears its ugly head they will have a dragon on their side

I felt very similarly about this as well.

Spoiler: Totk story spoilers

I had problems with the story in general but a lot of the impact of Zelda's sacrifice is taken away from her returning to normal after beating Ganondorf. It would have been a bold choice to give the game such a bittersweet ending by forcing Hyrule to move on without their Zelda.
That sort of boldness is what I liked about Botw because Link coming back to defeat Calamity Ganon wasn't going to return Hyrule to how it was 100 years ago.

 

[yumz]

watching letsplays/playthroughs of a game instead of playing the game is fine actually. especially if it’s a pricey or console exclusive title

 

[PacManFever]

The Minecraft Mob Votes should've never existed in the first place and all of the options should've been implemented instead.

I just hate the current Mojang in general, they make stupid changes like not allowing players to type whatever they want to type in their own single-player world. I can understand multiplayer, but really, single-player too? They've gone too soft and brittle and justify any and all sorts of laziness, I'm glad the mob vote is gone, give the players the content you've promised, and don't give any excuses on why you can't simply add all of the choices eventually. Oh and stop trying to impose bans on groups of friends just because they made a joke amongst themselves that you don't like.

The old Mojang was better, they took their time with each Minecraft update and it paid off, there was no mob or biome vote either, which was great, and players got what they had been promised (most of the time). Plus, they were a lot looser with jokes between friends.

Oh, and the current Mojang takes down 18+ Minecraft mods (completely understandable, children shouldn't be exposed to 18+ content) but they don't go after servers that has lootboxes? Just do both instead of only doing one of them, enough with the double standards, Mojang.

Wait, where are the hot takes? The only one that resembles a "hot take" is the first one, I don't think anyone disagrees with anything after that. A real hot take would be "The Minecraft movie looks like it was made for the fans!"

 

[Cephalobro]

Wait, where are the hot takes? The only one that resembles a "hot take" is the first one, I don't think anyone disagrees with anything after that. A real hot take would be "The Minecraft movie looks like it was made for the fans!"

I thought I should start with something that's more agreeable before really putting in a hot take. So here goes a real hot take:

Rayquaza is a super overrated Pokemon, in every top 10 legendary Pokemon list I have seen so far, it's the one legendary that has consistently made it to the top three. I also find Mewtwo to be overrated as heck. Mewtwo isn't that great lorewise, at least Rayquaza has the role to keep the other members of its trio from fighting. But Mewtwo isn't special at all.

 

[PacManFever]

I thought I should start with something that's more agreeable before really putting in a hot take. So here goes a real hot take:

Rayquaza is a super overrated Pokemon, in every top 10 legendary Pokemon list I have seen so far, it's the one legendary that has consistently made it to the top three. I also find Mewtwo to be overrated as heck. Mewtwo isn't that great lorewise, at least Rayquaza has the role to keep the other members of its trio from fighting. But Mewtwo isn't special at all.

Well, I'm just a casual Pokémon fan and I haven't played gen 3, but I have played Red, so I do have an opinion on Mewtwo.

Personally, I think Mewtwo does exactly what it needed to in its role; it's the endgame for the player. Mewtwo might not have the deepest lore, but I think it being genetically engineered is still interesting.

Looking back on it as someone who wasn't even alive when Pokémon first released, it seems like it was one of the main components of the whole Pokémon franchise. In the game, it played a significant role as being the "ultimate Pokémon", and it added a lot more significance to Team Rocket.

I think people's favorite Pokémon will always be tied to their favorite Pokémon game, which is why I'd imagine Rayquaza is so popular. I have biases towards 2nd gen Pokémon because Crystal is my favorite game, just as someone who likes Mewtwo is probably thinking about Red & Blue.

As for why people like Mewtwo, it's probably either the 1st gen era of Pokémon is their favorite, or social influence from it being literally everywhere.

 

[sevenleaf]

so should i repost my "the language/culture of Shipping has ruined how people talk about relationships in fiction" take orrrrrrr
(yes that originated from talking about splatoon but it was never specifically about splatoon)

