Mario Kart World - Review

It's a whole new world to race in!

Console: Nintendo Switch 2

All right then, let's give this new Mario Kart a shot! 

I didn’t intend to get Mario Kart World with my Switch 2 and yet, here we are. Don’t get me wrong, it's not that I dislike Mario Kart, but it's a title I bust out when friends are over and not much else. Not a title worth dropping €90 on.  The closer we got to launch though the more I started to reconsider. 

This wasn’t just a new Mario Kart — it had open-world elements and, most importantly for me, actual single-player content to sink my teeth into. This coupled with excitement for the Switch 2, is what led me to buy it. It's a gamble but one I hoped would surprise me. At the very least, it gave me a Switch 2 title to play until Donkey Kong Bananza arrived.  

I enjoyed my time trying to ace every Cup and Rally thee past weeks, but in the end, Mario Kart World is a good game that sadly promised more than it delivered. Let's talk about it. 

In many respects, Mario Kart World is Mario Kart how you know it. Mario and his friends compete in kart races all across the Mushroom Kingdom. Spicing things up from just driving are a variety of items to help you get 1st place – or just annoy your opponents. From shells that hit other racers to mushrooms that give you a speed boost. Obstacles like giant cars or big enemies are thrown your way and courses are rarely straight and narrow. They loop around, have multiple pathways and can even throw you into the sky or on the water. In short: it's kart racing but with many colourful bells and whistles. 

All this is true here but with a slew of changes. Let's start small and work our way up. The total amount of racers has doubled. From 12 in Mario Kart 8 to 24 here which as it turns out is a big reason why World moved from a Switch 1 to a Switch 2 title. The former couldn't handle that many racers on screen. In singleplayer it's not that different but online, with friends and in the new Knockout Rally a palpable difference this makes. 

Drifting is still here but now it has a companion: boost jumping. It’s basically drifting but when you go straight and with a little air time thrown in for good measure. I don’t get why they put drifting and jumping on the same button though. Sometimes I jump when I want to drift or drift when I want to jump. Perhaps more experienced and skilled Mario Kart players will see its value and use it to its full potential but I don't quite see what it brings to the table.  

More interesting to me is you don't have to hold a button to keep it behind you anymore. That game now does that for you. Another change that tripped me up at first but that I quickly got used to. Placing a banana behind you as a shield is now a lot more seamless and a lot less straining on your fingers! 

Time to race to the bigger stuff, starting with the Grand Prix. The backbone of each game, up until now each Cup consisted of 4 tracks of 3 laps each (some exceptions not withstanding). To fit this game's interconnected world, this is no longer the case. Each track, aside from the first, begins with an 'intermission' — a short race segment leading into the course itself. Once you have arrived at the course, you do a lap across it before racing across the finish line. I like this new style. 

While I miss the tried-and-true 3-lap formula, we have been racing this way for over 30-years. Nintendo trying something new like this is refreshing. Yes, these intermissions are rather linear in road design but they make up for that by throwing in lots of obstacles. From Hammer-Bros to Chargin' Chuck's. There are also items littered across the road that you can pick up, including mushrooms and stars. Since these items are completely separate from the item boxes and their mechanics this means the frontrunners have a chance to get more powerful items, albeit through a workaround. Neat. 

Tricks are also back which I honestly forgot about. It's not a big mechanic after all.

The marketing suggested that you could do the traditional style of Grand Prix as well as this new style but alas, that is not the case. I do miss it and the many different pathways and gimmicks these tracks are designed with don’t get the time to shine in just 1 lap. The only true way to do 3 laps if you go into VS. mode. Not quite the same though as Grand Prix though. Crossing my fingers a future update will give us a toggle or the like for traditional, 3-lap racing. 

Aside from the Grand Prix, Mario Kart World has the usual extra modes. Race for the best times in Time Trials, make up your own rules in Vs. races or go head-to-head against your friends in Battle mode. All fun and well but the real kicker here is the brand-new Knockout Tour. 

Making full use of the connected world in his new mode you race across six tracks, and their intermissions, all in one go. At every check point, the last 4 of the 24 racers are eliminated. Once you arrive at the last course it’s between you and just 3 other racers.

You could say that where Grand Prix is a series of sprints, Knockout Tour is one long marathon. It's not just about speed: it's about stamina. These Knockout Tours can take up to 10 minutes of non-stop racing. Since you keep all the items and coins all the way through you have to strategize for the long-term and you will never see the same scenery twice. To win, it also only matters that you cross the last finish line first. You could hang back, only just missing elimination but take it all in the last seconds. Can't do that in Grand Prix where a bad start can mean you never get into the top three. 

It's also the mode of the gaming thumb with all that non-stop pressing the ‘a’ button for speed. I wasn’t a big fan of auto assist and auto accelerating in Mario Kart before but in Knockout Tour, I won’t judge you if you use the latter. In short, Knockout Tour is the big secondary mode I never knew Mario Kart needed. It is such a simple idea that is wonderfully fun in its execution. 

Gameplay wise there is one more thing to talk about: free roam. The open-world aspect goes beyond the intermissions in Grand Prix or the interconnected Knockout Tour. Like all good open-world games you get to, in this case, race across a world at your own leisure. Weirdly hidden away on the main screen, when you drive across the island there are a couple of things for you to do aside from just enjoying the scenery. There are nearly 400 missions, activated when driving over P-blocks, for you to tackle. From collecting blue coins to surviving an obstacle course. There are also question blocks hidden in the track themselves and special Peach coins in overworld to collect. 

