"I've never had anything but praise for MK8's art direction. Despite it's lack of graphical fidelity"

OMG, I can't believe people are still saying this. Mario kart 8 is absurdly graphic intensive, get over it.

This is a topic that has been nagging me more and more recently after having several conversations with Nintendo fans about MK8.

In the past art direction was the most important thing to Nintendo fans, and that was something i appreciated. Had i said i thought MK7 was nicer to look at than GT5 because of it's great art direction (a real opinion of mine), many Nintendo fans would have been quick to agree with me. Yet things seem to have changed with MK8.

I've never had anything but praise for MK8's art direction. Despite it's lack of graphical fidelity i believe it's one of the best looking 8th gen titles we've seen, thanks to Nintendo excellent artistic skills. In the past that statement would have been welcome, yet suddenly i seem to be being attacked for it :/ So here i'm going to try and explain what exactly i mean when i call MK8 a graphical disappointment.

I say it based on two criteria. The first is what the WiiU is capable off, the second is comparing it to the competition.

First comes the comparison to the competition. If i look at MK8 and Driveclub, i don't believe either looks better than the other. They are both beautiful looking games, but for different reasons. Before i go further i should note that this is a GRAPHICAL comparison, not a PERFORMANCE comparison. If you want to have a 60fps vs 30fps argument, have it somewhere else.

To really judge a game graphically you have to take an up close look, so here are two close ups of the karts/cars of DC and MK8. When we do that with something like DC, we see cars with huge poly gon counts, excellent use of AA and some top level textures (what i would describe as graphically impressive). Then we turn to MK8 and see very low res textures (especially on the floor), awful AA, and visible polygon counts (the exact opposite of graphically impressive).

None of this would have mattered to most Nintendo fans in the past, as long as the game looked good for other reaons, which it does.

Back when it was thought MK8 was 720p/60fps i was told i was wrong for believe MK8 should be making better use of the WiiU's power (by everyone who replied to be except carl-6). Yet some of those same users fully embraced the possibility that it may in-fact be 1080p/60fps. I'm sure you can see why that's a tad hypocritical, since resource wise that would be like running the game twice over. At 1080p/60fps i can fully understand MK8's lack of graphical fidelity, because it is at leats pushing the WiiU's hardware. At 720p/60fps i was disappointed.

All in all it's been a confusing experience. I miss the days when fantastic art style was enough for all Nintendo fans, but i suppose we can't have everything :/

So discuss! What has brought about this change in many Nintendo fans?