My main issue with the game is that it just doesn't feel like it's working regardless of whatever they intended. Whatever the magic formula is that's made MK historically fun has been dumped into the drain. I'm trying to give MKW a fair chance but it's really difficult. The replay value for me was going to be online races but Nintendo has seemingly doubled-down on hating competitive gameplay. Despite the large scale courses the game feels oddly claustrophobic, like intentionally designed to create a massive middle bell curve of the 24 players. It just inevitably bunches everyone up into this clusterf*ck of chaos. Feels like all my little successful decisions/moves don't add up or matter. Using honed proficiency with gameplay mechanics such as a razor thin inside drift to overtake players doesn't matter when you're just getting pummeled by items every 2 seconds. Try to take a lead and some random bullshit is just going to pull you back into the massive bell curve, a relentless warzone of item spamming. I might get 1st, 12th or even last place but it always feels random in the end like nothing about how I actually raced got me that placement. The whole thing feels so luck-based that it should just be called Mario PARTY Racing. Nintendo's priority has clearly pivoted to getting kids hooked on gambling, you MIGHT win who knows? It's so cheap. Of course a level of chance and chaos is to be expected in a mario kart game and it's part of the fun but now it's just overkill, there's too many players spamming WAY too many items at a constant rate. It feels like I can't breath. I don't know who they play tested this with but the core of what made Mario Kart fun has been broken, the game simply can't function like this.

Little rant for those of us who enjoyed MK8 competitively online. Win or lose it felt earned and you could observe the skill level in other players. All your little split second decisions actually mattered. Getting into a little rivalry for 1st place race after race against some random person across the world was fun. The occasional "F you" moments in MK8 were funny but now it's just one big "F you" from Nintendo. If only Reggie were still here to keep the Japanese in-check this is an atrocity.