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Amiibo get! Fave of this wave goes to Pacman. It's just awesome! And the collection as it stands now

I had a couple of quick go's on the beta this weekend, it started Friday and I think it finishes tonight. It was a big download for my shitty connection, took the best part of 24 hours to download so that was a day instantly taken out of the play time. It's fucking slow to load, took a good 6 or 7 minutes to get playing. I started with the default character, some broad that throws apples. You start in a town square that acts as a pre-game lobby. You can run around the fountain centre piece but even though there are little cbbled paths that lead to big wooden doors you cant even get near them, you just hit an invisible wall. Anyways, in this little lobby you can change your character, read about the specific character powers and other minor gameplay mechanics. Once you select the 'Quick Play' option from the menu the game matchmakes while you wait, then it takes 3 or 4 minutes and a couple of random screen before it dumps you in a forest glade in front of a blue portal that you cant yet access. Then the game drops another three players in with you, the portal vanishes and your off, pretty much left to figure out what the fuck is going on and how to utilise your characters powers. You have to rescue villagers that are tied to a post somewhere in the forest, marked by a white arrow. You have a time limit to get to them, at the end of time limit they die. You fight creatures on the way and you have to kill all the creatures to move on to the next area. The next area has exatly the same objective, just two villagers to rescue and you have access to an 'ability' which is a special move. Once you have resued all the villagers and by this time you will ahve unlock three abilities assigned to the X, Y and B buttons you take on The Villain. I dont really know what this entails other than fighting alot of enemies because Ive played twice and the whole group has died here twice. The default character felt extremely underpowered to me so I'm guessing, as a magic user, she becomes more of a badass as she gets stronger. I couldnt work out how to use her ablitly properly, I did it once and it was awesome, fire raining down to pound the ground around you but I couldnt work out how to do it again when I was under pressure. Otherwise she throws red or green apples. Awesome. Second time i played I picked a guy called Malice, an undead suit of armour with a glow in his midrift. He was a bit more powerful with his mace but the enemies are tough. I could block with his shield and later I could have minions following me about plus I could use an ability that swarmed around me, buffeting the enemies with magic. The handling was excellent, the character movement was fluid but there just wasnt enough variation to make the time I spent with the beta too interesting. I am looking forward to the game and Ive got an understanding of the basic action and I'm looking forward to seeing how they will build on what I've experienced but the lack of overall excitement isnt worth the loading times so I'm done for now. Defininately will be playing this when it comes out though, it is free after all.

I've played the new courses quite a bit now. So we have new characters: Villager and Isabel from Animal Crossing, and Dry Bowser. Villager statistically is like Metal Mario and Isabel is another small character, and Dry Bowser is a heavy, so the latter two are predictable. While the animal crossing characters are fun what with all the expressions and sounds you only half expect, Dry Bowser is just not that cool. I get the feeling they were wanting to up the ante from Dry Bones but I think I'd rather have had Dry Bones. Dry Bones is cooler. There are some new karts but none really stand out but more options are nice. The courses are pretty much all great, apart from Baby Park. I know it's popular with some fans, and I know why people like it but it just doesn't do anything for me. But the rest are really, really good. A good mix of mid and high difficulty tier tracks that have some nice variety to them. I think I mostly want to give a shout out to Koopa City which just rules and makes me wonder why we fight Bowser so many times. The city he runs is this cool, neo, futuristic, prosperous city. I'm questioning everything I believe in here. But it's an awesome track, anyway. 200cc is something pretty special, though, I think at least. Like, I think it's a big game changer. It's not just having to deal with a faster kart. Now playing this mode I get the sense you were never fighting the track in many of the Mario Kart games; I feel like you don't fight it that much in a lot of racing games, but on 200cc it's your number one enemy. Before you would hit every boost, trick off every jump for a boost, drift as much as you possibly could to go as fast as you can. That wasn't always easy, and some were much better at it than others, but this is different. It's not that you just have to break now, you have to know when to dial it back. Which chicanes to not drift boost on, which boost pads to miss, which jumps to trick or not to trick. 200cc just makes you think about all the mechanics in MK8 in a broader way rather than just going as fast as possible. It starts to play like something closer to an actual driving game. A good thing though is the AI is awful at it. When I looked at what I'd done I saw I still hadn't done the last set of DLC tracks on Mirror Mode. Getting a gold trophy with all wins on Mirror Mode on the on-disc content was quite an upsetting experience. The AI is bullshit and aggressive as hell; so many times I was screwed over on the last leg. But on 200cc (while kinda aggressive) play a bit more fair, and if you do keep up the pace you will pull away quite a distance so some bullshitty Blue Shells or and accidental fall or two won't affect your place too much. The AI will probably be falling behind you. It's also damn fast and the framerate doesn't budge still so it's exciting and feels pretty sweet. So while I probably won't be going near Mirror Mode again I think I want to get all the stars on 200cc. I'd say if Mario Kart 8 wasn't the best Mario Kart then it is now, it definitely is now.