A experienced kart player (Shade, for those who remember him form the beginning of MKW) made a detailed report on
jeuxvideo.com of the demo available in the Japan Expo (Paris, France). A bunch of infos that I thought were notable (some of them to take carefully, it's only one person's experience) :
- No any kind of stats were shown at the kart/player selection. Though this could be because it's only a demo at this point. But however, the little tires seemed to give a better handling than the big tires, and the later ones to give a better off-road.
- The tracks were the exact 3 same as in the E3 demo.
- Strong items, such as star, lightning, bullet bill, blue shell...etc. were apparently very hard to get even in the bottom ranks : the player didn't get any after playing the demo multiple times. Again this could be a feature of the demo, where those items were simply unobtainable at the current state of the game, take this with a grain of salt.
- Coins does not seem to give a speed boost. By the way you cannot lose those coins when getting hit or when you fall.
- You can control the vertical angle of the green shells when launching them while gliding. It depends directly of the angle of your kart in the air.
- Hitting a banana does not remove the item you are trailing behind you. Don't know if it's the same for shells.
- You aren't warned anymore when red shells are approaching you. To see them coming close to you, you need to use the bottom screen's map. Red shells can now also clear gaps unlike in MKW. They even follow you while you're in the air, meaning you'll still need a protection while gliding.
- Talking about that, getting hit while flying removes immediately the glider and makes you fall back to the ground. This cost a lot of time, easily a good amount of seconds if you're high. I guess that's the con of using the glider...
- Gliding is overall faster than driving, but tilting too much back may slow you down considerably. Controling the angle of the kart in air will certainly be a (if not THE) crucial point in Time Trial when the glider is available. Note that it is also possible to brake mid-air to slow you down.
- Now this is something a bit curious and I'm not sure how to understand that, but it looks like hitting boost pads on the ramps not only does not remove the glider, but also gives you a speed boost to fly even further. The player mentions that however after a certain amount of flying, the glider disappear by itself, certainly to avoid abuses of that feature.
That's it. From the look of a time trialer, those who will be able to master the gliding will get the faster times...
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