IGN: Eight Reasons To Be Excited For Mario Kart 8

Those are some good reasons to be excited about the game and it's really boosted my excitement, but there are 3 reasons I remain uninterested

-Blue Shell: devalidating your input in a video game since 1997

-Gliding: this is a mechanic that I felt lessened the enjoyment of the track designs. When you launch off a blue boost, the track becomes a simple straight away. It's far more interesting to stay on the ground handling twists and turns

-Coins: Because I'm not a fan of the rigged nature of the items in the races, I spend most of my time in the time trials of a Mario Kart game. However, in the last game and now this one, they brought coins back in. The problem with this is that the enjoyment of precisely hugging corners or improvising more interesting takes on a track are kind of thrown away in favour of following the path of coins they set for you to speed you up.

Blue shells can be turned off, you don't have to follow the coins, your complaint about gliding is irrelevant, especially given that the track design seems to be more topsy turvy and creative than ever,

Just mentioning my concerns based off the latest Mario Kart. Can you turn the items off in grand prix mode? It always bothered me that you have to deal with a bunch of randomness to unlock everything in the game. Get hit by a blue shell just before crossing a finish line? Too bad, no 3 star completion and you have to retry the entire circuit for no other reason than the game randomly deciding that this would be the case.

@charizard1605: could you link us to that preview? I think an interview hinted at something like it but they could be talking about how it was in mk7 where you could play shells only/bananas only etc