Mario Kart World is a good but not perfect racing game
Switch 2 launch day has now been and gone and we can finally get our hands on Nintendo’s main launch game for their next generation console and let’s be honest, launching a brand new Mario Kart is a pretty big thing for Nintendo to do. I’ve been really looking forward to seeing a new Mario Kart since the last brand new Mario Kart console game launched in 2014, or 2017 if you count Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
As much as I enjoyed the previous iteration, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and that’s partly because there wasn’t any new feature which made the game stand out to me. So, when I saw a new Mario Kart game being teased back in March I was really excited to see more about it, but since the reveal, it’s safe to say that Nintendo’s flagship launch title for their new console has not gone without its controversy. With players reporting that the tracks look empty and boring to an eye watering price which caused many gamers to push back against paying too much for games. Nintendo had a lot to prove when it came to Mario Kart World. But, now that the game has launched, is it worth spending your money on?
What is Mario Kart World about?
To give the briefest of summaries on Mario Kart’s history, Mario Kart is a long established racing game and in its own right is seen as a market leader with many 3rd Party imitations coming out with their own licensed versions of a racing game including Crash Team Racing and Team Sonic Racing. Mario Kart is seen as a staple for Nintendo consoles with there being a version on every Nintendo console.
If you’re familiar with racing games, then you’ll understand the gist of how Mario Kart World works. You drive a series of laps around a course with the aim to get either the fastest time or to finish first.
Historically, Mario Kart has made it so that you get three laps of a track before you move onto the next, but Mario Kart World changes this formula and answers the question you may have asked of what is beyond the walls and can you drive there? Instead of sticking to the tried and tested format of racing games, Mario Kart World becomes the first Mario Kart game to offer you more of an open world racing experience which is an incredible move on and is really exciting to experience when your time with Mario Kart has been dominated by doing circuits of your favourite tracks.
Free Roam
This open world nature and lack of limits is something which was stressed during the promotional Directs and has become the newest gimmick to the series. However, when you first boot up the screen. Whilst there are a lot of familiar modes for you to jump straight into, there’s one noticeable absence on the main menu. Free Roam, the game’s open world setting which allows you to drive around the world, is not given as a selection option alongside the other modes and is instead hidden in the corner highlighting that you have to press the plus button to load into it. Given this is the new feature of Mario Kart World, I was surprised that this wasn’t given a lot more space on the main menu, but that can be updated in the future.
The experience of playing Free Roam is very different to anything I expected. In Free Roam, you can drive essentially anywhere you like including roads which connect all of the tracks together or around the tracks themselves. Item boxes and coins are everywhere so you can truly enjoy your time playing around and trying new tricks or skills to improve your driving, or go off road and enjoy some down time looking for hidden question panels which unlock new stickers for you or activating P switches and completing challenges.
The world itself is gorgeous and driving from one biome to another is smooth and seamless with gradual shifting colours and road styles which make it both look and feel like you are moving into another section without it being jarring. What can be jarring is the changing weather patterns which seem to start and stop of their own volition, but they also affect the world and tracks perfectly with rain making your drive more slippery whilst driving on a dry and sunny day down a dirt road kicks up dirt around you. It’s a stunning experience to just drive around.
There are plenty of details for you to see around the world including hidden Yoshi’s diners which give you the snack bags which you can use to unlock character customisations and get an extra speed boost. However, outside of these details though, there are moments where the world does feel a bit barren. Driving through desert sands or luscious fields whilst fun can quickly turn into landscapes which are devoid of things to look at whilst you try to navigate to the where you want to go next.
Navigation in Free Roam is also a little rough as despite there being a map for you to see where you are and a fast travel system to head straight to different tracks, there was no pin option on the map which makes it difficult to find an interesting area to explore. The mini map also offers limited help in finding main roads to drive on and shows limited options to explore which has resulted in me finding Free Roam something I don’t really want to go into often.
Knockout Tour
The other new mode which has been introduced to Mario Kart has been a feature in other racing games and multiplayer games for a while is a knockout mode called Knockout Tour in Mario Kart World. Here you race across six tracks from one side of the world to the other with the end of each section knocking out the bottom four players. It’s reminiscent of the style of Fall Guys and creating a mad dash to the finish which I love. With 24 racers on the track, this mode becomes fun and chaotic in the best way possible. As is typical for Mario Kart games, you can very quickly lose your position. However, in Knockout Tour, losing your position really matters as a shell being thrown by another player can take you into the bottom positions very quickly if you aren’t careful.
