The Switch 2 release certainly had a rollercoaster’s worth of excitement to its overall narrative arc. Tariffs, prices, availability, pre-order nightmare stories, will they/won’t they on hiking the price or not, and finally, launch day availability (a moment of silence to those who got their systems stapled through by Gamestop employees). The sticker shock of the system was perhaps only outshone by the sticker shock of its flagship launch title, Mario Kart World, at what may soon be an industry-standard $80. Would Mario Kart live up to the hype of the 30 year old franchise? Would it be able to justify the Switch 2’s existence, let alone price? And would it somehow prove to be worth 80 dollars? I was an early doubter, but since I’ve rarely ever missed a console launch (particularly Nintendo’s), I was determined to find out once I was able to snag a pre-order. But when the Switch 2 arrived last week, I didn’t realize that Mario Kart was going to dominate every moment of my free time since.
A World to Explore, If Only You Have Karts to See It
The initial thing I realized when getting into the actual racing of Mario Kart World is that the game felt immediately familiar. I think it is sometimes undervalued how simple Nintendo games can be to pick up and play, because gaming becoming more complex has sometimes rendered that idea as a negative. But once the Switch 2 was set up, we fired up Mario Kart and aside from just realizing what button did what, that was it. There wasn’t much to fiddle with or discover, and it immediately felt natural and comfortable to play. I had a feeling of nostalgia for when I had first gotten Super Mario Kart on the SNES 30 years ago, and had almost the same experience: put in the cartridge, spend a few seconds getting used to the controls, and then off I went for hours of racing until my hands hurt.
My hands hurt a lot easier these days, and my hours are a lot less free than they used to be, but our first night with Mario Kart Worlds lasted well until 5 AM. A good hour or so of that was marveling at the open world feature that you can access straight from booting up the game, which seamlessly lets you start driving around the “world” of Mario Kart World. I’ve seen a few other reviews mention that they were a little unsatisfied with the open world concept, but I found it fun and a great way to learn the game and play around. You can drive functionally anywhere, find lunchbags that let you unlock skins for characters, and find P Blocks that allow you to challenge timed skills. There aren’t really any “quests” or NPCs to interact with, but I don’t suppose I felt like they were missing.
Instead, I just got to drive around a huge, colorful world and see Mario Kart in a slightly different way and just have fun. My wife decided to try it out for a little and after randomly meeting Toadette in the open world, made it her life’s mission to catch up to her and pass her in some form of impromptu race. Shockingly, this was harder than it seemed, as Toadette led her on a wild chase weaving in and out of traffic, items, ramps, boosts, and drifts, only to culminate in Toadette taking a long ramp jump and sharply turning right while my wife assumed she’d go straight, and flew out of sight. We laughed at this for about a full five minutes, the look of incredulity on her face priceless; how dare Toadette duck her like that? It was at that moment that I knew Mario Kart World was going to be something special.
Nonstop Arcade Rollercoaster Racing
Generally speaking, Mario Kart World doesn’t have a lot going on in it that anyone familiar with Mario Kart games wouldn’t expect: there are rally races based on different cups, 4 tracks in each, where winning gives you a trophy and unlocks new characters. After completing all of the initial sets of races, a final stage of 4 races appears, signaling the “endgame” of the “campaign”, if you want to call it that, culminating with the iconic Rainbow Road that serves as the final stage of Mario Kart games. There are some new racing wrinkles, which we’ll get to in a bit, but otherwise there’s racing, some multiplayer versus modes, and the open world mode.
Racing works much the way it always has, except now there is a whopping 24 racers in a given race, all of them vying to take the top spot. Item distribution also works the way it has in the past: racers further from #1 receive better items to help them catch up, while racers further ahead get less strong but still somewhat useful items to keep things competitive. While item use has sometimes been contentious (viewed as either punishing the player in front for being ‘too good’ or even ‘unfair’), they really do help make Mario Kart something different from regular racing, instead into an arcade-y action racer where silly nonsense can, and will, happen during the course of it.
Racers have a few new things to consider while zipping around tracks, but generally the racing is broken up into flat stretches interspersed with curves, jumps, ramps, gliding, and water segments much as they have in the past. Starting at 50cc and moving to 150cc gives a very good way of getting comfortable with the game, and I’ll openly admit that with 23 CPU players, 100 and 150cc CPUs do NOT mess around, so prepare for a challenge even if you’re playing solo.
It sounds simplistic, which again, is often seen as a bad thing at times, or a reason to say that the game doesn’t justify $80 for a price, but I have grown to see that isn’t really the case. Because the price of a Switch 2, or Mariokart World, is less about “value” and more about what you expect to get out of it; sort of like quantifying fun, it’s nearly impossible to say that one person’s valuation of this game will somehow speak universally for others. I find Mariokart World fun, endlessly so, but whether or not you will, dear reader, is difficult to say. What might change your mind, though, is the Knockout Races. This is Mariokart World’s newest innovation, and it is absolutely, undeniably, the greatest thing Mario Kart has ever added to it’s basic formula.
