Can't wait to dominate once again today!

Glad to hear that the CPU difficulty and items are balanced! The unbalanced nature of MKWii always annoyed me!

Ooo, I might have to go today. I'll post my impressions if I do :)

Of course its on the weekends, when i work :/

Tried it again today! Got more character combos as well as the rest of the courses
+Cloudtop Cruise is now my favorite, partially because I already mastered the boostpad part and the leaf shortcut
+Controls are starting to feel better
-I'm best with Pink Gold Peach :(

The nearest event is an hour away from me :(

Actually the Vita display is awesome, its connected to a PS4 and lets you try out remote play on PS4 titles. Its pretty slick

My fiancee and I took turns playing. This is her as Baby Rosalina :D

This was my second time playing the game. The first was at Nintendo World last summer. It still plays like a dream.

The courses are brilliantly designed and gorgeous to look at. I love the branching paths.

This could definitely be the best MK yet. Can't wait until the 30th to really sink my teeth into it.

For the sake of consistency, i'm transplanting Einsam Dolphin's thread here as well

So after almost an entire year, I was finally able to play Mario Kart 8 once more today, this time courtesy of Gamestop! Unlike the first demo, this one was of the final build, and I noticed the difference immediately! The E3 build controlled pretty much exactly like MK7, but this time it controlled very different from any previous Mario Kart game. It's a bit hard to put into words exactly how it differs at the moment, but I definitely do like the idea of having to learn the controls again! As for the vehichles specifically, the Kart and ATV were the easiest to get the hang of naturally, but the Bikes posed a much steeper learning curve, especially the inward drifting ones! The tracks were all awesome, with my favorite of the bunch being Sunshine Airport, and pretty much everyone else liked Water Park! And needless to say, the game looked and sounded amazing! A first for the Mario Kart series!

I first used Lakitu + Biddybug + Standard tires + Parafoil on Mario Kart Stadium, and did alright, but went into the offroad a few times, which is killer in this game since if you touch an inch of off-road even just for a second, your mini turbo charge insta dies! Also the glider controls were tougher than in MK7 even with me using the same type of I glider I always used. Still, had a fairly good run for this race and the following ones using different Kart combos. This is only 100cc and computers are still brain dead afterall! However when I finally decided to try the bike out, things got a bit rougher! For my first run, as well for like 80% of the many races I did today, I used my favorite combo being Lakitu + Sport Bike + Roller + Parafoil (will be MKTV glider in full game), and well, I unintentionally fell off the track for the first time in this game! xD

Seeing as I played nothing but Karts in Mario Kart 7, my drift timing is still for Karts, which is too soon for inward drift Bikes, causing me to overdrift into the offroad or the abyss. Even with correct timing, it still tends to drift in more then neccesary when taking a turn as tight as possible, so lot's of careful input is required or else you meet off-road/the abyss. A steep learning curve indeed, but this isn't anything lot's of play time can't help! I was already noticing significant improvemt after a couple of hours, both with inward drifting and just the overall game. Yeah I'm definitely not nearly as good here as I am in Mario Kart 7, but you can bet that will change in time!

And now we have the neglected vehichle type, being the ATV! Honestly I didn't use it too much as Acceleration is my favorite stat and the only ATV available being the standard one drops Accel by half a point. From what I played of it the thing controlled fine, very similar to a Kart, but yeah I just could not handle that poor acceleration and quickly moved back to the Sport Bike. If only they had the Teddy Bear or better yet the Wild Wiggler as that actually increases acceleration. Ahwells, maybe tomorow I'll give it another shot, assuming I can detach myself from the Sport Bike! I may not be 100% with that vehicle yet, but I still love it! I always liked Bikes the most of all vehichle types, plus my combination has nearly identical stats to my go to Kart combo in Mario Kart 7!

Anywhos, the event itself didn't have too many peeps. This is probably due to the number of Gamestops in the area, as there's no other way the MK8 event would have less people than the Pikmin 3. I'm not complaining though, as it meant I had the demo all to myself the majority of time! I of course allowed the people who showed up periodically to play, and I even got to play with the Gamestop employees. This site gives gamestop a lot of flak, but these guys were actually very cool! Anywho's, the game does indeed run at an unbreakable 60fps with 1 or 2 players. Unfortunately, it's also true that the framerate drops to 30fps once a 3rd person joins. It's very much noticable, but in now way a deal breaker! The four player bouts were just as hetic and fun!

Well I think that is it for now! Probably forgot some stuff, but hopefully nothing major! I obviously intend on going back there tomorow, so if yal want me to try and figure out something, just let me know!

And yes, I won all but one race I put 100% effort into hehe!

So a thread that was just about reminding people of the events has now been turned into the official impression thread without even the OPer's consent. Well, that makes about as much sense as some other stuff done on here!