*makes sure my signature dragons are up to date before posting a hot take* alright

i wanna preface this by saying my take is not "Shipping Bad". it's not always my thing (i have a unique brain disease where i laserfocus too much on my ocs to do much with canon characters anywhere anyway) but i think it's fun. my take is also not "there's a problem with how folks in fandom spaces talk about relationships in fiction and it's all those dirty shippers' faults". more on that later

my central point is as stated - maybe ruined was a dramatic verb to use when i first posted here at 2 am but the language and culture surrounding shipping, i think, has made it difficult to talk about romantic relationships in fiction in a matter-of-fact way, or to analyze the role of a romantic relationship in a story, without it being assumed what you really want to talk about is Shipping™. if you say "i think the text strongly supports these characters having feelings for each other/being in a relationship" it is assumed what you want to talk about is not actually what that means for the story or those characters' development, but rather where to find good fanfics about those characters. and people who don't pick up on subtext are emboldened to skip "eh, i don't see it personally" and go straight to "wow the shippers want everyone to see the story the way they do" because speculating about characters' love lives is seen as this unimportant, juvenile thing rather than a part of the story and its characters someone could speculate about the same as any other part of the plot, characters' backstories, worldbuilding, etc.

the vibe is still very much there for m/f couples/potential couples but i see this kind of rhetoric used towards queer interpretations of stories and their characters a lot. to an extent i think some people might be trying to be realistic, shield themselves against disappointment, knowing that especially in older, mainstream media, it's a lot less likely for it to be explicitly shown that characters are gay. (...but even then, subtext is a thing and has always been a thing.) but in a lot of cases i think that, despite media from the past decade or so - even kids' media, sometimes at the risk of cancellation and sabotage, see: steven universe & the owl house - becoming more willing to portray queer characters and relationships, fans picking up on subtext (and sometimes just text) is seen as wishful thinking. and thank god there's this convenient "Shipper" label the "idm gay people but keep it out of my face" crowd can apply to queer fans seeing themselves represented in their favorite shows/games/etc to dismiss what we say as childish and unserious!

and it's not lost on me that the stereotypical 'shipper' is a female fan. we all know the "teenage girl writing bad fanfiction" archetype. so we've got this fandom activity largely associated with women and particularly teen girls, and it's also seen as an unimportant way to engage with a work with that sentiment extended to all discussion of fictional relationships... curious! this is why i wanted to make it clear that my grievance isn't with folks who do enjoy shipping for what it is. it's the response to the activity, bled over into conversations meaning to discuss romance in fiction without a shipping lens because nuance is hard to come across online, that i take issue with. and at the core of that response, i think, is misogyny in fandom

ideally, folks big into shipping would be allowed to draw their fanart and write their fanfiction without getting hounded by people who seek out amateur writing by young writers to pick apart, and those of us who want to discuss romance as a plot element and character aspect - or express joy over the fact that queerness in fiction is no longer always relegated to the subtlest of subtext - could do that without it getting shoved in the 'shipping' box.
(the shipping box? like from UPS?)

 

[missingno]

Three years ago I wrote a 20 page essay about how the best-selling installment in my favorite series is not only the worst game in the series, it's actually the reason why the series is now dead today.

Got a lot of backlash for it at the time, but three years later every word of it was proven correct.

 

[PacManFever]

Three years ago I wrote a 20 page essay about how the best-selling installment in my favorite series is not only the worst game in the series, it's actually the reason why the series is now dead today.

Got a lot of backlash for it at the time, but three years later every word of it was proven correct.

Wait, I've seen that before. I'm actually a fan of Puyo Puyo myself.

 

[Grushi]

I like to think I have a lot of hot takes regarding fiction but I feel like a lot of these are very common in reality, so I couldn't find anything to post... UNTIL

I kind of hate coloured hair in character designs
It's supposed to look appealing but honestly, the moment I see it, my suspension of disbelief shatters, I can't take it seriously. You're really telling me that in this peaceful farming village people are born with blue hair and it's just a normal thing here?

Now I'm kind of flexible when it comes to that, like I can get behind some darker orange, grayish, or even white hair. But the moment characters are blue, or neon yellow or something, you just lose me. It doesn't look natural at all and it feels like the character designer just made what looks good instead of thinking about why their characters look the way they do. And I can think of plenty of stories that just have natural hair colours and the characters look great! And I 'coincidentally' liked those a lot more.
So it looks even worse when compared to like, soda can hair waifu simulator.

I only think it works if it's a urban or even sci-fi universe, or if the character design is really out there as is, there has to be a reason to me. So yes, Splatoon is totally fine.

 

[Mp3]

Everyone deeply hates copy expansion levels but thinks it’s best campaign because it’s the only difficult one

 

[OnePotWonder]

Super Mario Odyssey is the most overrated game of all time. Super Mario is not about exploring open world environments, it is about getting a plumber from point A to point B or in some cases snooping around and finding a secret point C. We shouldn't have worlds with a point for every capital and lowercase letter of the alphabet. It's not how mainline Super Mario works.

