With the last Mario Kart having been 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 spin-off 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 mere hop away, though the map also has several that begin 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, 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 Grand Prix tracks, Knockout Tours, and intermissionary routes built within it, this idea is sold wholesale with how any of the tracks manage to flow seamlessly into the next. Every subsequent race after the first features a running start, which gives the impression 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, finding the well-hidden question block s, or the emergent moments of fun found in the wild, like the Chargin’ Chuck jettisoning item boxes as though they’re stolen goods.
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With genuine fun to be had and plenty of items to find and collect, within the open world, I expect the free roam will end up being a fine enough distraction for those not always into the grind of collecting cups in Grand Prix. I do wish the free roam was playable with friends, because just cruising about and shooting the breeze would have been special. I also don’t think the game provides a particularly ideal means of tracking collectibles, nor does it give you much of a reason to explore once they’re all recovered, but it’s a perfect proving ground for mastering the tricks and routes that’ll ultimately prove to be the difference online.
In of extra costumes for the shipped roster, I’ve got a few favourites, such as Mario’s ‘Touring’ variant. The issue is, I don’t know that there’s enough variety in what’s available to pick up. There isn’t a great deal of unique looks, and most of the styles can be collected and applied to all of the key characters. Donkey Kong, who should be a marquee character given he has his own adventure launching next month, is limited to one additional outfit, which is a bit of a letdown.
I’d argue the general audience has gravitated more to the newer animal characters, including the game’s bovine star, Cow. There’s also a flamingo who cruises along with its comically long neck craning high above the grid, as well as a cute little bat that has, so far, 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. At launch, it features two modes in Balloon Battle and Coin Runners. These are 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 manage to 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.
A part of what makes every event in Mario Kart World feel so unrelenting is that it now s up to twenty-four players, doubling the maximum online lobby from the last go around. I don’t think the balancing is, at all, perfect as it stands; certain items can too easily change the tide of a race or battle. In the competitive games, for example, where hitting the enemy is key to victory, the item that springs to mind as needing a nerf would absolutely be the boomerang.
For all the speculation over how Mario Kart World might run, especially as we exit the tail end of the original Switch’s less than spectacular track record of first-party optimisation, for the game to hold an exceptionally stable 60fps for the single-player racing is a relief. Of course, this halves once you spin your wheels online, but that’s to be expected. I definitely can’t be critical of how World looks, either. It’s vibrant, all of the remodels feel in keeping with the Mario Bros. film, and the world, as pointless as it might be once the collectibles dry up, is a veritable greatest hits of Mario Kart biomes that flow beautifully into each other.
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. Outside of collectibles, the vast setting only serves to prepare you for the thrill of online play, and I did find the available costumes to be a little disappointing.
Considering that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe remains one of the, if not the, greatest kart racers ever developed, it’s far from a condemnation of Mario Kart World that I’d consider it to be about as good as its predecessor.
