(There's a video version of this review available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPnO_Bdu948)
I don’t think it’s a hot take to say Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best Mario Kart. You may have differences on a personal level regarding your favorite Mario Kart — mine is Mario Kart DS by a pretty huge margin — but 8 Deluxe is just on another level in terms of the way it refined every aspect of the franchise to a point that made it hard to imagine what could possibly come next.
The answer over the past seven years is that “what comes next” ended up being “more Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” as Nintendo continued to update the game through its Booster Course Pass adding 48 more tracks and 8 more characters by the time support finally wrapped up. This took an already arguably-perfect game and put it on a pedestal that seemed impossible to meet by any eventual successor. This was my feeling, at least, as someone who put literally hundreds of hours into Mario Kart 8 during its initial run on the Wii U and then put even moreh undreds of hours into 8 Deluxe when the Switch launched in April of 2017. I cut my teeth over the years playing online — Waluigi, Standard Bike, Azure Roller wheels, and the Wario Wing glider — drilling every mechanic into my head. I optimized every drift, mapped every shortcut, and played relentlessly until the possibility space of Mario Kart 8 was subconscious. You know you’ve achieved enlightenment when a Blue Shell no longer phases you.
But outside of the skill, 8 Deluxe is a social game as much as it is a racing game. As with every Mario Kart before it, playing with friends is the truest joy possible in all of gaming. The frustration of getting bodied by red shells until you’re in the back of the pack is only matched by the highs of just hanging out, man. Racing is just an opportunity to catch up, online or offline. It’s rare for a game to straddle both sides so effortlessly — just look at Sony’s recent graveyard of live-service games for an indication of how difficult it is. 8 Deluxe is a miracle.
So I think it’s fair to say I’m entering the Mario Kart World era with a strong bit of bias. And I don’t mean “bias” in the sense that weird console-war reply-guy freaks mean “bias” but I mean it insofar as I think Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is one of the best games ever made, and the idea of following it up seems like an impossible task. Especially knowing how many huge swings Nintendo had made with this entry, it seemed more than likely that World would be more ambitious but likely stumble along the way. Admirable, but worse.
So did they pull it off, dear reader? Did they manage to best the best?
Well not really, if I’m being honest.
But that doesn’t stop Mario Kart World from being a monumental achievement and a game that will likely all but replace 8 Deluxe as the go-to for my friends and I when we want to hop on voice chat and hang out. Beyond that, given some of the terrifying videos I’ve seen of TikTok users shattering the skill ceiling repeatedly, it’s the kind of game that makes me want to once again pursue perfection — I need the movement of World to become second nature.
The first major change to Mario Kart World is present in the name of the game itself: The World. It’s open! That means every one of the game’s 30 tracks is connected by a system of roads and highways which are explorable in an included Free Roam mode accessible at any time from the main menu by pressing the plus button. The open world design bleeds into every single aspect of the game, in some cases enhancing the classic gameplay of Mario Kart and in just as many cases taking swings that come frighteningly close to whiffing entirely.
It starts with the immediately obvious changes like having 24 racers instead of the 12 present in 8’s races, which then bubbles out into more subtle but equally impactful changes like a general widening of tracks across the board. You have a lot more room to maneuver as an individual, but there’s also a lot more room to slam up against the 23 other racers battling for supremacy. Mario Kart has always felt Mad Max-adjacent, but never more than it does when you’re trapped between fifteen other karts with their own items and the same singular goal of escaping the pack.
The connected world design also changes how the headline Grand Prix mode works for the first time in eons. Each cup still contains four races, but they’re spaced out in a truly bizarre way. The first race consists of three laps on a standard track as per usual, but the next races all require you to drive from the end of that first track to the next track — with that commute counting as two of the three laps. One lap at the destination track then finishes that race. Do that three times to finish the cup. It’s a strange decision made purely to show off the openness of the play space, but only spending one lap at three of the four tracks per cup prevents them from feeling memorable or interesting while making your way through the Grand Prix mode. The bizarre thing is that these tracks ARE actually great when played individually, but the structure of the mode as a vehicle for showcasing the open world does a disservice to them by relegating so much of your experience to the connective tissue of the world instead of the main events.
It’s in the newly announced Knockout mode where the commitment to this design philosophy shines in a big way, enough so to make me wonder if it was designed as the primary method of play. Over the course of six laps across six interconnected tracks — no deviations across highways and back-roads here — 24 racers vie to prevent elimination from lap to lap. 24, 20, 16, 12, 8, then 4 players cross the titular World in the most horrifying, edge-of-your-seat gameplay since the introduction of Balloon Battle Mode on the Super Nintendo.
Knockout mode is spectacular, and I think could have easily replaced Grand Prix entirely. As an adaptation of battle royale to arcade racing, it single-handed justifies the entire concept of a sequel to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It’s just that good, folks.