It's by no means a hot take that Super Mario peaked with the Super Mario Galaxy games, but I would argue Super Mario 3D World is a close second simply because the way it takes the classic Super Mario formula into 3D is flawless.

Open worlds as a whole are overrated. They're more often than not a shortcut to increase the playtime of a game by making room to fit in hours of filler content that poses no challenge to the player whatsoever. At their worst, they can cheapen a game completely by giving players so many options that barely any content is mandatory to complete. Exhibit A: Super Mario Odyssey.

I would argue one of the things that made Octo Expansion so much fun was the limitation of its map; every level completion rewarded the player with a new level or two to play. The reason why Return of the Mammalians didn't work anywhere near as well despite taking so much inspiration from OE is because only one non-boss level in Alterna is actually mandatory. The individual levels in RotM are worthless to the point where (and this is likely an extremely hot take) campaigns that give the player virtually no agency like Octo Canyon from Splatoon 2 are better.

 

[Cephalobro]

When will people stop clamoring for Johto remakes, or for Johto to steal Unova's spot for a Legends game? Honestly, Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee should've never been released at all. Remaking a game that has already been remade is such a stupid idea that should've never been done in the first place, especially one that was already a single-screen game. While a Legends Johto game could be cool, I feel like they really should prioritize Pokemon regions that haven't gotten any for of revisit yet, really big missed opportunity not having something Unova-related announced in the Year of the Dragon.

Also, they should've waited for Legends ZA until much later, I feel Kalos is too soon, and the DS regions should take priority for some sort of revisit before the 3DS ones.

 

[DzNutsKong]

I was thinking about the Mario Odyssey post earlier. The points there are understandable except for it being the single most overrated game ever which sounded like a bit of hyperbole on paper. It makes sense with the reasons given in the post, but it got me trying to think of a game that I'd call more overrated. I quickly came to the conclusion "oh wait I don't play any video games." I still think Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Mega Man 2 are my answers of the ones I've played. Mega Man 2 I have less to say about and doesn't feel like as hot of a take since a solid chunk of the Mega Man community has moved to something like 11, 9, or 6 being the best so I'll just talk about MK8D.

Base gameplay of Mario Kart 8 consists of literally just hold forward, hit a turn, drift (or don't if you don't know how), then continue holding forward. That might sound like an oversimplification of racing as a whole but compare this to previous Mario Karts that had little things to optimize as you went along. Mario Kart DS and 7 had their own forms of snaking, as did Mario Kart Wii unless you had a bike in which case there are several of these things, and even base Mario Kart 8 still had firehopping. MK8D by comparison has absolutely none of this.

In 150cc you can release your drift into some tighter corners with offroad to cut them a bit faster but this has never felt great to do and there are very few spots like this that you would be able to pick up on without explicitly going out of your way to look for them. Like...this game should not force me to dig through internet stuff to find out how to optimize a mechanic that feels awful to learn in order to find more appreciation in a game I find awful to play to begin with. The thing with the other stuff was that you can do them anywhere and messing them up means you don't go any slower than had you not tried them to begin with. There is no incentive not to try and learn them.

The new anti-gravity mechanic is lame and adds basically nothing to the game outside of serving to make the maps for each course a bit funny lookin. Can't really say much there, but I can tell you that the game removes anything interesting you could do with gliders and doesn't do anything to fix how horrible underwater sections feel. Pretty clearly all just meant to be marketing gimmicks that they gave little to no care to.

The new items that weren't in 7 mostly suck. They feel awful to use and even worse to play against. The Fire and Boomerang Flowers all just exist to compound the issue of the middle spots feeling horrible to be in by adding even worse unreactable nonsense to deal with, the Piranha Plant locks you into it way too long for how weak the effect feels to use, and the Boo often feels explicitly worse than the other items you could get in the places you usually get it in. The Super Horn isn't bad though. I like the idea of a quick, burst radius kinda deal and I like how situational it is for actually blocking the Blue Shell as opposed to needing to be burned on a Red Shell or something.

Speaking of both of those things, the sheer amount of Red Shells. If you're playing the game in first then it becomes obnoxious. All you end up doing is cycling through items to get a Coin as your first item in case of a Boo, a defense item as your second one, and then...waiting. That's it. Using either of those two items is way too risky because of the abundance of Red Shells. No using any of the items you get in more interesting or thoughtful ways.

When you do get to use items from first though...why on earth would you give 1st place access to Bob-ombs?? Dropping a bomb backwards is the single most difficult-to-avoid setup in previous Mario Kart games and is also the most punishing because of how long you take to recover from Bob-omb damage. It was already a problem that being in first can be way too oppressive with how much chaos there is in the middle spots. Maybe this is a buff to compensate for Red Shells being a nerf? Then in that case, why would you choose to both buff and nerf first place at the same time in the most obnoxious way possible on both ends?

