It’s been a while since Mario upgraded his wheels. To be fair, Mario Kart 8 is a pretty tough act to follow, selling over 75 million copies between its Wii U and Switch iterations, but with the long-awaited launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, the Mushroom Kingdom crew are once again hitting the asphalt in Mario Kart World.

Does Mario Kart World successfully expand the beloved franchise’s horizons? Or does this open-world variation on the series take a wrong turn? Buckle up racers, it’s time to find out…

As its title implies, Mario Kart World goes the full-on open-world route, stitching all of its 30 courses together into one interconnected sandbox covering the usual array of biomes (city, beach, jungle, desert, Bowser’s castle, and beyond). While you’ll mostly stick to the track while racing, a new Free Roam mode allows you to go offroad and drive wherever your heart desires.

Broadly speaking, vehicle handling feels quite similar to Mario Kart 8, with all the standard techniques, such as drifting and hitting tricks to earn mini turbo boosts, still being intact. That said, some MK8 features, most notably the game’s trippy anti-gravity racing, have been left in the toybox this time around. There are additions as well, including a doubling of the number of competitors per race (up to a full 24) and a number of new techniques. The most important of these added techniques is the Charge Jump, which allows players racing in a straight line to build up and release energy in order to jump and get a small speed boost. The boost isn’t terribly useful, but the jump plays into two other techniques, as you’ll usually need that hop to pull off new-to-Mario-Kart-World rail grinds and wall rides.

Mario Kart World’s new techniques definitely don’t come as naturally as classic moves like drifting, and most of the time you don’t actually need to do them to best the AI, but they’re fun to do and great for bragging rights when playing against friends. Perhaps most importantly, new moves like rail grinding and wall riding introduce another level of skill to a series that has often been criticized for being a bit too random, so I welcome their addition, even if you can largely ignore them unless you’re looking to dominate online.

Of course, solid racing mechanics only matter if you have a good set of courses to race on, and, thankfully, Mario Kart World largely delivers. Nintendo has really gone all out with interesting and varied course themes, with the game’s new tracks taking you through an animal-filled safari, a ghostly living movie, and a spaceport lorded over by a giant robotic Donkey Kong, just to name a few. A number of classic courses, such as the OG Mario Circuit and Dino Dino Jungle, also return, but in most cases their layouts have been significantly updated, to the point they feel like completely new experiences. I’d be lying if I said the removal of anti-grav racing isn’t felt, as most courses don’t quite have that instant mind-bending wow factor Mario Kart 8’s tracks did a decade ago. That said, many of Mario Kart World’s courses are plenty memorable in their own right, as Nintendo has gone out of their way to really push each track’s specific theme, serving up plenty of unique sights, features, and hazards.

Many of Mario Kart World’s courses are also downright gorgeous. When the first trailers and clips for Mario Kart World dropped, there was some grumbling that the game didn’t look that much better than Mario Kart 8 (partly because Nintendo decided to debut the game with a look at one of its least-visually-interesting tracks for some reason) but let me assure you, playing the full game on a big 4K HDR-enabled screen is a treat. From the rich autumnal colors and rushing rapids of Cheep Cheep Falls, to the cloud-shrouded Great ? Block Ruins, to a truly epic version of Bowser’s Castle, Mario Kart World is a consistent stunner and never drops below its 60fps target no matter how much bedlam is on screen.

While most of Mario Kart World’s main courses are good to great, changes to classic modes like Grand Prix brought about by the game’s new open-world structure don’t always serve the racing experience that well. While each Grand Prix cup begins as they always have, with players taking three laps around an opening course, you’re then required to actually drive to each following course, with the first two or three “laps” of the second, third, and fourth Grand Prix races consisting of transitional routes followed by a single lap around a more traditional track.

While these connecting routes are fine, they also serve a utilitarian purpose – to get you from one place to another in the open world – and thus tend to be filled with a lot of lengthy straightaway sections. Now, in most racing games, straightaways are fun! They’re the place where you get to build up speed! But in Mario Kart games, you tend to get up to maximum speed quickly, with most challenge traditionally coming from skillfully navigating hazards and drifting around corners. As such, straightaways can sometimes feel kind of dull, particularly if you’re at the front of the pack and can’t even ping anyone with a red shell for laughs.

