This latest release blends the chaos of 24-player races with an open world full of tricky skill-based shortcuts to reinvent the wheel.
You haven’t lived until you’ve been hit by a blue shell just before you’re about to cross the finish line.
For those not in the know—or whose last Mario Kart was the 64 version—it’s a spiky shell that hones in on the player in first place and detonates. An equaliser.
If that’s a frustration you are yet to experience, well, you’re in luck with Mario Kart World.
Each race feels like a fancy dress party in cars.
In the few weeks I’ve been racing in the game, it’s happened to me at least a dozen times. See, the graphics aren’t the only thing that’s gotten an update in this hotly anticipated title. Mario and his mates have gone to school on how to race, and you’ll notice that they are no pushovers. They leverage items like pros, use every shortcut they can muster, and are downright merciless. Smiling assassins on the track.
Even on 50cc—the easiest difficulty—it’s incredibly easy to go from first to last. In this instance, that’s 24th place.
Why? Likely to balance the game. Surprisingly, this is also one of the most technical Mario Kart games we’ve ever seen. Courses are riddled with shortcuts that require you to be adept at timing your boosts, drifting, and mastering two new mechanics: rail and wall riding. Stealing Tony Hawk’s thunder, all racers can now grind rails and wall ride, provided you hit the surface at the right speed and angle.
Without challenging AI to give you a run for your money, an adept player could stunt their way to victory. But the difficulty is ramped up to push you to look for every advantage possible. Work has already begun online investigating whether certain characters have advantages on various racing terrain, or finding optimal kart and character combinations.
At face value, this is the most casual Mario Kart game to date, given the chaos 24-player races create. But dig just a little deeper, and on the right courses it’s a game that demands more precision than any of its predecessors.
Pushing forward an already perfect formula
This is, of course, only one of the many changes Mario Kart World brings to the table. As implied by the name, Mario Kart World is an open-world kart racing game that shakes up the series formula. Each racing cup still features four tracks. But beyond the first track, each race is essentially a sprint to the next course, where the final leg is a lap of that track. It leads to a lot of open road gameplay and, in some ways, more forgiving race tracks overall. It also means that by virtue of doing the major cups in the game, you’ll end up driving through the dense and varied world.
It is a shame, however, that while ‘world’ is in the title of the game, it takes a backseat in terms of gameplay. The open-world exploration mode feels like a hidden side-note rather than a core feature, despite being so rich and full of activities. This includes mini racing challenges, hidden coins, and unlockables. Yet most of the perks and characters you can unlock in this Mario Kart are achieved through the main cup and knockout races.
A lot of the incredible alternate costumes for all of the characters—such as Biker Yoshi—are more easily unlocked through the exploration mode. Shifting some more bonuses into the open world aspect of the game could encourage greater incentive for just mucking around in it, as it’s quite fun but, as is, easy to overlook.
They somehow made the game’s cutest character also cool?
Beyond this, the newest addition to the series are the knockout races. These manic 24-player races are sprints from one end of the world to the other, with checkpoints that—as the name describes—knock out the last four players. It leads to some fantastic moment-to-moment gameplay online that really tests players’ skills, especially when getting the coveted three-star rating on each cup requires your character coming first through each checkpoint.
They’re particularly manic online, where 23 other real players will do everything in their power to ensure they are not knocked out of the race early. Nintendo’s consistent track record with Mario Kart online play remains intact in this version of the game. Matchmaking is seamless and easy—you won’t wait more than five minutes for a race. That time is also spent wandering in the open world mode, so you hardly notice it. With over 50 characters and 40 vehicles, there’s a lot of room to express yourself virtually too.
Nintendo had a lot to prove
Mario Kart World is also the best showcase of what Nintendo can do with a tad of extra horsepower in its devices. Running at a crisp 60 frames per second, this is the best-looking Mario Kart to date. One of the game’s final courses, Rainbow Road, is particularly spectacular.
Perhaps the most stunning Rainbow Road track ever.
Musically, the game is perhaps even more impressive. Many of the classic Mario tunes are here, remixed to fit the racing mood. The harmonica punctuates a lot of Mario Kart World’s best bops, adding its own unique sound to this game. In a departure from previous Mario Kart games, musical tracks are not strictly tied to their racing counterparts and evolve as the race progresses. This means you’ll generally hear more tunes than usual when you play Mario Kart World, and it’s a nice little flourish on what is a very well-presented package.
Nintendo had to make a statement with the overall look and feel of Mario Kart World. It’s pushed up the usual retail price of Nintendo games from $89 AUD to $109 AUD. Nintendo always aces gameplay—that’s a given with its games. Its presentation had to justify this price bump, and in my eyes, this at least feels like a more premium package than past games.
But is it enough to justify purchasing a Switch 2 all on its own? If you are a diehard Mario Kart fan, you already have your answer. But for the casual market—the one Nintendo needs to win over to hit its massive sales targets—there likely needs to be more on the console to tip the scale. Mario Kart is a game you dip in and out of and play when you have friends over. It’s not a meaty enough experience to justify a whole device purchase—especially when the Switch 2 is in the same price range as the latest generation of Xbox and Sony consoles, but with markedly fewer games.
There was an opportunity for this to be the case with the open-world aspect of the game, a story, and perhaps more mechanics that improve your racer over time or encourage a stronger gameplay loop. But don’t let my dour business-brain assessment deter you. It’s still among the best Mario Kart has ever been and well worth your time.
Though without more high-profile, top-tier releases on the Switch 2, Nintendo may face its own blue shell before the finish line with regards to its console sales targets.
While I did the nuts and bolts of Mario Kart World more broadly, I suspect this is also a really excellent kids game with some noticeable omissions for them too. Check out Patrick Klepek’s coverage of it on Crossplay for a more detailed account on how it works in that context.
Harrison Polites writes the Infinite Lives newsletter. Follow him here.
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