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Almost a month after the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, I've still been mostly playing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Mario Kart World. While I was irked by the latter's focus on substituting most options for traditional three-lap play with interconnected tracks (known as 'intermissions' among fans), I had solutions. Local VS Mode play allows you to play three tracks, and voting for 'random' online did allow you to vote for a 3-lap course rather than a sprint across the open world. That's now changing, but not in the way I was hoping.
Racing between tracks can be quite fun – it's the linchpin of Mario Kart World's Knockout Tour mode, after all, where 24-player chaos truly comes into its own (and which we loved in our Mario Kart World review). Yet, with Grand Prix also having you race between circuits every time, and most online tracks also being races to a track – followed by one brief lap on the course itself – the novelty begins to wear thin after repeated races. Mario Kart World's frequent breaks in the action began to wear me down with how they detract from spending more time in their really creative circuits.
Tracking data
Which means that, like me, a large portion of the Mario Kart World community – especially at higher levels – had taken to almost exclusively voting for Random tracks to get some classic 3-lap action. It seems Nintendo has noticed this, like I originally hoped. But, bafflingly, for now the company has chosen to exacerbate the issue, reducing the ability to get my wheels onto the sweet, sweet 3-lap circuits I so crave.
With the Ver 1.1.2. update, selecting the fourth Random option in an online lobby vote no longer provides an almost guaranteed 3-lap track. Instead, it incorporates the three tracks up for grabs into that random selection, only giving you a really random track about a fourth of the time (the exact percentage is unclear).
It means it's not so easy to vote for a track outside of the three presented options, which are almost always intermission tracks – racing from one track to the next across a route made from the open world, before one quick lap of the track itself. It's fine to have the option for those tracks, but while the roads are pretty, so many of these connected bits of road just feel like straight lines. When it comes to racing across suspension bridges or gliding across a desert, almost all I'm doing is holding accelerate.
It's also on these bits of straight track that new features like wall riding and rail grinding feel the most underserved, as there's fewer chances to cut corners with skilful moves. Grinding on bridge rails or electricity lines means going out of my way enough to do so that I'm usually losing places. All these roads are incredibly wide too, so there's really little of the thrilling drifting mechanics that shine so brightly when doing proper laps of the actual circuits.
It's a shame as a lot of the tracks in Mario Kart World are really good. Grand Prix even spotlights some of these – the first race of each is a standard 3-lap race before moving into its interconnected mode of play. Peach Beach, for instance, has you weaving through different chunks of the course with each lap.
While Crown City has a similar set-up when you do get the rare chance to play it as 3-laps – the first taking you into city limits, the second being a loop around the city itself, and the third moving you to its outskirts – you wouldn't know if you played most modes as standard. It does mean you get a taste of these unique laps by how you approach the course, but you don't get to enjoy it as a whole with these very brief final laps plonked at the end of interconnected tracks.
The same goes for the likes of Whistlestop Summit, where the position of the train each lap changes as it makes its own circuit and you need to be careful when making use of the railway. And the really clever revamp of Dino Dino Jungle where dinosaurs reposition throughout a full race. It feels like most of the fantastic work Nintendo has put into Mario Kart World's tracks is hidden away, and they actively want me to stop me from enjoying them.
Even tracks that don't change much lap to lap feel much more complete when played as a full race. Dry Bones Burnout is a tense thrill ride across ancient bones as you nimbly dodge lava – but it feels like the race is over before it's even begun when you play it in its intermission form, the flag waving after just one lap when by rights it should feel like a climatic challenge.
Shell-ter skelter
I'm not against doing races where tracks are connected to one another. As I said before, the novelty of exploring that concept over the first few hours is fun enough, and it shines across Free Roam and Knockout Tour modes. I wouldn't want to have those any other way, and they work really well as they are.
But it's confusing to me why Nintendo seems to be so keen to bury the option to do standard 3-lap races when players online seem to really long for that option. Myself very much included. After all, online modes are inherently repetitive – why tour your way through simplistic straightaways when you can cut to the good stuff and hone your skills on the track?
I hope I'm jumping the gun here, and that my kart is about to spin out rather than boost ahead. Perhaps this update is simply preceding the addition of a mode dedicated to 3-lap play? Yet, just as I get that sinking feeling when I see a blue shell in my rearview mirror, I do fear this is Nintendo trying to 'fix' the desire for people to play 3-lap races as much as possible, tipping the scales towards constant intermission play.
It does run the risk of shuffling players out of open online play altogether and towards private lobbies, or even back to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Which, by the way, is still great fun. With Mirror Mode nabbed and a lot of Free Roam explored, I just want to enjoy some circuit races. Why is Nintendo making me feel like a moustache-twirling Waluigi for wanting to enjoy life's greatest gaming pleasures?
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