The Nintendo Switch library is brimming with amazing games for kids and games for adults, but the one that appeals to gamers of all ages has to be Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. This kart racer is great fun to play casually, but those who want to push their kart racing skills to the limit will find a lot of depth in the mechanics. In particular, the dozens of ways you can set up your kart does way more than change up its appearance. Depending on your character, the type of kart, choice of tires, and glider all change your stats on the race course. Once you hit the higher CCs and start racing competitively, these stats can determine if you finish first or last. We’ve been tinkering under the hoods of our Mario Kart 8 Deluxe karts ever since the WiiU days so we’ll be your trusty mechanic and give you the best Mario Kart 8 setup.
Your setup in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is comprised of four main components: the character, kart, tires, and glider. Each one impacts one or more of the five major stats, which are Speed, Acceleration, Weight, Handling, and Grip. You will want all these stats as high as possible, but there is no combination that has max stats on each one.
Our recommendation for the best setup comes from hours of races using every combination we could think to try and settling on what we feel is the best compromise of stats. Of course, you can use this setup as a baseline to try and make tweaks from there to fit your preferred racing style.
Character: Any heavy character, such as Morton, Wario, Bowser, and Dry Bowser
Kart: Pipeframe, Blue Falcon, or Streetle
Glider: Cloud Glider, Peach Parasol, Parachute, Parafoil, Flower Glider, Bowser Kite, MKTV Parafoil, Paper Glider, or any Glider with no stat changes.
To justify our Mario Kart 8 Deluxe setup, we were drawn to the heavy characters for a few reasons. First, they have the best speed stats of any character, which is obviously desirable in a racing game. Second, heavy characters can bully other racers around. For our Kart, we wanted to find the ones with the best balance of speed and traction to help compensate for the slick tires, which boost speed and weight at the cost of grip and acceleration. Finally, the glider has the least impact on your stats so you can really pick any you want. The ones we suggest all slightly improve your acceleration and mini-turbo, but lower your speed and weight by a tiny amount.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.