Game Review: Mario Kart World (Nintendo Switch 2)

Game Review: Mario Kart World (Nintendo Switch 2)

For many years, Mario Kart fans have been asking Nintendo for one thing – a new Mario Kart. After 11 years, Nintendo has finally delivered Mario Kart World, but does it surpass and exceed Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, considered to be one of the best Mario Kart titles by many?

As someone who has played several Mario Kart entries for many years, Mario Kart World was one of my most highly anticipated titles in years. Let’s find out how the game does in this review.

Gameplay

If you’re familiar with Mario Kart, you can expect a gameplay experience that is largely similar to previous entries in Mario Kart World – using a variety of items to slow down and disrupt your opponents, taking shortcuts, drifting, and using tricks.

The core gameplay elements in Mario Kart World haven’t really changed much, but I felt there were some differences, coming from someone who has spent a lot of time playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Drifting feels very different from the last two Mario Kart entries and took me a little a bit of time to get used to. Invisibility frames aren’t as generous as what they were in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, so it’s possible to get hit by a blue shell, and then getting hit by a red or green shell shortly after.

One of the biggest changes in Mario Kart World is the game’s number of players, doubling from 12 to 24. It makes things so much more chaotic. Also, I noticed that it’s easier to get powerful items, even in second place and third place. These adds to the chaotic nature of the game.

In Mario Kart World, there’s a larger focus on chaos compared to skill. Here’s an example – if you’re a good Mario Kart player like me, you’d find it easy to maintain first place throughout races against the hardest CPU players launching two to three blue shells in a row.

But that’s not always the case in Mario Kart World – even just one or two blue shells and lightning items can make you drop from first to 10th very quickly. Being good at drifting isn’t going to cut here, especially when it’s been nerfed a bit from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

On the flip side, it’s much easier to catch up from last place to first. Mushrooms are overpowered in this game, especially the triple mushrooms and golden mushroom. Using these items to take huge shortcuts can easily elevate your position from last to first.

So overall, there’s less focus on good driving, and more focus on using items to your advantage at the right time.

But that doesn’t mean the game isn’t fun for beginners and experts alike, in my opinion. Two new techniques, wall riding and rail riding, have helped even things out.

It took awhile for me to get used to wall riding and rail riding, but they aren’t very difficult to pull off once I got the hang of it. You can easily ride a wall or rail by simply jumping and landing close to a wall or rail while boosting from a trick in mid air. After perfecting that, you can move on to performing consecutive tricks and dodging red shells by switching between wall riding and rail riding, or taking advantage of complex shortcuts.

Believe it or not, wall riding and rail riding felt really rewarding to me, and for skilled players like myself, it was a delight. It added a whole new dimension to Mario Kart World that I wasn’t expecting myself.

And those straight routes connecting courses that everyone says is boring? I was expecting that to be the case too, but surprisingly, course obstacles (cars throwing Bob-ombs, Hammer Bros throwing hammers…), wall riding, rail riding, and all the crazy action going on with items in general makes things very lively. I wouldn’t say it’s boring for sure. Even if you’re really good at dodging obstacles in past Mario Kart games, the sheer number and variety of course obstacles will keep you on your toes even on straight routes.

Game Modes

Mario Kart World features six game modes – Grand Prix, Knockout Tour, Free Roam, Versus, Time Trial, and Battle Mode. Here’s what I think of all of them.

There’s a huge change with Grand Prix in Mario Kart World – in all races except the first course, you race on the route from the prior course to the next course, followed by 1 lap around the course itself. The only course where you race in the traditional 3 lap format is the first course.

Initially, I had some concerns with the new format, but after playing hundreds of races in this game, I have to say that I have come to appreciate it. While the interconnected routes play differently to the courses, they aren’t bad by any means as they force you to focus less on drifting and more on creative item play and taking shortcuts with items, rail riding, and wall riding. This new format gives off the feeling that you’re embarking on a road trip from one location to another.

Being only able to race 1 lap in every course may not feel satisfying to some people, but I didn’t find any problems with that, because in my opinion, every Grand Prix cup would have become too long if we had to race 2 laps around the course.

Of course, the lack of an option to play the traditional format is certainly disappointing, but I don’t think it makes or breaks the game as you can always race the traditional way in Versus (more on that later). And for me, I’m not someone who plays Grand Prix after getting three golden stars on every cup in all Mario Kart games, as I prefer the freedom of choosing courses in Versus.

