Topic: Mario Kart 8 DLC Thread (NoE pot stirring Edition)

[Soren]

Oh, this? It's nothing, just me dominating a bit on Baby Park, tis all.

[Evan_B]

Cheese Land is garbage. Seriously, the meager improvements they made to the track don't make it stand out in any way.

[Soren]

I hate 200cc. Some of the tracks were not designed to handle the speed, and most of the time it's pretty easy to take shortcuts that usually required mushrooms. It requires you to throw out all the common knowledge about the Mario Kart series up to now.

But that's not a bad thing. The formula for success on Mario Kart is so engrained that I'm glad this new mode is throwing me for a loop. It's forcing me to look at the tracks in a new light and see how I can break them to find success, and it makes for totally different item management, specially when you have mushrooms.

The sense of speed is pretty jarring though. When you drop back to 150cc it feels so slow now. I'm afraid future versions will include 200cc off the bat, making the single player content even more tedious. Future games will have to account for 200cc in their design, but that also means we have to retire 50cc.

[NWR_insanolord]

50cc sucks, though. I'd be in favor of getting rid of it even if they weren't adding 200cc. I've always liked speed in the series; the general slowness of Double Dash, even in 150cc, is why I was never really a fan of it.

[Mop it up]

It could just be my imagination, but it feels like the game stutters very slightly going full speed on 200cc. Else than that, it's a good option. It isn't as fast and uncontrollable as I thought, which is good, though some tracks work better than others. Some I don't even have to readjust much. It also makes the lightweight classes much more viable, which is nice.

[pokepal148]

Cursed eshop maintenance is keeping me from downloading the DLC.

[UncleBob]

They really need to bring back the Custom Cup option.  Call it the Mii Cup.  Trophy is a gold version of your Mii and, after creating one and getting 1st in it, you unlock the Metal Mii Racer.

[MagicCow64]

I realized that I never actually played the game to a serious degree past doing the "warm up" 50cc cups for golds when the base game and first DLC released, instead mostly watching my brother play online. So, no 200cc for me on my own save profile. I am spending the next few weeks clearing out the time trials for each cup then going for gold in 150cc. Although, really, I like the time trials considerably more than the races. The game feels more like solving a puzzle in this mode, working out the fastest paths and best use of mushrooms, which can sometimes be counter-intuitive (in a fun way). I know there are Mario Kart pros out there who cleared 3-star golds on 200cc within a day or two of the update, but I'm struggling to get just regular golds on even the earlier cups of 150. I just keep on getting fucked by items and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to earn the desired outcome, even after getting the most efficient racing lines internalized via time trials.

As for the second DLC, I am also a bit underwhelmed by the new tracks. Nothing too egregious, but also no major standouts, though the tree and toy tracks are very visually engaging. I've played around a bit on 200cc with my bro's profile, and it's a good time. There are points where you get going so fast it causes a physical sensation of being out of control, not something I'm used to from this franchise and quite refreshing. Although some of the tracks might not seem like they were meant for 200cc, in general you've got to acclimate to braking on drifts, which is considerably more comfortable/natural if you switch to using Y to accelerate.

I really wish they'd update the time trials with a 200cc mode. Surely it can't be that much work to make a new set of staff ghosts.

[Mop it up]

As for the second DLC, I am also a bit underwhelmed by the new tracks. Nothing too egregious, but also no major standouts.

Yeah, I agree, the DLC tracks don't really feel up to the quality of the main game tracks. But for the price, I s'pose that's to be expected. I'll say though, they did a better job with the GBA tracks than I expected, as I thought they'd just be flat again like the other GBA/SNES tracks.

[Dasmos]

Wild Woods, Ribbon Road and Big Blue are amongst the best tracks in the game in my opinion and Baby Park is always a frantic good time.

[Soren]

Big Blue is the only original course that really stands out in this pack. Ribbon Road, Baby Park and Neo Bowser City are also great. The rest are mediocre, except Cheese Land which is clearly the worst out of all the tracks in the game.

[Mop it up]

They really need to bring back the Custom Cup option.

Is this any different than how the vs. mode already works?

[MagicCow64]

So I just logged off work and booted up Mario Kart to find a new update installed. I was then shown an announcement that I had unlocked Mirror Mode and 200CC. But I've only gotten Gold trophies on 5 of the eight original cups. I'm assuming this was cheat from on high to get 200CC into everyone's hands? Or am I just confused?

[broodwars]

No, the general consensus seems to be that the patch is designed to unlock those exact features, perhaps to deal with the save wiping some people saw with the previous patch that blocked 200cc.

[Mop it up]

I guess we can start expecting Nintendo DLC to be glitchy at first.

[MagicCow64]

No, the general consensus seems to be that the patch is designed to unlock those exact features, perhaps to deal with the save wiping some people saw with the previous patch that blocked 200cc.

Well damn, that's actually kind of irritating for me. Given the bare-bones single player, I was holding the extra mode unlocks as an impetus to get golds on the vanilla cups. I would think they could still keep Mirror Mode progress-gated, but I wouldn't be surprised if 200cc was connected to it in some archaic way that required unlocking both.

[Mop it up]

Well, there's still the three-star ratings for you to try...

Good luck!

[Phil]

Do we have a night that we play Mario Kart 8 online now that the new DLC is out?

[Soren]

Speculation ahead...


https://twitter.com/NintendoEurope/status/738777797125144576

[TOPHATANT123]

Have people not played Mario Kart 64? Clearly the tweet is referring to that train that goes round on the desert level and you could either wait or try to quickly drive across the tracks before it comes. Apart from #MK8, which is an easy mistake to make, nothing points to DLC.

Blame those surveys for asking for more memes.

[Soren]

Apart from #MK8, which is an easy mistake to make...

Sure it is...

[nickmitch]

It's kind of a weird tweet to post without that context though.

[Oedo]

Doesn't seem like Nintendo's style to drop such an obvious hint, but Mario Kart 8 DLC would make a lot of sense. If they were to devote any of their internal resources to non-NX games, DLC for Mario Kart 8 seems like one of the most likely candidates. They probably wouldn't have to devote a ton of resources to it and there are over 7 million people out there to sell it to.

[Stratos]

Maybe we will see a new Game of the Year release with some new features, maps, and characters, with the new material also becoming available as DLC for the older version owners. This would give Nintendo a much needed retail release in 2nd half 2016 as well as get more mileage out of an older game.

[nickmitch]

Nintendo has, what, like 3 games coming out this year?  They could probably use some kind of revenue stream.