Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Wave 3 - Review

 Lap 3 is here!

Console: Nintendo Switch

Here we are again folks, right on schedule! When Nintendo revealed the existence of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass (that will never not be a mouthful), Nintendo gave a 2-year time frame for the entire 48-course package. That would equal one wave every 4 months and lo-and-behold: so far, that has been the case. 

Right on time in December and in that ‘pre-Christmas’ slot that is never a bad window for video games. They even tied it into the holiday in the ad campaign. The very first course revealed for the wave was the winter-themed ‘Merry Mountain’. One of those * aka Tour tracks that they don’t consider a Tour track because they probably developed it with MK8D in mind, even if it did release on mobile first.

Anyhoozle, let’s not make this introduction any longer and, just like I did with waves 1 & 2, dive right into this 3rd wave and see what it brings to the table.

To quickly recap, the booster course pass is divided up into 6 waves, each consisting of 8 tracks split into 2 cups. All of these tracks are remastered courses from games past. Remade in HD with minor tweaks to make them better fit with the gameplay style of MK8D and with re-recorded and remixed music.

In wave 3 we have London Loop (Tour), Boo Lake (GBA), Rock Rock Mountain (3DS) and Maple Treeway (Wii) in the Rock Cup and Berlin Byways (Tour), Peach Gardens (DS), Merry Mountain (New*) and Rainbow Road (3DS) in the Moon Cup.

The 8 tracks in wave 3.

The tracks of wave 3 continue the upward quality trend. While the graphics of these DLC tracks still don´t look quite as good as those of the base game, the tracks are still nice looking. The textures of, say, the foliage in London Loop are still not that impressive looking but on a track like Merry Mountains, it all looks excellent. The developers also integrated the anti-gravity mechanic more, throwing it into Boo Lake and Merry Mountain.

Said Merry Mountain is this wave’s token * track. The track that’s marketed as new but in reality, still comes from Tour. To be fair though, I’m pretty sure that these tracks were all made for MK8D first and foremost. The quality of these tracks is much higher than the other tracks from Mario Kart Tour. Don’t have the same ‘formula’ to them, have noticeably better textures, stuff going on in the background and attention to detail. That they also come to Tour feels, to me, more like Nintendo saving resources on Tour tracks than on MK8D tracks.

That ‘formula’ I just mentioned? Each of these ‘City’ Tour tracks are at their core the same. I track vaguely based on a real-life City where in all three laps you race over the track in a different way. London Loop does nothing to change this up. Each lap doesn’t really feel different and nothing about it screams ‘London’ to me. Berlin Byways is the better one if you ask me. It has more to its bones, and more variety each lap and I quite enjoy the music.

On to the rest of the courses! Peach’s Garden is this waves Waluigi Pinball: the DS track I remember from my youth. It’s fine. Where with Waluigi Pinball I immediately felt at home, racing on Peach Garden underwhelmed me. It’s not a bad track but I think I remembered it more rose-coloured than it actually was. That final, revamped, lap 3 doesn’t quite fit the track also. On the opposite side of the spectrum is 3D Rainbow Road. In lap 1, I felt it was nothing special but the track became more interesting every lap.

Boo Lake is a fun track. Short, perhaps a bit too short, but sweet. Nice anti-gravity implementation and excellent atmosphere. Maple Treeway got an excellent atmosphere as well, a lot more relaxing than I thought it would be. Another Wii classic that translated well to the MK8D style. Rock Rock Mountain is a competent track and that’s all I got to say about that!

The textures on something like this mountain wall here aren't the greatest, but they do the job.

Ok, I do have one more thing to touch on. Wave 3 came alongside Version 2.2.0. which introduced some changes to the base game for everyone, not just the DLC owners. You can now customise the items you get in question boxes in certain modes, such as the VS. mode. A very neat addition that’ll no doubt lead to a lot of fun when playing with friends. Only Blue Shells on Baby Park, anyone?

Another change includes lighting no longer dropping you out of the sky if it hits you when you’re gliding and different invincibility times after a hit based on your driver and Kart parts. The latter I can see having quite the impact on the tournament scene.

Conclusion

Wave 3, the mid-way point, of the Mario Kart 8 Booster Course Pass is fine. Just fine. It continues the upward trend in quality and the selection of tracks, the variety is good. I myself am not that blown away by it, no particular reason as to why, but it’s still good and I’m having fun racing in these cups. The extra stuff that comes along with it for all players, the custom item mode, in particular, is a nice new addition that makes the game that much more fun.