Mario Kart World review — The ups and downs of a road trip

Mario Kart 8 originally released for the Wii U in 2014. That’s a little over ten years without a new Mario Kart game, though the Booster Course Pass for the Switch version essentially filled that gap. With some of the best arcade-style racing out there, the next mainline Mario Kart needed to change things up, and that’s exactly what Mario Kart World does, for better or worse. Mario Kart World feels like a road trip, you’re constantly on the move, never staying in one place for too long. It’s chaotic, fun, and sometimes frustrating.

The big difference in Mario Kart World from previous games is that all the tracks exist together in one, seamless open world. You can drive directly from Moo Moo Meadows to Dino Dino Jungle without a single loading screen. Games like Forza Horizon have done this trick before, but none of them have had bespoke, Mario-style racetracks, complete with gliding and water sections. There are three different ways the game utilizes this open world: Free Roam, Grand Prix, and Knockout Tour. Battle Mode still takes place in the open world, but only in certain areas best suited to that style of play.

Grand Prix is the typical four races-style mode. You pick a cup, then race through the tracks in order gunning for first place in each race. The higher you place, the more points you gain for the final tally. It’s a bit different here in World, however, in that you hardly ever do three laps of a single track. Instead, the first two laps have you driving to your destination from the previous course, then doing one lap of said track to cap it off. As someone who really enjoys mastering a track and getting a consistently clean racing line through it despite tons of items coming my way, I didn’t like this change. This is the mode that’s supposed to let each track shine, but instead it feels like a weirdly segmented version of the next mode, Knockout Tour. 

Knockout Tour has you selecting a cup which contains a set of four or more tracks, but rather than driving the courses themselves, it’s a race from one point on the map to the other. At the end of each segment is a checkpoint with a number on it, with anyone placing above that number being eliminated. The rest of the racers seamlessly continue in one massive race until only 4 from the initial 24 are left. This mode places even less focus on the courses than Grand Prix, but it’s a much better utilization of the open world, feeling a bit like Rally Racing in practice. It’s a fun test of endurance and figuring out your own shortcuts, as crossing a tiny bit of rough terrain with a mushroom could bring you from last to first in an instant. 

Whatever mode you're playing, there is a lot of jockeying for first and especially second place. With the jump from 12 racers to 24 comes double the items, so there’s tons of shells, bananas, lightning bolts, feathers, coins, and mushrooms in play at all times. There are plenty of returning items in addition to new ones like the feather which lets you instantly jump to access shortcuts or the golden shell which speeds forward leaving a trail of coins behind it. They all add a bit of moment-to-moment strategy to the game, like do you keep a shell to protect you from other racers items, or throw it to potentially slow down the person ahead of you?

However, the caveat here is that there are just far too many items going everywhere all the time. The cooldown for getting hit is also much shorter, meaning you could be locked in place for several seconds while the entire pack passes you and you can do nothing about it. While it’s happened frequently in past Mario Karts, the amount of times I’ve lost a race because of being bombarded by blue shells and lightning literally in front of the finish line in World feels far, far too high. Despite the added strategy, it can feel like actual racing skill matters less than ever. The items and chaos is part of what makes Mario Kart so fun, but it’s just ridiculous here, especially on 150 CC.

150 CC is the hardest available difficulty, aside from the unlockable mirror mode (though good luck getting gold in every race in 150 CC to unlock it), but the next hardest difficulty, 100 CC, feels way too easy in comparison. Where you can struggle to stay in first due to the sheer volume of items in 150 CC, it’s trivial to get so far ahead in 100 CC that you’ll probably never see another racer again. It feels like there should be something between them or toning down 150 CC to be more balanced and enjoyable as the game never really hits a sweet spot in terms of difficulty.

