Mario Kart World review: Nintendo’s latest racer is at its best when it’s doing what it’s always done

With its first major Switch 2 title, Nintendo has attempted to do with Mario Kart what it’s already done with its other major series.

When the original Switch launched alongside The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo was lauded for taking the Zelda formula and applying it to a large, open-world structure.

In a move that went somewhat under the radar but was no less transformative, Nintendo then did the same with the Switch port of Super Mario 3D World, adding a new adventure called Bowser’s Fury, which placed Mario in a similarly large expanse of land, with all its stages connected with no loading screens.

With Mario Kart World, Nintendo has now applied the same formula to the Mario Kart series, but this time the results aren’t quite as emphatically successful.

While at first glance it may not immediately appear that Mario Kart World provides a significant graphical upgrade over its predecessor, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – a testament to the quality of that game, rather than a failure of this one – when you place the two side by side, the difference is clear.

Not only does the Switch 2 sequel run at a higher resolution, it’s also packed with more subtle details. Much like Super Mario Bros Wonder before it, the characters in Mario Kart World have been redesigned with a somewhat more cartoonish vibe. Characters and vehicles no longer feel as rigid as they did in the previous game, they now have a deliberate elasticity which gives everything a more playful look.

Of course, the switch to an open world environment – where players can go in any direction at a moment’s notice – also requires more processing power than Mario Kart’s traditional closed-off courses, so in that sense it’s not a like-for-like comparison. Regardless, World is a beautiful game to look at, as has become the standard for the series in recent years.

The driving itself hasn’t escaped revision either. The addition of grinding allows players to slide along rails and walls, introducing a new strategic element to races. Crucially, these grinding opportunities aren’t always the best solution, meaning players will likely have to practice a lot to eventually find the best racing lines and routes to take in order to get the fastest lap times.

It’s that move to the open world map that’s clearly the biggest change in Mario Kart World, however, and its execution isn’t entirely successful.

Grand Prix mode remains, but it no longer consists almost entirely of standalone three-lap races. While each GP still consists of four races, only some of these are three-lap affairs, while others involve driving across the open world from one track to the next, only doing a lap or two once you get there.

It’s not necessarily a bad idea, and the sight of 24 racers zooming down the highways in some sort of mustachioed Mad Max is an entertaining one that lends an undoubtedly fresh feel to proceedings, but those who prefer the traditional routine may be left wanting by this new format.

The open world is also home to a new Free Roam mode, where players can drive around wherever they like, exploring the surroundings for various collectibles. On paper, the idea of exploring every nook and cranny of this large map, Breath of the Wild style, seems like the sort of thing that could have players spending tens of hours uncovering a wide variety of secrets.

“While the world itself is indeed a beautifully designed environment bustling with life – from the traffic and characters populating the streets to the organic way every track joins together – the almost entire lack of progress tracking is a frankly bewildering design choice that killed my enthusiasm to explore more.”

In practice, however, the whole affair feels oddly undercooked and uncharacteristically incomplete for Nintendo. Firstly, you can’t play Free Roam with other players in multiplayer, outside of a limited online lobby that appears before races, which feels like a significant and bewildering omission, especially considering how the game was marketed pre-release.

While the world itself is indeed a beautifully designed environment bustling with life – from the traffic and characters populating the streets to the organic way every track joins together – the almost entire lack of progress tracking is a frankly bewildering design choice that killed my enthusiasm to explore more.

There are P Switches dotted around, which, when activated, offer challenges similar to the Mission mode in Mario Kart DS. Broadly, they’re entertaining to complete, but the problem is the player is given absolutely no idea how many are left to clear, and the prospect of driving aimlessly around in search of a new one isn’t an enticing one.

The same goes for the various gold Peach Medallions which are also dotted around in hard-to-reach locations, much like the XP boards in the Forza Horizon games. Whereas Xbox’s series gives players a clear total to aim towards, there’s currently no way of telling how many Peach Medallions are located in each region.

Given that the Power Moons in Super Mario Odyssey were clearly listed in a way that players knew how many were left to collect, Mario Kart World’s decision to instead offer an open-ended shoulder shrug is all the more frustrating by comparison.

The inconsistency is also odd. Each of the tracks in Free Roam has five hidden Question Panels that can be driven over to unlock various stickers. These panels actually are tracked in the game, meaning you can see at a glance how many you’ve collected and how many are left.

That the Question Panels can be tracked, but the P Switch missions and Peach Medallions can’t, leaves the whole thing feeling somewhat arbitrary. It all lends the game an oddly unfinished feel, which is certainly not something you could usually say of any Nintendo product, let alone the sequel to a game that sold more than 76 million copies.

