Gaming technology channel Digital Foundry has taken a look at the available courses in the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass and their implementation into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. The new courses do look dramatically different to the base-game tracks with flatter textures and less detail. The courses play differently too as they are more simple and less dynamic in comparison to the courses found in the base-game. Here’s what Digital Foundry had to say about the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass tracks.
“The Booster Course tracks are less dynamic than the base tracks in Mario Kart 8 – there are fewer boost pads, no underwater sections and limited glider sections. The track layouts are simpler, with fewer corners, wider roads, and shorter circuit lengths. The best MK8 tracks combine challenging sets of fast corners with extended anti-gravity sections, multiple viable routes, and track hazards. Most of the new tracks are sedate in comparison, with laid-back layouts, less interesting track features, and little in the way of vehicle transformations. Simply porting mobile tracks over without major modifications means they don’t match the gameplay concepts in Mario Kart 8 especially well. “
“Don’t get me wrong – Mario Kart Tour is a decent mobile game and I can understand its appeal. Tour wraps popular characters and colourful, basic graphics around a simplified variant of Mario Kart, something that works perfectly well on mobile – but its tracks simply don’t mesh well with the Switch originals. As it stands, players are left with courses that largely don’t play like Mario Kart 8 tracks, don’t look like Mario Kart 8 tracks, and don’t feel like Mario Kart 8 tracks.”