Editor’s note: This review-in-progress is based on extensive hands-on time with a final version of Mario Kart World in a controlled environment.
It will be updated with final thoughts, a score, and pros/cons in the following days.
With the last Mario Kart having released over a decade ago and spanning two Nintendo consoles, expectations are high for Mario Kart World to steer the racing spin-off in a brand new direction. Of course, it’s not as though Mario Kart is begging for a shot in the arm; it has gone from strength to strength over its life cycle, though I’d say the earliest adopters of the game, those who’ve been there since before Mario Kart 8’s Deluxe days, are ready for something fresh.
Pretty much every Mario Kart title in retrievable memory has brought to the track a gimmick of its own to set it apart from its predecessors. It should come as no surprise when you consider its title, but Mario Kart World delivers the first free-roamable open world in the series. It also delivers an enormous roster, and the biggest lobbies of any Mario Kart yet, meaning every race has the expected, thrilling undercurrent of excitement that only Mario’s kart-racing can offer.
Leaving well enough alone, Nintendo doesn’t appear to have tinkered too much under the hood in of the ‘Mario Kart feel’. There’s a heap of familiarity found here that’ll make it easy for lifelong fans to jump back in without missing a beat. With that said, Mario Kart World remains an ideal point of entry for kids who’ve never picked it up before. It has an “out of the box” brand of family-friendly fun that not many other titles can boast of, although there are plenty of mechanics to master that’ll undoubtedly separate the wheat from the chaff on race day.
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Along with returning tough to master mechanics like boosting, players can now grind rails and wall jump by charge-jumping into either a grindable rail or wall. It can be a tad finicky to find the perfect angle of attack, but it’s worthwhile experimenting with because either can be a time-saver through the trickier legs of certain tracks. Most rails are a hop away, though the map also has several that are at road level, meaning they’ll auto-activate, which’ll help novice players feel like they’re looking as cool as they can.
Mario Kart World also serves as a reminder that Wave Race ruled, as karts now convert automatically into watercraft, letting racers take it to the surrounding seas of Mario Kart’s huge map. It’s completely seamless, and I loved how tracks were designed, this time around, to move effortlessly between street, off-road tracks, and sea. Not being a huge advocate for Mario Kart historically, it’s hard for me to separate old tracks from new, but perhaps that’s a testament to how good Nintendo’s design philosophies are in bringing the old up to accommodate World’s open-world ideas.
With Mario Kart World being sold as one big contiguous map that you can drive across, which has all of the regular tracks built within it, each cup’s track flowing into the next is a nice little touch that gives the impression of this. Every race bar the first has a running start of sorts, which sells the notion that you’re picking up where the last left off.
Mario Kart World feels like Nintendo’s attempt at capturing the open world racing sub-genre that games like Burnout Paradise and Forza Horizon have gone close to perfecting. Given how sparse the map appeared to look during the game’s reveal, I had fears that it mightn’t offer the same kind of activity density as its contemporaries. And while I believe that’s still true to a degree, I had enough fun roaming around Mario Kart World’s map. I’d fooled myself into thinking I might time myself running from coast to coast, only to find myself getting distracted by either the P Switch mini-missions or small, emergent moments like the Chargin’ Chuck jettisoning item boxes as though they’re stolen goods.
With genuine fun to be had, and plenty of items to find and collect, like extra costumes and Princess Peach tokens, within the open world–some that I encountered were pretty hidden–I expect the free roam will end up being a worthwhile distraction for those not always into the grind of collecting cups in Grand Prix. Not only is it a joy to explore, it’s surprisingly accommodating in letting you fast travel from spot to spot, although that often means taking over one of the U drivers simply cruising about.
As good as some of the costumes are, like Biker Mario, people in our session were constantly taken aback by and revering the new characters, including Mario Kart’s bovine star, Cow. There’s also a flamingo, which cruises along comically with its enormous neck craning high above the grid, and a cute little bat that won many, many hearts.
While free roam and Grand Prix make up what’ll most likely be people’s ‘single-player’ experience with Mario Kart World, I absolutely cannot recommend Knockout Tour enough. While I’d say it’s a battle royale in spirit, I’d compare it most to the Eliminator mode in Burnout, as it sees a group of racers eliminated at set checkpoints during a point-to-point sprint. Just with how Mario Kart works, and how the game will force-feed you powerful items to get you back into the race, these are always chaotic. There’s inherent frustration in cruising out in first place, only to be struck down and struck out within the space of fifteen seconds, but that is Mario Kart.
Although I do think Knockout Tour will be the premiere competitive mode for Mario Kart World, players can also opt for the slightly less hectic Battle Mode, which, at launch, features two modes in Balloon Battle and Coin Runners. Again, this is a lot of fun—there’s an ebb and flow to each battle, and it never feels like the battle is lost. This is especially true in the case of Balloon Battle, where points only tally at the end if you survive the round—a single elimination can change the course of a battle, and it’s a thrill limping to the final bell with a single unpopped balloon intact.
Part of what makes every PVP event in Mario Kart World so hectic is that it now s up to twenty-four players, effectively doubling the maximum online lobby size from Mario Kart 8. I think, with such a huge pool of players to race against, there’ll be some balancing of certain items post-launch. I found in competitive games where hitting the enemy is key to victory that item drops like the boomerang were disgustingly overpowered.
Mario Kart World also features for both GameChat and the console’s camera, which, by placing a small porthole with your face in it over your car so that you’re able to mock others to maximise smugness, only further adds to the natural, electric energy of Mario Kart competition. The challenge is not distracting yourself as you’re effectively hanging out of your car, tongue out, giving ‘em one of these.
Despite delivering the franchise into its first open world setting, Mario Kart World still does feel a bit like an iteration as opposed to a complete evolution of the series. Although given Mario Kart 8 remains one of the, if not the, best kart racers ever developed, it’s not a condemnation of Mario Kart World to simply be as good as its predecessor.
Mario Kart World launches on June 5th. It’s available from Amazon for $104 with free shipping HERE.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This review-in-progress is based on extensive hands-on time with a final version of Mario Kart World in a controlled environment. It will be updated with final thoughts, a score and pros/cons in the following days.