Moving on is a new mode called Knockout Tour. This is Mario Kart’s take on battle royale – players get kicked out over time if they fail to reach the checkpoint within a certain number of places. Unlike Grand Prix, Knockout Tour does not have any intermissions and you have to race through six different courses without rest.

Knockout Tour was the mode I was most excited for in Mario Kart World, and I’m happy to say that it didn’t disappoint. I know some people were worried that the long stretches of straight roads and highways might felt boring to them, but I didn’t felt that way at all, for the reasons I’ve mentioned in the previous gameplay section.

In fact, Knockout Tour is pretty intense – there’s little room for error, and if you don’t cross the checkpoint within a certain number of places, it’s game over. And that’s what I like about Knockout Tour, it’s more challenging than Grand Prix and I think beginners and skilled players will love it.

While challenging and fun, the biggest gripe I had with Knockout Tour is its CPU difficulty at 150cc. Apparently, the game uses a dynamic difficulty system – it scales the speed and aggressiveness of its CPU players depending on how often the player drifts.

Rubberbanding isn’t new to the Mario Kart series, but relying on drifts as a metric to determine difficulty is something new, I believe. In order to get three stars in a Knockout Tour rally, you need to place first at every checkpoint. This means that if you get hit by a blue shell, or worse, three red shells (which is happened to me many times), you can easily lose your spot at first with no chance of recovery as the CPU player is way too fast.

This happened to me many times – stayed in first all the way until the last or second last checkpoint, got hit by something, and unable to reclaim first because the CPU players were driving too fast. This level of rubberbanding is not something I’ve ever seen in past Mario Kart entries I’ve played, and it may feel unfair to some.

For that reason, some observant players have suggested those who are trying to get three stars on every rally at 150cc and mirror mode to not drift. And I can say that anecdotally, this worked for me. The items that the CPU players were throwing at me became less intense and less frequent, and they weren’t driving as fast.

So yes, I do appreciate the challenge that this dynamic difficulty system provides, but it needs to be tweaked a bit because if good players are finding it hard to get three stars multiple times, it’s probably overpowered.

Now onto Free Roam, a mode new to Mario Kart. This mode allows you to freely explore the world of Mario Kart at your own pace, with lots of missions and secrets lying around.

When I first learned about Free Roam, I wasn’t really fond of the idea as I thought, this would add a bunch of things that I have to unlock to 100% beat the game. After trying it out, my views on Free Roam have changed – the missions are quite satisfying to play, there’s a lot of things to see and explore, and in a sense they remind me of Super Mario Odyssey.

This is a game mode that you can mindlessly play when you’re talking to a friend or multi-tasking. I really enjoyed it as a way to ‘destress’ after intense races and work. There are P-Switch missions, Peach Medallions, and ? panels scattered throughout the game’s courses and routes, and it can take quite a bit of time to find them all.

The game rewards you for exploration by hiding all of these collectibles in accessible but not-so-obvious locations, and collecting or clearing these missions will unlock a unique decal. Sometimes, it takes a bit of work trying to figure out how to reach a medallion – do you glide in from somewhere high up, rail ride, or use a feather?

There are several types of P-Switch missions, such as those that focus on racing 3 laps in around a retro track, missions that require you to wall ride and rail ride, and those that require you to collect coins. You have to complete these objectives within a certain period of time, or you won’t succeed. The variety keeps things fresh, and once in a while there are some really difficult ones that will have you keep trying over and over for 10 to 30 minutes. But trust me – it’s really rewarding to finally clear them!

The same goes for Peach Medallions and ? panels – some of these require some skill to access or collect, or are hidden in some obscure area that encourages you to drive off course.

Besides collectibles, there are other fun things you can do in Free Roam, such as chasing Nabbit around, riding large vehicles like UFOs and helicopters, and taking down a Chargin’ Chuck biker. Free Roam is also a great way to take stunning screenshots of your characters in the world of Mario Kart at your own pace.

On top of that, the music you can enjoy in Free Roam is insane – there are lots of remixed tracks from past Mario games. You’re going to love this if you love music from the Mario series.

I’ve sunk at least 10 to 15 hours into Free Roam, and I believe it will take another 10 to 20 hours at least to find everything while fully exploring the world. On its own, Free Roam could have been a standalone game by itself, so it’s easy to see why there is so much content and value from this mode.