I spent quite a bit of time in Free Roam during my first couple of play sessions. I figured that would be where I would spend most of my time. I figured the plethora of activities and freedom would be like me playing Breath of the Wild or Horizon Forbidden West. Turns out I was wrong. Why, you ask? Free Roam is another department that is undercooked. 

Many basic features are missing here. There is no way to mark stuff on the map, it doesn’t track where you’ve been or what you’ve done and more. The activities lack in variety (how many timed collectathons can there be?) and above all else: it feels directionless. 

In Ghost of Tsushima and the like there is a drive for you to do all of these activities because they are part of side-quests or because there is some reward involved. That isn't the case here. You do them... because. Perhaps it won't matter to the Minecraft crowd but I just couldn’t be motivated to keep up. 

Mario Kart World doesn't just have the largest roster of racers the series has ever seen with whopping 50 characters. From the usual gang of Mario and his friends to characters I never expected to see. From Monty Mole to Pokey to a Cow. Yes, you read that right, a Cow. Those are unlockable through standard racing, winning cups and all that, but what you unlock by collecting are outfits. That and car parts but that’s nothing new. 

Most characters can wear costumes, from Toad in is 'Captain Toad' gear to Waluigi dressing up like a vampire. You unlock these by collecting a brand-new item: Dash Food. These give you a random speed boost while also changing a character’s outfit unlocking them in the process. 

I've always been rather basic when it comes to outfits, in games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 I use transmog constantly to keep the same look, but I do quite like these costumes. Something like the Pro Racer outfits really shine and I quite like how these have small variations between each character. 

Rosalina was always my top pick and this new racer outfit only reinforces that!

Circling back a bit: with how you don't have to worry about wining anything and since they are pretty plentiful in Free Roam, this is the best mode to unlock them in. Once I had done so, I stopped playing Free Roam all together. Also, now that I have mentioned the items, it’s all pretty good. Mario Kart World trims the fat keeping the most useful and iconic items. 

The item might be a little tame but visually, the game’s a real standout. It's the HD graphics and colourful look of its predecessor but with the more 'characterful' direction and animation spirit as Super Mario Bros. Wonder. If you compare the character models between both games you notice how much livelier the models in World look. Not much more to say on that really. It just looks really nice which is, well, nice to see.

I'm more mixed on the music. There are many tracks here... too many. Aside from a remixed version of the Mario Kart 8 main theme and World's own theme I can't recall any of them. With Grand Prix and Knockout Tour constantly rotating in 'random' music in intermissions and the like you won't hear a track all that often. If that is a good or bad thing I'll leave up to you. You won't constantly hear the same music and get sick of it - but there isn't much opportunity for any track to become an earworm either. 

Before wrapping this review up there is one more type of track to talk about. The tracks you race on. There are 30 courses here across 8 cups which, if you do the math, means we have 2 repeats here - a first for the series. Fear not though: these repeats do have unique variations in the cups they appear in. What is also different is you no longer have 4 cups with all new courses and 4 cups with all retro tracks. They are mixed and matched throughout which I didn't notice at first. 

Part of that is I play Mario Kart World in my native Dutch which has different names for each course. The other reason is that all retro tracks have gotten more of a facelift than ever before. I'm certain that because of the open world and needing to make them interconnect their original designs wouldn't work. In that sense, I feel these tracks are more in 'based on' territory. That's nothing bad though: I actually think that revamping them makes for more interesting courses. Rainbow Road SNES might be a classic but not very interesting compared to more modern track design, for instance. 

When we talk about this modern track design, I can't complain. These courses are twisty, with multiple layers to race on and different pathways to take. We have a slew of different design ideas at play here: from a haunted cinema in which you race into the movie to a giant question-mark-shaped ruin up in the sky. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (with the Booster Course Pass) holds the crown for most tracks in a Mario Kart but when it comes to pure design, Mario Kart World might overtake it. 

At the moment my top personal top three is, in Cup order, DK Spaceport, Starview Peak and of course: the new Rainbow Road. Each bring something different to the table that make them standout to me. From the clear inspiration of the arcade Donkey Kong, to its atmosphere, to just being so very varied and involved. If I could make my own custom cup, a feature Mario Kart should really have gotten by now, it would feature these three. 

Conclusion

With Mario Kart World, the Nintendo Switch 2 comes out hot out of the starting blocks. Introducing a brand-new way to race in Knockout Tour and taking a cue from the still-popular open-world genre, it’s the most ambitious Mario Kart in years. Often, that ambition pays off. The new Knockout Tour is a blast, the track design is excellent, a big character roster and there’s more here for solo players to enjoy. 

A limited free roam and the intermission-only Grand Prix structure keeps Mario Kart World from reaching its full potential, however. While the intermission setup is something different it, doesn’t always let the excellent track designs shine, and the free roam’s lack of direction makes it hard to stay invested for long. It feels like a game bursting with ideas that was taken out of the oven a little too early. 

If future updates patch the rough edges, Mario Kart World could become the best the series has ever offered. Fingers crossed!