Mario Kart World

Genre: Open World Kart Racer

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen), 2-8 (Local Wireless), 2-24 (Online)

.

Review:

Mario Kart World has a lot to live up to. Not only is it Nintendo’s premier first-party title for the Nintendo Switch 2 launch, but it’s seen by many as the first original Mario Kart game since Mario Kart 8 released on Wii U in 2014 (though these people conveniently forget Mario Kart Tour on mobile devices and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit on Nintendo Switch, though those are both fairly different takes on the series formula. What’s more, it’s the first Open-World entry in the series. And as if all of that wasn’t enough, it’s also Nintendo’s first game to release at $80 (that is, unless you bought the Nintendo Switch 2 launch bundle that came with a digital copy of the game, which would have only set you back $50. What’s more, many (including myself) have said that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the greatest Kart Racer of all time.

So… yeah, Mario Kart World has a lot to live up to.

As a showpiece for Nintendo’s newest shiny hardware, Mario Kart World is… adequate. The Mario Kart series has long been one of the best-looking games on Nintendo platforms, but that also means that Mario Kart World is being compared to Mario Kart 8, which already looked amazing. And to be sure, Mario Kart World is an improvement, with very nice texture work, a lot of environmental density, great-looking water, excellent lighting, and an overall mostly smooth framerate. However, it’s not perfect – I noticed some pop-in in the distance, a few moments where the framerates dropped, and just in general this still looks very much like what you’d expect from a Mario game – in other words, it looks very good, but I’m not exactly feeling a “generational leap” like I would hope for here.

At the very least, the sound here is excellent. This game has impeccable sound design, with everything from the engine sounds to the different surfaces you drive on to even the whooshing of the wind as you take a particularly spectacular jump all sounding great. What’s more, this game features a massive soundtrack of new songs and remixes of classics tunes from throughout the Mario franchise, with some interesting choices for remixes. In particular, I noticed an energetic remix of the Super Mario 64 title screen music, and an electric guitar remix of the Mario Kart 64 Choco Mountain theme, which… is definitely a choice. However, the standout here still has to be the game’s harmonica-led remix of the Mario Kart main theme.

Also, because I’m not sure where else to mention it, this game’s use of HD Rumble 2 is quite good.

Of course, the big new feature this time around is the game’s Open World, where players can freely drive anywhere on the game’s large world map, where the main courses are strewn about and connected via a network of roads, which plays into one of the game’s major new gameplay modes, which I’ll get to in a bit. But for now I want to focus on that Open World. So, does it revolutionize the franchise?

Well… no.

To be sure, there’s plenty to see and do in Mario Kart World’s… er, world. There are P-Block challenges to activate and complete within a time limit, there are hidden question mark panels to find and activate, there are encounters with enemies to take on, and there are foods to collect at the game’s various eateries that transform your character into different costumes (as well as giving a speed boost).

The thing is… none of that seems to matter. Apart from unlocking costumes, none of these challenges or hidden items seems to actually do anything. You’re not unlocking new courses, building up characters in any sort of RPG-style system, or anything like that. The new costumes don’t change your stats or grant new abilities. It’s all just kind of meaningless. Is it fun? Sure, I guess. But it adds little to the overall game, and after exploring around a bit and completing a few of these tasks, I didn’t feel especially compelled to seek them all out.

The Open-World elements have another issue – they feel like a secondary thought. The game’s main courses are clearly designed to be focal points of the game’s world, and everything else just feels like areas in between rather than cool places to ride in their own right. And this forces its way onto players even if they’re struggling against it, trying to enjoy the open world – this game’s roadways all seem designed to funnel players to one of the game’s main courses, so when you find one of the game’s roads (which are hard to avoid), you naturally feel inclined to follow it, and that road will soon enough bring you to one of the racing courses, even if you had every intention of staying off the beaten path.

What really saddens me here is the wasted potential. I could see some real joy in racing around in Mario’s world, in creating start and end points for you and friends to race between and having to find your own way to get there, or even cordoning off an area of the world to have your own custom battle arena. While the game’s own courses aren’t lacking, making an Open-World game to race in just entices players at the thought of charting their own path, so it’s a bit sad that this game’s paths are all charted for you.