The actual Free Roam mode seems to be hotly debated online, from some saying it’s too barebones to others saying all they do is dump hours into the various challenges which take the form of Super Mario Bros 3’s P-Switches. These challenges range WILDLY in difficulty. Some are as simple as driving around a track as quickly as possible, while others are Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater challenges in disguise — more on this soon. There are 334 of these challenges littered across the map in total, which would already be enough for a specific and self-motivated player.
And yet, in addition to the P-Switch challenges you’ll also find (or maybe not find) 138 Peach Medallions — giant floating coins placed in precarious or hidden locations around the map. Like the P-Switches, acquiring these medallions is a test of skill albeit less directed. They require a very specific blend of curiosity and motivation to both find and collect, with each demanding out-of-the-box thinking from either a discovery OR mechanic know-how perspective.
Again, these two collectibles will really only appeal to players driven by specific motivations, and you may or may not align with those motivations. Personally, I find Free Roam to be mostly enjoyable as a vibe-simulator. It’s just nice to drive around!! Like a Nintendo-coded rendition of everything great about Forza Horizon, Free Roam allows me to take a break from the sweaty nature of online multiplayer for a moment and just relax, explore, and puzzle out how to collect Peach Medallions while listening to one of the hundreds of incredible tracks composed for the game’s score.
An aside: I saw someone say Mario Kart World is a soundtrack that happens to include a game as its bonus features, which sounds dismissive but is also an apt way of illustrating just how much the score fucking owns.
All of that said: If none of the above really appeals to you, it’s probable you’ll fall into the “Free Roam is boring” camp. That’s a bummer for you. I’m sorry.
What I will say is that the game isn’t worse for including it, and I imagine a few years into Mario Kart World being the go-to for hanging out online with your buds we’ll all be happy about its inclusion. Already in my brief sessions playing with friends, we’ve forgotten multiple times to start a new race or Knockout Tour and just hung out in Free Roam shooting the shit.
It’s a mode that will get better with time.
---
Okay so I’m having a hard time deciding what to think about this game mechanically. It’s definitely too early to judge for real, and it feels unfair to compare my hundreds of hours across every other Mario Kart with this game within its first month. That said, there are some huge changes that are literally game changing. The first two involve grinding on rails and wall-riding each of which expand the possibility space dramatically. Add to these the ability to charge a standard jump to better achieve these grinds and wallrides and you have a skill ceiling that feels astronomically high compared to previous entries in the series. You’ll be begging for snaking to make a comeback when you see someone grind a rail, completely disappear off the top of the screen, and then win the race before you ever see them again. As a Tiktok comment on a time trial video I saw the other day asked:
Is driving on the track no longer the meta of Mario Kart?
Like I said, I don’t know where I land here. Watching speedrunners perfect this game’s systems so quickly worries me in the same way I get worried when a new, fun online shooter comes out and the vibe quickly shifts from “I’m having fun playing this with my friends” to “why do I feel like everyone is playing this game at a professional level except me?” So frequently players will hit 90% of a game’s skill ceiling within the first week, then spend the next decade trying to hit that last ten percent.
I’m decently good at Mario Kart. Good in a “I can beat all my friends at Smash Bros but you’re not about to see me going to a tournament or thinking about frame-data” kind of way. In the case of Mario Kart World I may spend some time getting good again, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get “posting clips on TikTok” good. But that gap between me and the TikTok crowd is wide enough that I still see a lot of room to grow and improve, and just like learning the language of a roguelike over repeated runs and invested time I foresee a ton of play hours spent drilling some of these concepts into my head.
Honestly though, only time will tell. I find it’s helpful to think of Mario Kart 8 as three video games: The one released on Wii U in 2014, the one released as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch in 2017, and the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe we have now after years of patches and content updates. In that way I think it’s also helpful to remember that this is realistically the worst Mario Kart World will ever be. More than anything else: It makes World the perfect Switch 2 launch title.
---
A Mini Review of the Nintendo Switch 2
The Switch 2 is an interesting beast in that it’s exactly what everyone expected it to be, full stop. In the long history of Nintendo throwing curveballs and marching to the beat of its own drum, doing what everyone expects is actually their version of a 4D chess move. It’s that scene from The Princess Bride with the poison goblets, and the mind-losing, forum-posting Nintendo fans — and people like me if I’m being honest — are Wallace Shawn.
The Nintendo Switch 2 is a bit bigger and a bit heavier than its predecessor, which immediately makes it less comfortable to hold in handheld mode. I had two wishes for the next Switch, and they were: more ergonomic Joycons and more themes than just “light and dark.”
But those are nitpicks more than anything. I can live without themes as it only makes my nostalgia for the years of era-defining music for each channel of the Nintendo Wii more powerful. And the Joycon ergonomics were easily fixed by a $4 pair of grips I bought on a whim from a department store in Akihabara. I also have the Killswitch from dBrand on the way, which I think will work wonders.