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "distance from first place" thing they have for items. I've seen several games where the person in dead last just gets bullied like crazy because other people are getting Stars and Golden Mushrooms in 6th place for some reason, but this is also the game where sandbagging is at its strongest. That much is probably because of the game having double items which in itself I don't entirely mind. There is, or at least was before they patched it, an interesting dynamic where you want the double item box in a set, but you think the player in front of you might want it, so you'll need to react on the fly and change your direction to hit a box you think the guy in front of you won't. But then they made the item boxes respawn like instantly so even that's gone. Whoops.

Some of you may say that I'm looking at this game too deeply as if it's a competitive and that it's just a party game that you goof off with friends with. I do not enjoy any Mario Kart game as a competitive experience. Maybe some of them are better than others if you sink a ton of time into them but I genuinely would not know which. Every single thing I just listed save maybe the last point serves to make the game less enjoyable even as a more casual game. I have picked up Mario Kart DS or Wii on my own time just because the mechanics are fun to screw around with but only begrudgingly pick up MK8D when other friends are already playing because it's the only option they want to play.

The game's graphics, music, and visuals to each track are all pretty good for the most part, but those things have not been bad for any previous Mario Kart game other than Wii or DS's graphics being subpar. The visual stuff definitely isn't the reason so many people prefer this game to previous ones though because a lot of the DLC tracks look very strange. Not bad, but definitely of a much lower quality than the base game's tracks. This was a big thing people got up in arms over on the internet before so I'll just say the artstyles are not consistent between the base game and DLC and the texturing and stuff is way worse in the DLC. Either way I'm entirely willing to put up with a game having decent or even bad graphics for its time if the rest of it makes up for it.

Which, to that point, 96 tracks. That's a lot. It's not like it matters though. You're not going to honestly sit down and tell me that you ever felt like 32 tracks was too few in any previous Mario Kart game. Nobody is going to sit with their friends through 32 Mario Kart tracks, play one repeat and tell everyone "dang we already did this one this is boring." It's technically better to have more but it's never going to mean anything.

The big, genuine merits I see in this game are 200cc and the custom item rules. 200cc genuinely fixes how most tracks feel too empty and lack little things to optimize because the game's just going so much faster that you don't have time to think. It's actually a lot harder to have good racing lines because of how much harder it is to not go flying off of the track. Doing tricks becomes something you need to carefully think about the risk of as opposed to the admittedly nice thing it was before that just existed for the sake of game feel. Custom item rules I don't have much to say about but adding more customization and allowing for more wacky scenarios will always be a flat-out plus for a game like this. It's a bit unfortunate that not all groups of friends will want to play with either of these, especially in the former case, but I'm never going to complain about either of these being added.

A lot of people complain about the game being unbalanced compared previous Mario Kart games but to be brutally honest, I don't like that opinion. There will always be an "optimal" character or vehicle in every Mario Kart game. There's even one in MK8D that you'll see people spamming a lot if you go online! This has zero effect on the game in a more casual sense though. Even in something like Mario Kart Wii, I know of a local group that has several dozen people who play the game more casually. They like the Dolphin Dasher the most and there are several people who have successfully used Karts despite them being worse than Bikes at a serious level! Imagine if those people just picked Funky Kong and the Flame Runner and then went on Twitter to complain about how unbalanced the game is. That would be an embarrassing opinion to have if you were within that group.

That's all to say that I don't understand why MK8D game is so beloved in the first place. Maybe people see something in the gameplay that I don't but if that's the case I've never heard anything beyond the graphics and music being better. Maybe people just don't think about or care about the differences between this game and previous Mario Karts so the graphics and music end up being the only deciding factor they have.

It's all just a bit disappointing to me. The differences between each new Mario Kart game are starting to get ironed out in a way that's steering (pun!) the series into having really boring gameplay. A while ago everyone online was begging for a new Mario Kart 9 and I never understood that. It's just going to feel the exact same as MK8D but add some big pointless gimmick like so many modern games do, a few other items that don't do anything interesting, and it'll end up having all of the exact same strengths and weaknesses of MK8D. Maybe some things change, like the Coin item and Red Shell, but all of the bottom lines will be the same. There will be no reason to prefer it to MK8D which will sting because MK8D in itself is not even a good game. Just a painfully average one that makes me wish I was playing something else, but I'll put up with sometimes because it's what everyone else is playing.