While the Open-World stuff may be a disappointment, Mario Kart World excels at being, well, Mario Kart. This game ups the number of characters in each race to 24, with most courses being widened to accommodate the larger number of racers. Players have new tricks like the ability to grind and “pre-load” jumps when driving straight to get a little more air and a bigger boost. There are also wall-rides and wall-jumps you can perform after charging a jump. It takes a bit of time to get used to these new tricks, and pre-loading jumps is really the key – not only is this a good way to ensure you get boosts on straightaways, but it’s necessary to wall ride, and often the only way you can get high enough to pop onto a rail.

However, even more than this game’s trick system, the courses are absolutely wonderful. They’re intricately designed and often offer players multiple diverging pathways, and frequently have their own unique features, such as DK Spaceport’s massive robotic Donkey Kong rolling giant-sized barrels at racers, or Boo Cinema having part of the level take place inside a sepia-toned film screen. On top of this, there are many fun little quirks throughout the world that help things to always seem fresh and new, such as a goomba wearing a Kuribo’s Shoe trying to stomp you, or a semi truck you can drive into and control for a little while, slamming through everything on the busy road. The creativity here is absolutely off the charts, and as much as I complain about the Open-World stuff, it is an absolute joy to ride through many of these courses.

The game modes have had a bit of creativity injected in them as well. Grand Prix now has every race after the first include the area between the previous course and the next, extending its length. There’s also Knockout Tour, which is a non-stop run through four courses and everything between, with checkpoints that eliminate the slowest racers until only a few remain for the final race. And of course the traditional Time Trials and single-course races are here as well.

Finally, there’s Battle Mode, and I think there’s both some good and some bad here. For the bad, this battle mode only includes two game modes – balloon battle and coin runners. And while you do get to set options for these modes, one option you cannot set, even for private matches, is the time limit, which you’re stuck with whether you want it or not. And players may be dismayed to find out that the biggest flaw of Mario Kart 8 on Wii U, that was subsequently fixed on Nintendo Switch, has returned – the majority of battle mode arenas are in-game courses rather than areas created specifically for battle mode.

However, on that last point, it’s not as bad as you may think. This game’s many diverging pathways on its courses actually give you a much less linear experience than past courses. And with up to 24 players now filling those courses, you’re far less likely to be going around in circles trying to find another player to hit with your red shell. Plus, with that many players and the larger battle mode courses to accommodate them, the need for a time limit seems like a necessary evil – if you played until elimination, these battle courses would seem a lot more empty once you’re down to the last 4 players or so.

So in the end, is Mario Kart World worth $80? No, I don’t think so. Nothing it does truly transcends the medium, especially when we’ve already seen multiple other Open-World Racing games make much better use of the open world, and when the jump in visuals, while still quite good, is far from mind-blowing.

Is Mario Kart World this series’ “Breath of the Wild moment”? I don’t think so, no. Again, there’s nothing truly transcendent here, and nothing that will convince someone who didn’t like Mario Kart before to like it now.

Is Mario Kart World the best game in the series? That’s a tough call. While it absolutely has some magnificent qualities such as its superb level design, interesting new gameplay modes, great music, and fun new abilities… I think Mario Kart 8 Deluxe might have it beat in its breadth of content and fine-tuned gameplay. It’s a tough call to say which of these two I would put on top.

Is Mario Kart World the “system seller” of the Nintendo Switch 2 launch? For some, perhaps. But I can’t help but feel like the Nintendo Switch 2 is the system seller of the Nintendo Switch 2 – its prospects for great games in the future, and what it can do to improve past games.

Is Mario Kart World a great game? A fun racing game? A game worth buying? Absolutely it is, yes. While I would really hope you find some way to play this without spending the absurd $80 price tag, and I’m going to mark its grade down a few notches specifically because of that price, this is still an outstanding, varied, creative, and highly-accessible game that I think every Nintendo Switch 2 owner should have if they can pick it up at an affordable price. It may be a bit of a disappointment in that it’s not everything it could have been and perhaps should have been. But it is still an outstanding game that starts out the Nintendo Switch 2 on a high note.

tl;dr – Mario Kart World is Nintendo’s premier major family-friendly game to kick off the Nintendo Switch 2’s launch, and while it doesn’t make great use of the Open World format, and isn’t as impressive a leap over Mario Kart 8 as players may hope for… and oof, that $80 price tag is nasty… but despite these flaws, it is still a wildly-creative, extremely well-crafted, delightfully varied, and immensely fun Kart Racer. As long as you can get it at an affordable price, I highly recommend it.

Grade: A-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}