And now onto Versus. Versus is pretty much what the same as how it’s always been in past entries – you can customise the CPU difficulty, choose the number of races, select courses, speed class, and more.

The beauty of Versus in Mario Kart World is the ability to choose how you want to play. Want to race in the traditional 3-lap format? You can do that. Want to race from one course to another? You can also do that.

The thing I’ve enjoyed the most in Versus is the ability to race routes that aren’t present in Grand Prix and Knockout Tour. The game has some incredibly long and interesting routes, such as the routes between Bowser’s Castle and Mario’s Circuit, as well as Sky High Sundae and Cheep Cheep Falls. There is also a way to enjoy some of these courses in reverse by simply racing from one course to another in the opposite direction.

My only complaint of versus is the inability to create Knockout Tour-style intermission-free races. I was under the impression that at the very least, we could race without intermissions (just like in Knockout Tour) in Versus. However, this option isn’t present in Versus at the time of writing. I hope it will be added at some point in the future.

As for Time Trials, I’ve nothing much to add as you can race three-laps against ghost data and it’s the same as past entries. It does its job well.

And now onto the last mode – Battle Mode. I’m not someone who plays them often but I found them to be pretty fun and in light with the experience from past entries, but I do think that the number of modes available in Battle mode (balloon battle and coins) is disappointing, especially when Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has far more games on offer. I hope Nintendo will add more modes over time.

Visuals

I was a little concerned with how Mario Kart World visually looked like when I saw its first teaser in January 2025, but after playing the game for hours, I don’t have that concern anymore because the game looks visually stunning.

The visuals really stand out in terms of how vivid and detailed the environmental textures and elements are, and how colourful everything is in general.

You can really appreciate the visuals during various weather conditions, like snow and rain. It’s a few notches higher than what we’ve seen in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

What surprised me the most was how lively and dynamic the game feels. The characters are very expressive with the poses and reactions they make when something happens during a race. Even the obstacle courses and spectators feel that way, too. It adds a lot of flair to the world of Mario Kart.

Unlockable content

If you’re a completionist, there’s plenty of content to unlock and complete in Mario Kart World. There’s a bunch of characters to unlock by beating Grand Prix and getting attacked by Kamek in different courses, but I would say that those don’t really take up a lot of time if you’re actively using different characters and unlocking the remaining outfits by eating Dash Food in Free Roam.

This time round, you’ll need to complete some missions, drive over some ? panels, and collect Peach Medallions to unlock mirror mode, but it’s much easier to get three stars in the game as getting 3 stars in mirror mode also gets you 3 stars in every other speed class.

As mentioned earlier, there are lots of missions and collectibles to collect in Free Roam, and finding all of these is probably going to take at least 30 hours. I’ve already spent at least 10 to 15 hours in Free Roam and am not close to finding everything yet.

The game seems to have hundreds of decals, all unlocked through missions and collectibles in Free Roam, as well as for collecting coins and driving around in the game. It’d probably take at least 50 hours to collect every decal.

My only disappointment in terms of unlockable content is the absence of an unlock for getting three stars in every Grand Prix cup and Knockout Tour rally. Yes, there’s no reward, not even a decal, for getting three stars.

Overall, the amount of unlockable content in the game is huge, but it would have been nice to get something more concrete aside from decals.

Online multiplayer

Now, I’d like to talk about the game’s online multiplayer. Generally speaking, there weren’t any big problems that I experienced while playing online, everything worked, and they were far more chaotic than what I experienced in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

However, there should be more freedom in allowing players to choose the type of courses they want to play. Currently, players can only choose between three courses that connect the prior course to the next course, as well as a random course in the traditional 3-lap format.

I have no problems between either formats, but I do agree with what most people have been saying, that there should be lobbies for interconnected races and traditional 3-lap format races.

Conclusion

Mario Kart World is Nintendo’s twist on open-world Mario Kart. I’m quite satisfied with the game, I’ve had a lot of fun with it, and I think it is a worthy successor to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Is it worth the price tag (USD79.99) though? With the amount of content and changes in the game, I would say yes, it’s definitely worth it. I’ve spent close to 50 hours in the game, I haven’t gotten tired of it, and I can see myself playing this for many years to come.

Nintendo kept us waiting for 11 years, and they have absolutely delivered a phenomenal experience. I recommend this game to both casual and competitive players.

I’ve had a hard time deciding how to score Mario Kart World, but I think it absolutely deserves this.

Review score: 10/10

The product for this review was purchased by the author.