Mario Kart World review: "A glorious road trip that embraces the open road"

To put the Nintendo Switch 2 in pole position, Mario Kart World has the daunting requirement to not just be the best in the series to date, but the best karter ever. The franchise lacks any serious competition when it comes to the kart racing genre, barring some indie attempts and minor AAA shots over the years, and as such the only real measuring stick to progress or changes and expansion is its own self. But it's been a long time since a proper new Mario Kart has been released – with Mario Kart 8 initially releasing in 2014 on the Wii U – which makes it all the more difficult to answer what, exactly, makes a good Mario Kart? What makes a good kart racing game in general?

These are the questions I've struggled with while playing Mario Kart World. After an hour or so of existential dread and self-reflective navel-gazing, my conclusion is that a good kart racing game (and by extension, a good Mario Kart game) feels good in that races are hectic and slick with responsive controls. A good kart racing game is also never actually unfair, despite sometimes feeling like it is out to get you, with mechanics designed to keep you in the thick of things even if you've fallen behind.

By these metrics, Mario Kart World is certainly good. Zooming through the various tracks at 150cc is a colorful blast with plenty of shortcuts and surprises, and more than once I found myself managing a mad dash from 24th to 1st thanks to a combination of clutch items and clever handling. The core Mario Kart experience of goofy racing punctuated by diabolical shells of varying colors is alive and well.

Tour the world

Mario Kart World isn't purely content to sit on its laurels by simply repeating past successes. As the name implies there's a whole vast world out there to explore that the new Nintendo Switch 2 game takes every opportunity to enjoy. You can largely ignore the game's larger world in favor of just plain old racing if that's what you really want to do, but you'd be missing out – both because certain parts of the game will remain locked and because it's a blast, actually.

In Grand Prix mode, for example, you can do the usual four-map race as a continuous course by traveling from one race to the next. Knockout Tour is a somewhat similar concept with one single long race featuring checkpoints where players are – you guessed it – knocked out if they don't place high enough. And then there's Free Roam, which, well, allows you to freely roam around Mario Kart World's vast map.

I have drifted across all Mario Kart World has to offer, including Battle Mode and Time Trials and even a local co-op GameChat session with three players where the single camera superimposed three different live cropped images above our respective karts – but it is Free Roam that I keep finding myself cruising back to. In part, this is absolutely by design, as basically every single moment of downtime between races or while rules are being decided lets me wander about, but it's also because of just how tempting Free Roam is.

Free as a Birdo

It's hard to emphasize the sheer scope of Mario Kart World's, well, world to anyone that hasn't been able to experience it for themself. The sprawling race courses are stitched together with connective tissue that bridges them into related groups which are then also stitched together. The end result is a massive map you can kart around in, explore with pals, and discover ways to unlock a vast array of collectibles from stickers to outfits and more.

This "world", as the game's name implies, is the big difference between Mario Kart World and everything that's come before it. Everything from collectibles to courses to letting 24 players into a race to Knockout Tour's entire existence is driven by this major mutation from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and the game is all the better for it.

It would have been easy enough to just make more courses and call it a day. Maybe add a new item, the new racing techniques, and that's it. But it's hard to imagine that any of this truly succeeds at crafting anything better than what's come before. It would have just been that, but more. Instead, if Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the pinnacle of that specific brand of kart racing design, Mario Kart World feels like a fork in the road that not everyone's going to be interested in.

That doesn't mean there aren't drawbacks. The biggest weakness in Mario Kart World is honestly its map. There's no good way of tracking collectibles, the minimap is effectively useless with how little it actually shows, and good luck trying to make any sort of detailed, informed decisions about where to go or how to get there based on looking at the larger map in the menu itself. It's frustrating, and holds Mario Kart World back from true greatness.

Gotta switch 'em all

I am not one to spend much time searching out cosmetics, especially given new karts and racers typically unlocked for me by simply racing around, and yet I find myself absolutely compelled by Mario Kart World's P-Switch missions. The classic blue switch can be found all over the map during Free Roam, and activating them initiates a mission with various objectives. Maybe you have to dodge enemies, maybe it's following a series of rails, or maybe it's something else entirely, and what awaits you for completing these trials is a sticker for your efforts.

For most games, these sorts of missions are only worthwhile if the reward is meaningful. And stickers, while appreciated, aren't really what I'd consider meaningful. Mario Kart World's P-Switch missions are fun and interesting specifically because they are otherwise largely brief, meaningless diversions in a big open world that dangles some kind of goal in front of the player through use of an important skill that transfers to traditional races.

For example, Mario Kart World lets players grind on rails and jump onto and off of walls. If you're not at least familiar with both, you're immediately at a disadvantage during races as your opponents will happily and regularly use anything to get ahead. More than one P-Switch mission I encounter is in some way a tutorial to get more accustomed to grinding, riding on walls, and sometimes both. With how brief they are, and how easy each is to restart, it's hard to ever get too frustrated with any of them despite the inevitable serious skill tests that sneak in from time to time.

A whole new world

Any one of these major additions – Grand Prix, Knockout Tour, and Free Roam – would feel like a significant enough change to warrant a new franchise entry, and all three at once (on top of many, many other changes) makes for an almost overwhelming departure. Arguably, perhaps that alone fully justifies what Mario Kart World is and does.

But it certainly fundamentally changes the core Mario Kart experience. If all you're looking for out of Mario Kart World is going around some fun courses over and over again, it's not exactly simply laid out for you. The intermissions and world outside of the traditional tracks are directly integrated, and attempting to ignore them or circumvent their existence creates a haphazard, partial experience at best.

Taken on its own terms, however, Mario Kart World is a glorious road trip that embraces the open road. It's easy to imagine playing this latest entry for a decade in much the same way as Mario Kart 8, and my relatively minor frustrations all slip away in the breeze of a good drift followed by an exceptionally well-shot Green Shell.