EDIT: Oh man. Why is this in general discussion? I was totally posting in the Mario Kart 8 forum. If any mods could help move it, I'd appreciate it. Sorry about that.
I put some time into the new DLC feat. Animal Crossing as well as the new mode 200cc. While it's not quite F-Zero fast, it's pretty damn fast for the likes of Mario Kart. All my driving lines are totally fucked up now, haha, which means every course needs to be relearned with all the fasts running wild.
Probably the biggest discovery I made is that the brake button is relevant again. It actually serves a purpose as some turns are just too tight when you've got 200cc engine power. Another thing is that you might not want to trick off some jumps as it puts your speed and trajectory at a less than ideal angle for the next turn. It's really given Mario Kart 8 another way to look at things.
The flip side is that it's turned a lot of courses into different experiences when you're speeding along. I have some of my favorites listed below.
Baby Park
- I've always loved Baby Park for the chaos and madness for spending such a long time in such a tiny loop. Shells and bananas are everywhere, along with passing people in the back using stars and bullet bills. I'm never quite sure what I'm going to get with 7 laps of this stuff. 200cc only makes it better with the sheer speed as it's more like a big donut you're drifting around where you hardly have time to drive straight before you have to hit the next turn.
Excitebike Arena
- Excitebike Arena basically turns into mad jumps. A lot of tricks I used to hit the alternating ramps while I drive down the center doesn't work anymore now that you can skip over a few with the height you get from 200cc. Tricking off the various ramps gets you air too so you really don't spend that much time on the ground. This track was novel but always kind of ho-hum on the other difficulties even with the shuffling of track pieces. The speed of 200cc definitely helps.
Moo Moo Meadows
- I didn't originally care much for Moo Moo Meadows even on the Wii. It didn't really catch my eye and the background music I'm not a big fan of. But on 200cc you get to do some neat serpentine slides where the cows graze and depending on whether or not you hit the ramp right after it feels really fun to do the glider incline. Maybe the fact it's over pretty quickly with a clean lap helps too. But man is this one a lot of fun when you're going faster.
Water Park
- Water Park actually becomes a worthwhile track when you're going so fast. You can practically drift around the whole loop after going underwater. And the Wario Wheel at the end becomes a real obstacle as you fly so far with the ramp it's always a risk hitting one of the buckets unless you dive right afterwards. Again, it's one of those where the long straight aways where nothing is happening become a lot more interesting when you get through them faster.
I'm still working away at 200cc. A lot of the courses I found pretty hard on 150cc are harder still on 200cc. Like Shy Guy Falls and the Haunted Mansion. I'm looking forward to Bowser's Castle and Electrodrome though. And of course there are the F-Zero tracks but I felt maybe that would be too obvious. I haven't noticed whether or not the computer is any more vicious than 150cc. They do seem to eat it in the walls a lot more often than usual. But like I said, I have many more tracks to get around to.
Of course, feel free to give your thoughts on 200cc. I'm really digging it so far. It's given the game a very different feel. I kind of wonder why they never did it sooner.
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