It seems likely these transitional routes were one of the reasons Nintendo added some of Mario Kart World’s new maneuvers, as finding a new rail to grind adds a bit of challenge to these otherwise undemanding stretches of straight track. That said, sometimes these straightaways don’t even have rails to grind, leaving you to just hold the acceleration button for seconds at a time. Now, don’t get me wrong, these transitional bits don’t ruin the game or anything so dramatic, but I’ll admit, while connecting all the tracks together within a larger world is a neat trick, most of the time, I’d probably prefer to just do three laps on each of the Grand Prix’s main courses as that’s where the best racing moments are concentrated.

But Grand Prix isn’t the only big single-player mode this time around, as Mario Kart World adds the new Knockout Tour. This mode is a battle royale of sorts, consisting of a continuous race through six interconnected courses, with the four bottom racers eliminated at each checkpoint. Survive to the final four and come in first to win. It’s an interesting new idea, and the fact that you always have to be concerned about your placement in the pack does ratchet up the intensity, but the mode has a few issues. For starters, the mode focuses even more heavily on those so-so connecting routes than Grand Prix, and secondly, the mode doesn’t really mesh well with Mario Kart’s inherent randomness. You can play through an entire 6-race Knockout Tour Rally only to be hit with a red shell right before the final finish line and come in second (something that’s happened to me more than once). Knockout Tour is a promising concept worth keeping around and refining, but, at least for now, I still prefer Grand Prix, even if it has its own issues.

So, if Mario Kart World’s sandbox doesn’t necessarily benefit its traditional racing experience, is it at least worthwhile in its own right? How does Free Roam mode stand up? You can enter Free Roam any time you want from the main menu and there really are very few restrictions on where you can go – if you see something, and you’re clever enough, you can probably drive there. As for what you actually do in the open world beyond just driving around, it’s somewhat limited as there’s no story mode nor any NPCs you can interact with in a meaningful way. Players can find P Switches scattered around the world, which allow you to tackle simple missions (collect the blue coins, drive through the checkpoints, etc.) You can also find ? Panels and Princess Coins hidden in out-of-the-way locations. You don’t get much reward for doing these things – mainly, you unlock stickers, which can be affixed to your kart but mostly act as a basic achievement system.

As simple as Free Roam is, I’ll admit, I still found myself quite enjoying my time with it. It brought to mind Peach’s Castle from the classic Super Mario 64, in the sense that there’s not a lot of structure to driving around Mario Kart World’s sandbox, there’s not a lot of traditional reward for doing it, but it’s still fun to do for its own sake. The world is packed with nooks and crannies to explore, tricks to pull off, and often-gorgeous vistas to take in. Are you going to spend hours straight totally immersed in Free Roam mode? Probably not, but it’s an entertaining and relaxing way to spend a few minutes when you’ve had enough of Grand Prix or battling online.

And hey, if you’re not that into Free Roam, there are other traditional Mario Kart distractions to take part in. Mario Kart World gets a full Battle Mode right from the get go, with players being able to jump into Balloon Battle or Coin Runners matches in one of eight modestly-sized closed-off arenas. Battle Mode is surprisingly old-school in its approach, but that isn’t a bad thing, as it remains good, simple fun, with the increased 24-player limit adding some intensity to the proceedings. Of course, Time Trials also return, so get ready to take on those ghosts.

Most of Mario Kart World’s modes can be tackled online or against bots, if you’re the antisocial type. Online play felt nice and smooth to me, and certain modes, Knockout Tour in particular, really take on a life of their own with a crew of rowdy online opponents. That said, the larger player count meant I was often left waiting for minutes at a time for a race to start (thankfully, you can mess around in Free Roam while you’re in the queue).

There’s certainly no shortage of things to see and do in Mario Kart World, but the big-money question is… is it worth the big 80 coins? Mario Kart World’s collection of 30 courses is nothing to sniff at, but they are less than the 48 you get with the $60 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. How much does the game’s open world count for? And, of course, we can’t pretend inflation doesn’t exist — that $60 you paid in 2017 (the year MK8 Deluxe came out) translates to around $80 today. Personally, I’m not really a fan of breaking down a game’s worth in such a mercantile way. What I can say, is that Mario Kart World feels like a very full-featured ride, one that will hopefully end up even more tricked out as additional updates roll out. But, at the same time, I definitely understand if the game’s price tag makes you pump the breaks.

This review was based on a copy of Mario Kart World provided by publisher Nintendo.

8.5

WCCFTECH RATING

Mario Kart World