I decided to blitz through the entire Booster Course Pass now that it's all out, I feel whelmed. Now don't get me wrong, the value that you get out of this DLC is insane, doubling the track count of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. However, there is that poorly textured elephant in the room, everything looks so cheap. It is quite obvious that these tracks are just upscaled tracks from Mario Kart Tour. Due to that, all these courses stand out so much when compared to the base game. Quality does improve as the DLC waves go on, but they never meet the same standard as base tracks.

Track selection is also quite all over the place. These selections don't feel like a best of and more like they randomly selected tracks to include in here. Quite of few bland retro tracks like Toad Circuit and Sky Garden. Some tracks are even butchered like poor poor Coconut Mall. However, the original tracks from Mario Kart Tour, excluding most real-life locales, are pretty good; highlights being Yoshi's Island, Squeaky Clean Sprint, Rome Avanti, and Ninja Hideaway. The new characters are a nice bonus too, although characters don't really interest me anywhere near as new tracks. Although, I do really like wiggler returning from Mario Kart 7. They're so darn cute with their hunchback gamer posture while riding the wiggler bike and turning red when getting hit.

I overall enjoyed this DLC, it doesn't really bother me. I do appreciate that a lot of courses from Mario Kart Tour are being preserved in a Mario Kart with good gameplay. Especially, since we all know Mario Kart Tour will be rendered completely unplayable one day, such is the way of modern mobile games. My main takeaway after playing all of these tracks is that I just want a new Mario Kart. I've been playing Mario Kart 8 since it came out back on the Wii U and I'm just kinda sick of it at this point.

(preface: I joined backloggd roughly like in march this year when the course drip feed was in the middle and because of that I thought it would be funny to review the waves individually since there were only like 2 or 3 by then and now there are 6 of those mfers clogging up my played and I don't want to delete them but also want to write about the pass as a whole without just copy pasting all 6 reviews into here so uhhhhh oops)

This was like the most whelming DLC I have ever played for a video game. Not overwhelming or underwhelming, just whelming. What I got was precisely what I expected when I first heard "Mario Kart DLC that doubles the course count for less than half the price of the game, released in waves". Yeah, the visuals took quite a hit in terms of aesthetic consistency, but that's kinda what I expected given the release-wave live-service type structure they decided to crank these courses out through. Doubling the course count definitely gives a fresh breath of air to Mario Kart 8, a game that had grown quite stale to me after the dozens of hours through the past 8-9 years playing on both Wii U and Switch, but something just kinda feels lost in the sauce with this expansion.

One of my favorite things about Mario Kart is the track design and selection, how each course feels less like a racing circuit and more like a theme park ride. Dozens of themed rollercoasters to ride through each with their own gimmicks and setpieces to race through (while obviously avoiding the nonsense that the other drivers throw at you). I feel like the courses in Mario Kart can really shine because of how much polish and effort goes into making each course have its own unique bespoke thrills, and it's the reason why courses from games decades old can still remain fresh in my memory. With this pass taking courses from previous games yet done so in a hasty manner so as not to overvalue the 25 dollar price point as well as to fit in the likely-incredibly-tight wave release deadline schedule meant corners had to be cut, and the polish had to be sanded.

A lot of courses lost most of their core identities from the little things in them that weren't recreated, whether due to janky reinterpretations of features in previous mario kart games that weren't necessarily in 8 like the half pipe boosters, or from conscious track design alterations that make certain courses lose a lot of their edge. You can't fall back down to the earlier part of the track in Choco Mountain. You can't do the cool-ass crevice skipping shortcut in DK mountain anymore. The bob-omb cars in Moonview Highway barely harm you more than an ordinary shell when hit. I think a lot of the changes usually come from courses that were converted multiple times from their original games to something like Mario Kart 7 and then from there to Tour and then from Tour to 8, and it just makes the vibes off just as much on a gameplay level as on an aesthetic level. Which really wouldn't be much of a problem if there weren't already the highly polished original versions of each track that exist as not only a comparison, but really a reference point as how the courses should be.

Luckily it's not all complete vibe-killers, as the blander courses manage to make it out mostly unscathed or even improved, as is the case with various GBA and SNES courses that made the jump. They even managed to shake up a few existing courses like Peach Gardens and Kalamari Desert by changing up the course as the laps go on, leading to a fresh take on familiar ground. Some Mario Kart courses are just impossible to mess up, yanno?

There are also plenty of city-themed courses from Mario Kart Tour that were included, and they were mostly quite uninteresting compared to the rest of the track repertoire. They felt more like courses from the Mario Kart Arcade GP series, where the courses are flat and devoid of many hazards, with setpieces mostly being static background imagery rather than dynamically integrated into the course like a lot of the best Mario Kart tracks. Like, how come we just drive under the Eiffel Tower in the Paris track instead of driving up it in zero-gravity and doing a backflip off the top or something? By making the courses just tour you through a cities landmarks instead of committing to a singular one and theming around it, it makes the city courses just feel like basic tourism propaganda from their respective cities, rather than creatively thought-out Mario Kart tracks.

Lastly they threw in some original courses, and while the highest highs in the entire 48 course lineup can be found here through Ninja Hideaway, Yoshi's Island, and Squeaky Clean Circuit bringing fresh course designs and gimmicks with considerable levels of polish (Yoshi's Island in particular being a fantastic tribute to its source game), there are also some absolute dingers thrown in there. Merry Mountain and Sky High Sundae were some of the most uninspired courses I have ever seen, being mostly static boring ovals with not much to really make them remarkable, and Piranha Plant Cove being kinda just meh all around.

As a whole, despite the fact that now the course count in Mario Kart 8 has doubled from 48 to an impressive 96 tracks to race on, it's reached the point of diminishing returns for me. I guess stale bread is still stale no matter how much sauce you may try to cover it in, especially if that sauce is stuff I had before in the past made by someone who had more time to perfect it. I was originally kinda upset that courses like Airship Fortress and Mushroom City didn't make the cut, but honestly maybe it's for the better they get to keep their swag.

At this point, I want Mario Kart 9 to have a course count closer to older titles. Give me only 16 courses in four cups, but make them the most exciting, creative, goddamn FUN 16 courses they could ever possibly conceive. Quantity can only win out against quality for so long.

Half the score for half the effort. Actually unreal people are defending the Tour maps when they either have horrid signage or none at all (Paris???).

Most of the tracks fail to do anything that makes them feel like MK8 content, these would be right at home in MK7 and- oh wait some of these already had community-made versions in CTGP-7. These would be bottom tier even in MK7 and low-tier in CTGP-7.

I also remember now that I'm playing it that it has my 2nd least favorite item meta only behind 64 which is unfair since 64's literally is broken, as in nonfunctioning, on half its courses as well as AI softlocking themselves.

But hey at least it costs less than an actual new Mario Kart would for almost the same amount of content, who cares if it's microwave slop some 16 year old outdid a decade ago with janky level editors made for a game nobody has access to the source code for.

The actual original tracks or any that saw more than a finger lifted to refit them are unsurprisingly the best in the pack so far. Others like Coconut Mall are strict downgrades over their originals.

I dunno. I fell off of 8 and especially 8D at points in my life where I should have sunk my teeth into them until I was splitting bone, for a variety of reasons too long to fit here but I may elaborate in the main game page for MK8/MK8D.

But hey it's a party game, I should just shut up and enjoy the slop because Nintendo put in Birdo so my queer ass can go "so true bestie" every time she honks.