The true story of the Switch 2 is that pretty much everything is improved across the board. Games output to 4k when docked. The console supports HDR. There’s built in voice chat so we don’t need to use the app anymore — and by “use the app” I mean “just use Discord like everyone else.” The Joycon now attach magnetically and feel significantly sturdier, which is great as my OLED Switch had an issue where the Joycon would just randomly slide out of the rails and disconnect constantly while playing in handheld mode. Games load faster when booting up, the eShop actually works… even if it’s still filled with AI generated slop, and many titles are receiving unadvertised improvements to graphics and frame rate just because of the more powerful hardware.
The most complimentary thing I can saw about the Switch 2 is that it settled into my life immediately. I booted the thing up, started downloading my games, and within an hour I was literally off to the races in Mario Kart World. Every day since then I’ve gotten out of bed, spent my time wandering around Tokyo, then coming home to do a few laps or dump time into Fantasy Life i or Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy before bed.
Just like Mario Kart World, this is the worst the Switch 2 will ever be — and it’s already starting in a great place from a hardware perspective. The lack of exclusive software is a real confusing twist, which makes World all the more important as it’s literally the Atlas holding up the launch window until Donkey Kong Bananza’s release in July.
---
I haven’t mentioned the way characters and costumes are unlocked, which is confusing and incredible in equal measure. Costumes are unlocked by visiting Yoshi’s drive-thru locations and picking up fast food around the map, which give a speed boost and also occasionally transform your character’s outfit at random based on the food you acquire. Characters are unlocked either by completing Grand Prix cups — there’s one character tied to each — or by getting transformed into a new character by Kamek, who appears as an item this time around. Kamek transforms every racer in front of the user into a random character, and jury is out if where this happens is directly tied to which character you unlock. Personally I think this rocks, but I’ve seen some people complain about finding it annoying that these unlocks are completely tied to RNG.
It all comes back to the expectation that we’ll be playing this game for the next five-to-ten years, though. It’s not fun to experience 100% of what a game has to offer within the first week, and having some characters and costumes remaining just out of reach gives players a reason to keep coming back. And this is always better than the alternative, which is just buying them through the eShop.
And the characters and costumes themselves are incredible. As someone who is generally a Waluigi main it’s hard to not start by shouting out that there’s a Dracula costume called “Wampire.” But the smaller and weirder enemies from across the Mario franchise really steal the show. The amount of comedy to be found in watching Sidestepper the crab ride a motorcycle is only outdone by the cow from Moo Moo Meadows. The cow went viral for a reason, folks.
One lingering question I have about this game’s future is how much DLC we’ll end up getting and what Nintendo will primarily focus on. Costumes seem to be the most obvious at first because it sure is suspicious that the two stars of Donkey Kong Bananza have so few costumes despite that game having a heavy focus on costumes. But I wonder how they’ll try to add tracks in the future, if at all considering the difficulty of piecing them into the game’s huge and interconnected open world. It won’t be as easy as just plopping Waluigi Pinball into the world as-is.
Speaking of the tracks: They’re immediately great. Whether it’s the reinventions of returning tracks like Mario Kart 7’s Shy Guy Bazaar or new standouts like Boo Cinema, the team behind this game was clearly having a blast. There are a few downgrades here and there — the newly Charging Chuck-infested version of Choco Mountain feels like it’s lost a lot of what made the original special — but I’m not as concerned by that considering the ambition of connecting all of these tracks together means there will probably be a few casualties along the way.
I think that’s the key to my feeling about Mario Kart World: The ambition on display is palpable, and it’s always more exciting to play something that takes the kinds of swings this game does even if it stumbles a bit in the process. Nintendo could have made Mario Kart 9 and it could have included everything Mario Kart 8 Deluxe did but with even more tracks and even more characters and we all would have loved it. Hell, that’s basically what the Switch 2 is compared to the original. But launching the Switch 2 with a game that’s both interested in honoring the series’ legacy while also pushing it further and expanding what “Mario Kart” means conceptually makes me optimistic about the next decade of what Nintendo has to offer.
It’s the most confident the company has ever been, and it shows in every aspect of this game as much as it shows in decisions like “let’s have Donkey Kong take the spotlight instead of just making a new Mario.” It’s everything we loved about the GameCube era, but with a dash of “this time it’ll work.”
Mario Kart World is the first at the starting line to show off Nintendo’s commitment to only playing it safe where it makes sense, but also understanding that you need to take chances to stay in the lead. That could mean adding a second USB-C port to the top of the Switch 2 for reasons I still believe are yet to be announced, or that could mean letting me and my friends hop on voice chat and laugh so hard we cry while forgetting to race at all and driving around the rainforest between The Great Question Mark Block Ruins and Dino Dino Jungle.