With all of the fun this mode has, what I’m less keen on is how the races themselves are structured. Rather than racing around the tracks themselves, you are instead travelling in one direction to a final destination which isn’t a bad thing at all, but what I noticed very clearly from the long drives is that the roads are very straight. With a lack of cornering to go around until the very last section where you race with three other players to get first place on the final race track, playing Knockout Tour becomes more about how fast you are travelling than how well you handle the track. The traditional strategies I have for nailing Mario Kart races are pretty much irrelevant here, and even with the new wall jumps and grinding mechanics, they don’t really make you gain positions and in a lot of cases are actually slower than just driving on the main track itself without drifting and with a lack of scenery to look at whilst you are driving from one side of the map to the other, it can be a boring experience particularly in single player.
Where Knockout Tour really shines though is in multiplayer. I’ve had more fun in Mario Kart World going online and playing Knockout Tour with other players who are more strategic on using items than playing against the computer. What I do worry about though is that very quickly we will find there is a meta and if you don’t use that same character and kart combination, you don’t stand a chance of winning. Hopefully there will be some more options in the future to customise the Knockout Tour experience so that we can play on routes which have more twists and turns to make it more interesting to race across the world.
Grand Prix
Racing is a lot of fun in Mario Kart World and you still get a lot of that outside of Knockout Mode in the form of Grand Prix mode. This has long been a staple of all Mario Kart games and seeing it back in Mario Kart World makes for a welcome return, but the developers have mixed things up in this new game which makes for some interesting changes. Whereas past games saw you do at least three laps of each track before sending you to the next one, Mario Kart World instead sees you finish one track before then letting you drive to the next track. I personally love this mix up in the traditional race structure, but what has concerned me from playing is that the driving to the next track doesn’t work as I want it to.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the interconnected nature of the tracks to the world and I love the idea of driving to the next track. What is a problem though is that the drive to the next track forms part of your second, third and fourth races. When you get the countdown before you go, you notice on the screen that you are on lap one of three and when you reach the next checkpoint you still haven’t reached the next track. It’s not until you start the third lap of the race that you finally reach the next track in the cup leaving you with only one lap to do on the actual track. This to me feels like a misbalance between driving around the world and racing on the tracks. Yes, the world is pretty to look at and there are interesting details for you to look at on the route, but when you enter Grand Prix mode in Mario Kart, you generally expect to race around a track. Forcing players to complete a cup which is primarily just driving to the next track in a cup for me takes away from the core elements of what Mario Kart is well known for.
The other issue that occurs when driving to the next track is the straight nature of the course itself. You see the twists and bends in the final section of the race when you are finally getting towards the track itself. Outside of the track, the routes feature next to no bends and like you see in Knockout Tour, these sections result in being more about speed and less about handling which is harder to get right in a kart or bike selection for Grand Prix mode.
Fortunately though, the soundtrack which underscores Mario Kart World does make up for some of these issues. When you are finding yourself racing in a straight line, the audio really stands the test in adding to the ambience of the race itself and even with the beeps indicating an approaching red shell, it still is an auditory delight. There is still the sped up music on the track when you get to the last race, but from listening to this again, this only seems to happen on the first track in the cup all the other music you hear otherwise is reminiscent of the route you are driving on with the music changing for each lap.
Accessibility in Mario Kart World
Accessibility in Mario Kart World is not much different to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. There is no central hub where you can make changes to your game. Instead, you need to select a mode, then a character and when you get to the vehicle selection, you press X to see Settings and Controls. Here you will have the option to turn on or off smart steering, auto-accelerate, auto-use item and tilt controls. If you feel like you need these options as a beginner or to improve your game, they are there for you.
There is also the option to invert vertical and horizontal cameras separately as well, but I couldn’t find any options to remap camera controls if you wanted them on another set of buttons. It would be nice to see options to remap some of these buttons within Mario Kart World rather than remapping these in the Nintendo Switch 2 settings and have it affect all games if you didn’t need the buttons to be remapped for other games.
Summary
Mario Kart World is a lot of fun as a racing game and is a nice move on for the franchise. However, if you are looking for something which really stands apart from the series, I don’t think you will find everything you want from Mario Kart World which you wouldn’t find in the previous game.
As much Knockout Tour is the selling point for Mario Kart World, with the world itself doesn’t have enough details in it for me to be truly captivated and given the format of races in the latest installment is more about racing in a straight line than optimising your performance on a track, I don’t find myself wanting to play this more than the 10 hours I’ve currently put into the game.
Is Mario Kart World really worth the $80 price tag? I don’t personally think so. At a real push, I would say that if you purchase Mario Kart World as a bundle with the Nintendo Switch and pay about half of the price, it is just about worth it. Personally though, I would wait for a massive sale on Mario Kart World or buy it second hand if you are interested in playing it as it currently is.
I will be going back into Mario Kart World eventually, but for now, I think I'm more likely to go back to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Mario Kart World is a good game, but it’s not my go to by any means and doesn’t top my favourite version on the Wii.
How did you feel about Mario Kart World? Are you looking to purchase it as your first game on Nintendo Switch 2 or are you going to wait for a sale? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll see you in the next one.