This applies to Free Roam as well. There’s no real objective in Free Mode other than finding Peach Coins, collecting costumes through food items, hitting ? Panels hidden in each track, and completing P Switch challenges dotted around the world. P Switch challenges are a bit similar to Mission Mode from Mario Kart DS, presenting you with a short challenge like collecting all the blue coins, going through a series of rings within a time limit, or simply driving through an unruly herd of cows. They’re neat, but the problem with them is that they're either so easy you could do them in your sleep or the most difficult thing ever devised by human hands. There’s no in between here. This is a game for children, so I can certainly understand making things easier, but I simply do not see a kid completing some of these challenges. Again, it's difficult to the point of not being fun rather than an interesting challenge. 

Simply put, there’s just not much to do in Free Roam either. Aside from costumes and new karts, which can be acquired in any mode, the only reward for doing any of these activities is stickers. You can pick one of these stickers to go in a predetermined place on your kart from the main menu, and it’ll show up next to your character icon in races, but that’s it. Multiple players on the same system can’t pick their own stickers either as it’s a per-profile thing. That in and of itself isn’t the problem, it just feels like there’s not much to do in the open world. The fun you’ll have in it is really determined by how self-motivated you are in games, and as someone more goal-driven, even if I can find self-imposed challenges between those goals, I don’t see myself coming back to Free Roam other than to kill some time or utilize the game’s excellent photo mode. It’s also hard to even find these activities, as the world map shows you virtually no useful information and the minimap is a simple overhead view.

It’s a shame it feels like there’s a caveat to every mode, as the racing itself is phenomenal. Driving and drifting feel very different from 8, but once you get used to it, drifting through corners and trying to keep your boost going feel fantastic. Less emphasis has been placed on gliding, with both it and the new jet-ski mode being significantly less speedy than driving on a road. This applies as well to wall-riding, charging a jump, and grinding on rails, but all three could lead to key shortcuts if utilized properly. It’s key to know when to break out these abilities and when to hold off, with just about every course having risky shortcuts you can only access through them. It’s all the more impressive as every course can also be played backwards depending on how you set things up in Vs. Mode. It does have a lot less spectacle than 8 and can feel a bit bland in terms of design occasionally, but constantly looking for shortcuts keeps you on your toes in a fun way. 

I think that’s Mario Kart World’s best trait and it’s downfall simultaneously. You’re never focused on one thing long enough for it to get boring, but as a result it can feel more wide than it is deep. Just like the character and kart selection menus, which feel bloated and disorganized since characters and costumes each occupy a separate slot. It feels fantastic to move through its world, but at so fast a pace I can’t really stop and smell the roses.

When I can stop and smell the roses, it’s with the game’s Photo Mode. This pauses the action so you can set up a shot by controlling your character’s pose and expression along with the camera’s angle and zoom. Other players can pose too as whatever they do with their character in their own Photo Mode will be reflected in yours, allowing groups to take cool, dynamic poses. It all really adds to the road trip theme the game has going on, which is one of the best parts. The best moments in Mario Kart World are those spent with friends just messing around rather than actually racing.

Whatever you’re doing, you’re going to be listening to some absolutely killer music. The new main theme with its focus on harmonica firmly establishes the road trip vibe, while the remixes of past Mario songs you hear as you drive around are incredibly catchy. Probably the best part of Free Roam is suddenly realizing that what you’re listening to is a new arrangement of an old tune. I need this soundtrack on Nintendo Music ASAP just to more clearly listen to all these bangers.

Finally, and I don’t usually do this, but let’s talk about that price tag. If you don’t get the game bundled with the Switch 2, Mario Kart World is $80. Considering Nintendo games don’t go down in price anymore for some unjustified reason, it’s going to stay that way forever. I received this game for free, but I think I’d be a bit miffed if I had paid $80 for it given the reasons stated throughout this review. It’s a big game and I’ll probably be coming back to it for the entirety of the Switch 2’s life, but that is simply too much money for a game that didn’t blow my socks off. For reasons you’ve probably experienced, it’s getting harder and harder to even afford $60 games, and if they keep going up in price many fans will be priced out of the hobby entirely. Mario Kart World, for all its triumphs and flaws, simply is not worth $80.