This week is early Christmas for gamers, with lots of presents directly from the internet to keep you entertained. There's the Game Awards later tonight, where we will hopefully see more of Tears of the Kingdom and maybe some other exciting announcements. Also, quite a number of games are getting a content update this week, which includes Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with the third wave of the Booster Course Pass.
And arguably this is the best wave so far. The visuals have improved quite a bit, where some of the new additions have been getting closer to the base game quality, even matching them in one case. The courses finally also make better use of the different driving modes, where more than half of them have anti-gravity and there is a first course in the DLC with under water gameplay.
It genuinely feels like Nintendo has been listening to feedback, which is great. It's just a shame that they can't go back and overhaul some of the courses from the first two waves, other than making the cars at Coconut Mall spin. Anyway, here are the new additions...
Rock Cup:
- Tour London Loop
- GBA Boo Lake
- 3DS Alpine Pass / Rock Rock Mountain
- Wii Maple Treeway
Moon Cup:
- Tour Berlin Byways
- DS Peach Gardens
- Merry Mountain
- 3DS Rainbow Road
First of all, you may notice that some tracks got reshuffled from the previous datamines. Originally, DS Waluigi Stadium was going to be part of the Moon Cup, Peach Gardens was part of the Rock Cup, and Maple Treeway was not supposed to be released until a later point, in the Acorn Cup. The latter is a bit disappointing, because it would have been a better fit thematically.
The courses in a cup don't necessarily have to match the corresponding trophy item, of course, but there are some clear references here and there, like having Rock Rock Mountain in the Rock Cup or ending the Moon Cup with the 3DS Rainbow Road. These are good calls and likewise you would put Maple Treeway into the Acorn Cup. Not sure why Nintendo has changed these, but if there is one course to move from the Rock Cup into the Moon Cup, it should have been Boo Lake and not Peach Gardens, since this track is bathed in moonlight. So, I'm not a big fan of the decisions here, but naturally this doesn't affect the quality of the actual courses.
And the quality is overall really great in wave 3. The city tours, London Loop and Berlin Byways, are probably my least favorite this time, where the magic of the ever-changing course layouts has worn off a bit. In fact, in these two cases it can get quite confusing, because there is just very little consistency and a lot going on. Especially in Berlin I'm constantly thinking, "where do I need to go? Where do I need to go?! Where do I need to go...?!"
Both of the courses have some nice touches, however, like the little drawbridge for the London Bridge, which keeps going up. And the Berlin Wall has Whomps crashing down, which is very clever. The music is also pretty great, where overall they still feel like good additions, it's just a bit too much clutter.
GBA Boo Lake is another fantastic re-imagining of a Super Circuit course. I would even go as far and say that it's my favorite one so far, though Snow Land is quite close. It just perfectly captures those spooky Luigi's Mansion visuals and is a lot of fun to race in 200cc, similar to SNES Rainbow Road. There is also an underwater section in this track, the first and only in the DLC so far. While the underwater gameplay isn't terribly exciting, it's a bit crazy how there hasn't been any new underwater course since the base game Mario Kart 8 in 2014.
This makes you wish for 3DS Wario's Galleon / Wario Shipyard, but that's not going to happen, at least not in this Booster Course Pack, because we have already gotten all courses from Mario Kart 7 that are going to be in the DLC, at least from what we know. And with that in mind 3DS Alpine Pass (also known as Rock Rock Mountain) isn't exactly the greatest choice. The track is okay, but I was never particularly fond of it on the Nintendo 3DS and this didn't change with the new version.
It's probably the most disappointing course addition in wave 3, where it's also the least impressive visually. We're talking about wave 1 quality here with completely flat textures and trees made out of clay. You even have a cave with bats flying at you, exactly like in Choco Mountain, where it's clear that they are re-using as many assets as possible for these new tracks. At least they have spiced things up a notch at the last section, where now it makes use of anti-gravity while going up the mountain, which was a good change.
