Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pack Wave 4 Review
A fun surprise and eight less-fun tracks.
Uh. Hey!
It’s been a minute.
Once again, that’s my bad. Juggling a job that often bleeds into More Than Full Time + the hullabaloo of moving + life just gets messy. My apologies.
That said, we’re past the halfway mark!
For a link to the first review, look here. My second review is here as well, as is the third, for your perusal. Previously, our intent was to give you insight so that you could make an informed decision on whether this was a worthwhile purchase. Now that we’re in the homestretch, I think the answer is confidently yes, but I think it opens the door for a wider discussion about what this DLC could have been, and, say… Mario Kart 9?
That’ll be the focus going forward, one way or another. Until then, we focus on the new content from our latest release, the fourth of six waves.
You know the drill at this point. Two cups, eight tracks… and a character?
Birdo is back! They’re the first of six new characters to be added into the expanded Deluxe roster, a returnee from Mario Kart Wii, and some bomb-ass trans representation. With nine different color swatches, you’ve got no shortage of visual options, and I’m admittedly super excited to see who else might be making the cut. (If you want my prediction for the other five, it’s Diddy Kong, Funky Kong, Pauline (of Mario Odyssey fame), Petey Piranha, and the Wiggler.)
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, though, it’s back to business as usual. Cup time!
Our first cup is the Fruit Cup, comprised of [Tour] Amsterdam Drift, [GBA] Riverside Park, [Wii] DK Summit, and our second original course of the DLC, Yoshi’s Island. Our second cup is the Boomerang Cup, made up of [Tour] Bangkok Rush, [DS] Mario Circuit, [GCN] Waluigi Stadium, and [Tour] Singapore Speedway.
First, let’s talk about the Fruit Cup.
Amsterdam Drift feels like the weakest European entry into the Tour gimmick. I don’t really have much to say about it, but it doesn’t really feel fun. It’s another attempt to shoehorn this dumbass mobile game into what we’ve built, without considering little things like mobile game tracks being really poor ports.
Riverside Park is the star of this installment, if you ask me, though it’s definitely not branded that way. It’s simple, but what it does do, it does well, committing to a fun drive that plays well at all speeds. It’s a quick drive, one I’m happy to return to, and a criminally slept on experience.
DK Summit may not be the worst track in this wave, but I think it’s got to be the most disappointing. I loved this track in the Wii version of the game, slaloming my way around those roadblock Shy Guys, handling the moguls with practiced comfort, getting thrown through the cannon at light-speed in what would undoubtedly be the world’s coolest ski lift if real. Unfortunately, to accommodate Mario Kart 8, that slalom section has been neutered - instead of being able to fly on those ramps, you’re just stuck kind of dragging, unable to really get any air and forced into awkward situations more often than successfully making the turn. The rest of the track is effectively the same, but I didn’t realize how imperative that last section was until it went awry for me.
Yoshi’s Island is the second original track released, following Sky-High Sundae, but where that one missed over and over again, this one hits. It almost feels a touch too chaotic, but only for a moment before you feel the cosmic hands reel things in a little bit. This track gave me that elation that I had the first time I played Mario Kart Wii, if only for a moment. That sense of wonder, sorely missed, so beautiful - that’s what this DLC should be gunning for.
All in all? Up and down. It’s a mixed bag - on one hand, potentially my favorite track of the entire DLC thus far, and on the other, one of the biggest disappointments. On one hand, a super neat original composition, the kind of track that knocks your socks off, and on the other… well. Best not to talk about Amsterdam.
That leaves our second cup - the Boomerang Cup.
Bangkok Rush just kinda stinks, if you ask me. On 150cc, it feels slow and draggy, sections running overlong as though they forgot to put assets in. Rarely do you run into the sort of instance that actually has you feeling racey. On 200cc, there’s almost the opposite issue - it’s built in a way where your throttle control has to be frame-perfect and that can be utterly exhausting.
Mario Circuit is a surprise joy for me - on the DS, where I originally played this track, I hated this variant. I couldn’t wrap my head around the way the track needed to be played at the time, but now that I’m older, this one is just flat-out fun. It’s not the most wildly exciting track, but I think given the rest of this pack, it’s a demonstration that that’s not always a bad thing.
Waluigi Stadium is another old friend from the Wii, and suffers much the same fate as DK Summit with the slalom section comparable to the pipe section of this course. The rest is alright - visually, it’s been spruced nicely, but the rest feels a little bit sloppily put together. I think there are better ways to navigate this sort of
Singapore Speedway does alright, as far as Tour tracks go. It feels exactly as futuristic as Singaporean tourism paints the city-state, and that gives the track an inherently present level of fun that I think is done better here than it has been in most of the other Tour tracks.
All in all? This is fine - and not like “oh the room’s on fire this is fine” - no, this is just genuinely fine. It’s four tracks ranging from “eh” to “oh” and nothing that stands out too fantastically in either direction. I’ll take it.
On the whole, what’s the takeaway?
It’s Mario Kart, man. I don’t necessarily think this is the strongest wave at all - I think you see a fair bit of the issues with scaling old tracks to this game, and I feel as though the Tour tracks keep moving in the wrong direction, but even then - the floor for a game like this is the ceiling for nine out of ten games.
What’s your track ranking?
Yoshi’s Island barely edges out Riverside Park in a nice little one-two punch, followed by Mario Circuit. Waluigi Stadium and DK Summit are the four-five set, followed by (wow, can you believe it?) our three Tour tracks - in order, I’m going Singapore, Bangkok, Amsterdam.
Final thoughts
If nothing else, this DLC has helped me formulate a lot of my feelings about Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - from its handling as an initial release, to the announcement and dispensation of this DLC pack, to the integration of Tour-related statistics.
When all six DLC waves are out, I’ll post a final full-game review and cover all of that, but I’m pretty pleased with how this new content has given me a chance to look at this nine year old game with fresh eyes.