Mario Said Knock You Out
The Knockout Races function generally the same as regular races, in that there are 24 total racers, but there are some key differences that I have found addicting. The most important is that Knockout Races function almost like a Battle Royale style of game, where “laps” in the race have a specific placement number you need to stay at or above in order to continue the race. At first this seems simple–just don’t be dead last–but as the race intensifies, the number starts to climb and climb, until only 4 racers are left for the final leg of the race. It’s inherently thrilling, and in online multiplayer, absolutely the main attraction to the game.
The other thing is that track changes are seamless; Knockout Races link five different tracks together in a single unbroken race, and I absolutely love the marathon feel it has, not to mention that it is just visually impressive and fun to see the courses blend together and realize that there’s not a single second of loading from one track to the next. The other fun thing I noticed after having gone through Grand Prix is that Knockout Races use segments and snippets of courses, but often in reverse order; for example, in Grand Prix mode you race down the mountains of DK Pass, while Knockout Races have you racing up them instead.
I absolutely love Knockout Races. They are an amazing addition to Mario Kart that feels totally within the current moment of gaming culture, where even Elden Ring is using timed “storms” or “rings” like Fortnite or Apex Legends, to include a mode that institutes a Battle Royale feel to Mario Kart. It also helps keep the races feeling important, even in the early stages; while many times a huge comeback is possible with good racing and judicious item use, that doesn’t matter if you’re hanging back in 20th place and the gate closes at 16, and you didn’t plan to need to catch up that fast. I’ve been enjoying a little schadenfreude of content creators crashing out over calling the game “for babies” and then losing Knockout Races in 22nd place.
The Sights of the Tracks
Nintendo’s general design philosophy tends to baffle pundits and gamers for the fact that the company almost always seems to do something that doesn’t seem to make sense. Where most AAA games and platforms are shooting for cinematic graphical fidelity and realism, Nintendo continues on the path of cartoony, bright, colorful palettes and aesthetics. Mario Kart World is exactly that, and it looks absolutely fantastic. The characters are adorable and fun, the world is attractive and pops to life, and the stages all feel dazzling and alive in their own weird little ways. I’ve always loved Mario games and characters ever since I was a kid, and they’re all represented here in a way that brings a little bit of new fun and life into them; for me, I’ll admit that Daisy sometimes always felt a little left in the cold by Nintendo, but not here. Mario Kart World’s rendition of Daisy is so lively and energetic that she instantly rocketed to be my favorite racer, but I also think she’s indicative of the success of making the game feel so enjoyable to look at. There’s 50 racers in the game, some with a bevy of unlockable costumes, and there are some really, really deep pulls in here. I’m not sure exactly who was dying to race as Charging Chuck, for example, but something about seeing big and small billed Mario characters all lined up and racing for their lives is impressive when you realize that in a race of 24 players, each one is visually distinct and identifiable.
But the thing that visually impressed me the most in Mario Kart World are the tracks themselves. These are huge, expansive tracks, filled to the brim with shortcuts and alternative paths. The Golden Gate Bridge-esque segment of Crown City allows racers to take the main bridge, ride up the railings on either side, or even find other ways to fly through the air into the heights of the bridge. I have particular love for DK Spaceport, Mario Circuit, and Boo Cinema, with Rainbow Road taking the cake. Perhaps that feels a little trite, but as I started realizing what was going on with Rainbow Road (which if you really enjoy Mario Kart games, I think you’ll figure it out as well to keep some mystery there), I felt myself getting almost a little misty eyed at it. Each stage feels wholly unique and deeply immersed in it’s theme, and I can’t say that two stages have felt too similar or samey, and the variable types of stages you can encounter depending on the mode you play helps keep that feeling fresh.
Lo-Fi Jazz Music to Throw Blue Shells To
The most surprising thing to me was the music. I expected to hear familiar tracks and to go “oh, neat,” and ignore it, but perhaps the best thing in Mario Kart World to me is the musical direction taken by composer Atsuko Asahi. Mario Kart has a lot of familiar music, as do Nintendo games in general, but Asahi’s direction seems to have been a jazz-forward rendition of the tracks in the game. I am not the biggest Game Music Listener when I am not playing games, as I often don’t find a lot of video game soundtracks “listenable” on their own; they tend to be highly repetitive, and at least for me, the experience of playing the game is important to enjoying the music as a compliment. As you may be expecting from how I’m phrasing this, I am absolutely in love with the Mario Kart Worlds soundtrack, and I’m listening to it while writing this review; I’ve also been listening to it on my way to and from work this week.