Now, off to Wii Maple Treeway, where this has always been one of my absolute favorite courses ever since Mario Kart Wii. However, I feel like this is my least favorite version so far and I can't exactly put my finger on it why that is, but there is just something off. I guess, it just looks too dark. While the textures in other courses are often very bright and simple, here they took the grittiest wooden surfaces they could possibly find. It also has been scaled up a bit, where the Wigglers seemingly pose no threat any longer. Just drive by them, there is enough space.
But visually this is a huge upgrade over Mario Kart Tour. When compared to the previous course, it's a day and night difference. Alpine Pass looks like it was directly ported out of Mario Kart Tour, while this one here got a lot of work done on it, almost like it was made by a different team. And this has to be praised at this point.
Another surprise comes with DS Peach Gardens. This has always been one of the more relaxed courses and that's fine, but to change things up a gear you now go in reverse during the last lap. That's ingenious. Well, Mario Kart Tour has reversed variants of all its courses, where it's about time that they made some of use of this for something other than the city tours. Of course you need a part of the track that lets you go in a circle, so this will be difficult to implement with most of the classic courses, but they certainly have found the perfect candidate here.
After the lackluster Sky-High Sundae my expectations for Merry Mountain were quite low, but I have been positively surprised here. This course may still be simple, but it flows. It's just very enjoyable to drive around here and it has to be one of may favorite courses for 200cc. It's also the only one of the new courses where I managed to beat the staff ghost on first try. And the last section reminds me of GCN DK Mountain, the part where you're going downhill after the cannon.
This wave also re-introduces half-pipes to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, where both Merry Mountain and Maple Treeway make use of it. Anti-gravity is active here and this could be interesting for some future additions, like GCN Waluigi Stadium, which was originally supposed to be part of this wave, as already mentioned. But this makes me wonder if something about the half-pipes still needed some further adjustments...
Finally, we have the 3DS Rainbow Road and this one is a looker. The texture they have been using for the road itself is absolutely stunning. And the whole course is very beautiful from start to finish. Unlike the Rainbow Road from Mario Kart 8, this one also works wonderfully in 200cc. It's easily my favorite Rainbow Road in this game next to the SNES one, where there are four Rainbow Roads now in total.
The Spiny Cup will end on another Wii course, where the total could go up to five. But I'm thinking that they will go with Wii Bowser's Castle there, because there haven't been any of the previous Bowser Castles in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe yet... Imagine that. And after the 3DS Rainbow Road this will be hard to top, it's an amazing finale for the first half of the Booster Course Pass.
Version 2.2.0
Other than the new course additions, the recent update for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also came with a small variety of improvements. The biggest addition is by far the custom item selection, which you can use in the VS and Battle Modes, as well as online friend lobbies and tournaments. If you play Super Smash Bros., then this should be familiar to you, where it's actually quite weird that it took this long to make it into Mario Kart as well.
But better later than never, because this can be a lot of fun and lets you do all sort of crazy things. It doesn't work too well with just a hand full of items, because it seemingly still applies the usual item rules. So, if you have bananas and a bunch of powerful items, you will mostly just get bananas in the front rows. There needs to be a frantic custom item selection of sorts. But it's good for deactivating some annoying items, like the Blooper, or just playing with a single item. Like only Spiny Shells. Or only Bullet Bills. Or only Lightnings...
Speaking of Lightning, this item got finally nerfed, where now it won't disable your glider any longer. No more target shocks for you...! This actually makes playing against CPU quite a bit nicer, because they loved to snipe you whenever you were above an abyss.
The invincibility time after getting hit now also varies depending on your kart combination, which may or may not change the current meta. Well, I don't play online with randoms, so I don't really care and will stick to my beloved Master Cycle Zero, no matter what, but this still could be interesting and may end the reign of the Waluigi Wiggler.
And in general it's nice to see that they are working on the game outside of the new courses. Remember the 1.6.0 update, where they've added Link from Breath of the Wild with the awesome Master Cycle Zero? I wouldn't mind getting more like that, where they could use drivers and karts from Mario Kart Tour. Go for it, Nintendo!
This was really enjoyable overall and made Mario Kart 8 Deluxe my favorite "ongoing game" of 2022. Too bad that it wasn't nominated in this category of the Game Awards.
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