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Friday 12 January, 2007
For my second session, I decided to play the single player grand prix mode and settled on the Star Cup, 150 CC.
At the start of the first race, the single player starts in 8th place and I let myself stay in 8th for a little while to see if that actually is an effective strategy against 7 CPU players. At the first box, I received a lightning bolt and was in first place before the end of the first lap. From the beginning of the second lap, it felt much like a 4 player game because only a couple other racers were within a short distance of the lead. There is one difference.
In the multi-player, 4 person race, the racer in 4th is in last place, and consequently receives much better items, as the player in 3rd generally does as well. In grand prix mode, the three or four racers jockeying for position are the top 3 out of 8, so, generally, none of these top racers will likely get anything better than a single red shell or maybe some mushrooms. This changes the dynamic as the lightning bolts affect everyone and are an advantage to none (generally). The racer in 1st in grand prix doesn't have to be as worrisome as the 1st place racer in 4 player mode because most of the direct competition isn't getting anything to useful.
This seems to be why any individual 4 player race can have any outcome. One racer will almost always make a run at the end of the race with a string of useful weapons. This may be explain the extreme re-playability of the game. Anybody of any experience in Kart can win any race and a lot of crazy things will happen during the course of any race.
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