3. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017*)
- * released on the Nintendo Switch in 2017; original release of Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U in 2014
- Final score: 91 points
- Total placements: 6 lists
- Highest placement: #1, Nick
Schnei writes:
The pinnacle of kart racing craft, finely tuned and balanced, bringing friends together for years to share their incandescent rage. You know it, you love it, you love to hate it–admittedly for different reasons, depending on your active participation in the Lakitu Fun Club.
Bill writes:
I doubt that any of us will ever be able to reflect on our time together in MK8 with anything like a calm or dispassionate eye, but my soul has been at least somewhat aided in grappling with our shared affliction by two bodies of work concerning baseball, both by the writer Jon Bois. The first is Jon's There is No Future of Baseball, in which he poetically argues that baseball neither can sustain nor demands any changes to whatever it now is. At some level, it's absurd to try to tie that opinion onto the franchise whose latest iteration is all of three days old and currently generates approximately 100% of the Switch 2's launch buzz. But on another level, Jon's ode to the engineering triumph that is the Pioneer 10, still streaking along on its arc across the galaxy, feels like a fitting tribute to the game that provided all that we asked of it for so, so long.
The second body of work are posts sent to Jon semi-frequently on social media, consisting of game footage accompanied by only the text "watching baseball," each technically explainable by the game's rules, but still making you wonder that they ever occurred within our lifetimes, and usually humiliating for all parties involved. Here is a representative sample, ending in a nutshot so pure that it almost feels wholesome. Their relevance to this review should be obvious.
Casey writes:
Data-wise, it is (perhaps not super surprising but) interesting to see the leap between position #4 and the top 3. So here we are with the first of the definitive best games of the Switch era. I will say, with the release of the Switch 2, I’m relieved to know that I never have to play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe again. Now to take a big sip of coffee and look at the group chat where all my friends will share the news that they’ve preordered a Switch 2.