Mario Kart World Review

Mario Kart is, in many ways, too totemic to ever actually make for a bad game. A kart racing formula honed over decades of iteration, the flagship party game that achieves true four-quadrant status, the simplicity that innately benefits from the fidelity leap brought about by new hardware. Mario Kart has franchise momentum the likes of which we rarely see. In the Switch 2’s premier launch title, Mario Kart World, that momentum propels Nintendo onto the open road, producing a game adorned with house-style charm, experimental new systems, and a double-dash of overconfidence. 

The titular open world of Mario Kart World is the most emblematic of the problem. Ostensibly a massive shake-up to the tried and true, this sprawling Mushroom county serves as both differentiator selling point and invasive track changer. Plopped directly into it from the game’s menu (a fun sprinkle of that Nintendo magic), you’re invited to roam a sizeable map built around, and through existing tracks. It’s a strangely unhurried affair; the world is dotted with short time trial challenges, collectibles, and some sparse unlocks, activities that sometimes test your mettle but provide a loose outline of motivators for exploration. You’ll also want to chase that next horizon for a time – Mario Kart World’s stellar art direction is matched by the Switch 2’s performance to produce an array of gorgeously realised play spaces and dynamic lighting and weather effects.

Mario Kart World’s world is often gorgeous and calming

There’s a briefly compelling emptiness to this map, like Mario Kart World has inadvertently stumbled into creating the most vibrant liminal space imaginable. The mundane hum of its looping citizens and strangely quiet businesses, combined with the game’s relatively slim array of activities and baffling lack of organic multiplayer in the open world, make for a map that elicits raw Vibes and little else. It’s not not interesting, but it’s also decidedly not in line with Mario Kart World’s intentions, let alone its exorbitant price tag, itself justified by the scope creep that led to its primary selling point. I want to watch AnyAustin breakdown the inane logistics of this world more than I want to actually play in it.  

It also bleeds through to Mario Kart World’s track design and moment-to-moment racing, a complicated two-step forward and back for the series. The additional racing mechanics and nature of the open-play spaces that exist around the tracks mean each one is littered with wide roads and dozens of railings and walls to grind and drive on. Systems baked into the world design make for races that can be turned on a dime with the right use of the space available to you now. Players can utilise a somewhat awkward jump to latch onto railings and flat surfaces, providing speed boosts and some questionable shortcuts. Here, you can feel World beginning to truly innovate, pushing in the right direction toward (even optionally) more skill-based racing, though World is still beholden to aggressive item-based rubber banding. But in needing to tie all of these new components together into workable tracks, the overall variety is weakened, and, despite Nintendo’s consistently impressive aesthetic quality control, courses still feel just slightly less for their unity. 

Likewise, the shift to open world has dramatically impacted the pacing of races, for better or worse, depending on your chosen game mode. The other new major addition to Mario Kart World is the Knockout Tour, in which 24 racers contend in a series of elimination races across the map with no breaks between. It’s an exhaustingly wonderful riot, utilising the new play space to craft a mode that pushes endurance to the limit in seamless, momentum-driven races is genius and only truly sucks for anyone knocked out in the first bracket (get good). But Grand Prix catches a stray here, it’s traditional track-by-track flow interrupted by “intermission” laps (long stretches of relatively straight, scenic highway) raced between courses that eat into the 3–5 lap structure at any given track. For as considered as some of this level design is, it’s brutal how often the game denies racers time on the tracks themselves.

Ride or die

Rounding out World’s offerings is a small suite of multiplayer modes, time trials, and the increasingly anaemic Battle Mode. Mario Kart with friends remains Mario Kart at its best, and the simplicity of lobby creation is a nice counterbalance to the lack of tournament options. Not even the boys can infuse Battle Mode with much life, though, as the signature Balloon Battle and newcomer Coin Runners are played out in arenas that feel too large and at speeds that feel too slow. Broadly, World could stand to move a little faster; the lack of 200cc mode is frustrating and exploring the open world without being able to truly burn rubber rubs the wrong way. Still, it’s a solid enough lineup of modes befitting the series, though only Knockout Tour feels truly essential to World’s supposed innovations.  

No matter which of World’s unevenly implemented systems you want to engage in, you’ll at least be doing it in unabashed style. Nintendo’s keen eye for design has yet to fail it, and World greatly benefits from a massive roster of charmingly animated racers, pulling from decades of history to form the largest assortment of characters to date. These drivers, from staples to deep-cut new NPC additions, are expertly brought to life through countless micro-movements and reactions, matched only by the variety of karts. Customisation of these elements is somewhat inconsistent though, as only certain characters can nab unlockable outfits, and karts can slap a sticker on the hood but little else. Finally, much has been made of Cow, but Penguin is the true MVP of the lineup. His placid dead eyes and small chirps in the face of both danger and bounty making him the quintessential character of this moment in history. Let me give him a hat, Nintendo, come on.

Number 1 for a reason

There’s also the price tag. Mario Kart World has inadvertently heralded an industry-wide shift in AAA game pricing, hitting shelves in Australia at $119.95. At a time when consumers are experiencing a near-universal cost of living crisis, the massive spike in the price of entry for a series beloved for its ability to bring people together is intensely frustrating. In discussing the sticker shock, Nintendo explained that the additional content in the game would justify the shift, but having spent time with World’s new trappings, it’s difficult to imagine any one of them worth the impact this price point will have on both consumer and brand. 

Final Thoughts 

Mario Kart World stands in stark contrast to the original Switch’s franchise re-evaluation, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Where Link’s first foray into true open world design made for a generation-defining experience, Mario Kart World’s shift is uneven and chaotic, often producing frustrations alongside innovation and fun. A massive leap in fidelity and a lengthy development cycle have shaped a gorgeously realised world and roster of racers to barrel down impressive tracks with a small bag of new tricks. But the time spent between these breathless bouts is unrefined and clumsy, a world built for a console’s lifetime worth of updates that, for now, offers you little more than a freshly paved highway to nowhere. Mind the toll.

Reviewed on Switch 2 // Review code supplied by Nintendo

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