We previously posted a review on the 200cc add-on for Mario Kart 8, which you can read here.

While the boy and girl Villagers are both welcome additions to Mario Kart 8, Isabelle, who is the Mayor's faithful dog-secretary, doesn't feel like the best option for a third Animal Crossing character. Shop owner Tom Nook, singer/songwriter K.K. Slider, or even the angry save file manager Mr. Resetti (whose torso will pop up from underneath the dirt to disrupt your drifts in the unremarkable Animal Crossing course) all would have been more interesting representatives from that franchise.

At least Isabelle is a brand new driver, because Dry Bowser, the fourth character in this DLC pack, is just another lame reskin of an existing racer, joining Metal Mario, Pink Gold Peach, Cat Peach, Raccoon Mario, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Baby Peach, Baby Daisy, and Baby Rosalina on Mario Kart 8's long list of cheaply made clone characters. Not including the seven Koopa Kids, who are all pretty indistinct and interchangeable, 10 of the 36 slots on Mario Kart 8's character select screen are now occupied by clones. That's far too many copycats for my liking, especially when guys like Captain Falcon are still stuck being a rare, $40 Amiibo-only costume, even though his car (The Blue Falcon) and two F-Zero courses (Mute City and Big Blue) are currently included in Mario Kart 8.

Big Blue's brief appearance as the Bell Cup's final challenge is the lone highlight of this DLC Pack's eight levels. Your path through the watery planet is as eventful and epic as Mount Wario, plus it's every bit as imaginative as the delicious-looking cake track, Sweet Sweet Canyon. The DLC's reheated Cheese Land is a comparatively unappealing appetizer, which could've just as easily been named Nondescript Desert 3. The equally pedestrian Super Bell Subway feels like a cheap mashup of the terminals from Sunshine Airport with the roadways of Toad's Turnpike, only this time, oncoming train traffic has replaced the Turnpike's trailer trucks and compact cars. Baby Park, regardless of whether you love it or loathe it, is undeniably a bad retro track to bring back, considering that Excitebike Arena (from DLC Pack 1) already executes oval racing so much better, just by adding a randomized assortment of ramps, turbo strips, and oil slicks to enhance the simplistic course shape. Apart from the brilliant Big Blue, Wild Woods is the only world that I really wanted to revisit more than once, but after further inspection, even it seems somewhat derivative of Cloudtop Cruise, with the way that it ends on a similar “jump over the S curve” shortcut.

Like most of the downloadable content that video game companies are pumping out nowadays, the best word to describe DLC Pack 2 (and DLC Pack 1, as well) is unessential. Nintendo's bundle inarguably offers more stuff than what people have come to expect from a $15 Call of Duty map pack or a $30 Mortal Kombat season pass, but the quality of these add-ons remains every bit as mediocre and expendable. The majority of Mario Kart 8's most memorable and replayable courses still come from the original 32 levels that the game shipped with last May. And on a Wii U eShop where so many essential gaming classics can be downloaded for a few dollars less than what the Mario Kart 8 bundle costs, I cannot recommend this DLC at its current price of $8 per pack, or $12 for the pair.