This apparent lax attitude to structure also extends to the character roster. The list of racers itself is impressive, with 50 characters spanning an enormous variety of both heroes and villains from the Mario universe, but it’s in their alternate costumes where things start to go all over the place.

“The list of racers itself is impressive, with 50 characters spanning an enormous variety of both heroes and villains from the Mario universe, but it’s in their alternate costumes where things start to go all over the place.”

Mario Kart World features Dash Food, which can be found at various roadside restaurants. Each food outlet provides a different type of cuisine, and collecting one of its glowing Happy Meal-like pickups gives your character a different outfit. If it’s one you’ve never seen before, it’s then unlocked in the Character Select screen.

It’s a great way of adding variety, and some of the costumes are a lot of fun. Mario’s cowboy outfit is a joy to behold, while Peach’s vintage sightseeing garb is straight out of Thelma and Louise.

The issue with this mechanic is that not every character has the same number of outfits. Mario has ten while Luigi only has nine, Wario has six, Bowser Jr has four, and Donkey Kong only has two. This means some of the foods don’t actually do anything other than provide a small speed boost.

This extends to almost all the enemy characters too, the vast majority of which are essentially bonus racers with no outfits to speak of at all, lessening the impact and entertainment provided by the Dash Fruit. It’s perhaps petty to complain about something as frivolous as unlockable outfits, but it’s just another example of the seemingly slapdash nature in which the game expects players to use trial and error until something happens.

As you collect outfits the Character Select screen becomes a pig’s dinner too. Each outfit is given its own slot, and by default there’s no apparent rhyme or reason to where these outfits appear, meaning Mario’s 10 outfits can be found in seemingly random pages.

If you press the ‘sort’ button, a character’s outfits are all presented in sequence, but it’s still a mess that has you sifting through countless pages. Annoyingly, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had already sorted this problem by giving, for example, the Inkling character a single slot which expanded to a separate menu of outfits when selected, but this time, once everything’s been unlocked, you’re looking at a Character Select screen with more than 150 slots.

But, if I sound overly negative so far, it’s purely because the Mario Kart series is held to such a high standard that when flaws appear, they’re more glaring than they may be in other titles. For the avoidance of doubt, when Mario Kart World does it right – which it frequently does – the results are exceptional.

The new Knockout Tour mode may be the greatest addition to the entire series since Mario Kart 64 added support for four players. It offers a selection of lengthy point-to-point races, in which players travel to six separate locations, passing checkpoints that eliminate the lowest-placed racers along the way.

“The new Knockout Tour mode may be the greatest addition to the entire series since Mario Kart 64 added support for four players.”

These are particularly thrilling when played online. With 24 players competing and the scenery changing each time you hit a new checkpoint, the whole thing feels like a sort of Battle Royale version of Sega’s classic arcade racer Out Run, which is far from a bad thing.

The game also boasts what I sincerely believe is the greatest soundtrack ever created for any Mario game (with only Super Smash Bros Ultimate rivalling it across all of Nintendo’s softography). With more than 240 tracks, it offers glorious orchestral renditions of not just previous Mario Kart themes, but a lengthy greatest hits selection of the Mario series as a whole.

Whether it’s the Dire Dire Docks theme from Super Mario 64, the player select screen from Super Mario Bros 2, or even deep dives like the Mario Drawing Song from Flipnote Studio, the entire soundtrack is an absolute joy from start to finish and I’ve got everything crossed that I’m not sitting here years from now still waiting for it to be added to the Nintendo Music app.

Ultimately then, despite its new open world gimmickry, Mario Kart World is at its best when it’s doing what the series has always done. Choose Grand Prix, VS Race or online multiplayer and the game is up there with the very best in the series’ history, and while the highway racing and wider tracks may not be to everybody’s tastes, the move to 24 racers only adds to the carnage that the Mario Kart series is loved for.

Add to this the fantastic new Knockout Tour mode, and when it comes to the competitive racing side of things, Mario Kart World is a top-tier entry in the series. It’s only when the game decides – quite literally – to steer off its normal course that things start to feel undercooked.

While it could be salvaged in the future with progression tracking for P Switches and Peach Medallions, until this happens, the much-promoted Free Roam mode feels more like an experimental novelty that hasn’t quite been finished, rather than a bold new direction for the series to take going forward.

Free Roam is a rare miss in what’s usually such an accomplished franchise, and while it shouldn’t diminish too much from the numerous hits that World also provides, the fact that it’s such a central component of the game means it can’t be ignored.

That aside, however, at its core, Mario Kart World is still Mario Kart, and it’s still a joy when racing against friends or online. Hopefully, Nintendo plans to continue upgrading the game with DLC characters, outfits, and tracks (and maybe even the return of crossover content), because putting the open world to the side, there’s a rock-solid racing foundation here for Nintendo to build on over the course of Switch 2’s life.