Asahi’s work transforms recognizable tracks into catchy and listenable versions that stick with you; One of the best examples is the version of “Jump Up, Super Star!” that’s in the game, which has a big band jazz feel to it. The original song was already super catchy from Mario Odyssey, and the Mario Kart World version feels equally charming; the thing that catches me though is the way that the songs in Mario Kart world blend and vary their tempo and sound over time, rather than just repeating themselves on a loop. But my favorite track and I think the best example I can give to how much of a darling project this soundtrack is would be the rendition of the Underground theme from Mario Bros. games. The original Super Mario Bros. underground theme is basically a 12 second repetitive loop, and in Mario Kart World Asashi takes that loop and intersperses it with saxophones, electric guitars, and one of the sickest drum beats I’ve ever heard from jazz band T-Square. And don’t even get my started with how amazing the Ground BGM from Super Mario Bros. 3 or the Select a Character music from Super Mario Bros. 2 is on this soundtrack. Absolute sicko jazz shit that rules.
Honestly, even if you have no desire to play Mario Kart World or don’t want to buy a Switch 2 yet, but love Mario games and their music, you may want to go look up the soundtrack for Mario Kart World; there is 40 years of Mario franchise music being rendered into simply amazing jazz tracks by a group of musicians that seem to be absolutely in love with the material.
But Should I Buy a Switch 2 for One Game?
I think the answer to that question is… maybe? You probably expected me to say “yes” or “no”, or maybe you didn’t. Because I don’t really know how to answer that question. Without turning this review into a Switch 2 AND Mario Kart World review, I will simply say that the Switch 2 is an awkward stepping-stone from the Switch. It mostly feels like it does what the Switch did, but better, but does not really yet feel revolutionary or different. It plays Switch games better to the point that they feel like the Switch was a trial system for the Switch 2, but so far the only native Switch 2 game, Mario Kart World, feels like a game that only a “more powerful” system could handle.
There are a few things I will say about Mario Kart World that made the decision easier for me: as I mentioned earlier, I primarily have been playing Mario Kart World with my wife. I groused in a few reviews and gaming previews earlier this year and last year that the cost to play multiplayer games is becoming increasingly untenable, so the idea of having to buy 2 Switch 2s was, functionally and financially, just not possible. I was happy to discover that the game has online capability to allow 2 players to play together from one system online in docked mode, similar to Mario Kart 8, and that’s breathed a lot of life into my enjoyment of the game, as we’ve been able to go online and play against other people together instead of having to trade off.
That still begs the question of whether you need to spend 500 dollars on a console to race karts around tracks and throw shells at one another. I really can’t tell you what to do there, dear reader. For us, it’s been amazing. For others, it’s probably been fine. There certainly are a lot more people with Switch 2s than seemed likely at first, if you took internet complaining at face value, so we’ve certainly never had a day of waiting more than few seconds to get online matches going.
I think that if you absolutely love Nintendo, love Mario Kart, and love the idea of playing Mario Kart for hours and hours and hours, then this is a simple slam dunk. You probably already own the game, and are just reading to see what I had to say about it. If you’re on the fence, or a hard no on the cost, then I don’t think anything I could say in this review will change your mind. And that’s okay too; the Switch 2 isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Mario Kart World, so if, or when, you end up with a Switch 2, there will be thousands of players for you to face in Knockout Races and more.
The Overly-Sentimental Final Lap
Perhaps part of why I’ve been enjoying Mario Kart World so much, though, is that it is just absolute unabashed joy and fun. There is not a whole lot in the world to look at and find enjoyment in currently: state violence, looming war, a genocide, poverty, intolerance all exist at increasing levels that make it feel like simply getting through a day without feeling the cold grip of the abyss is some sort of achievement (which it is. Good for you; you did it). In my own personal life, much like your own, there are additional wrinkles that make needing to find some sort of pressure valve or temporary relief desirable, and while I love video games, I am increasingly tired of Deep Narratives Exploring Human Cruelty or Violence Simulator; sometimes I just want to play something soothing. And for me, that’s currently Mario Kart World.
I mentioned earlier that Mario has been a big deal for me, because I started my gaming journey with Super Mario Bros. on the NES, and I’ve played every Mario game at launch since then; when we saw we had the chance and ability to get a Switch 2 with Mario Kart, I was elated that I’d keep the trend going, and playing the game gave me that feeling of what I’ve always loved about games since I began playing them. When I saw Mario Circuit load up and the memories of playing Super Mario Kart on my SNES popped into my head, each recognizable curve and stupid pipe placement coming into view, I felt something deeply warm and rewarding and just relieving in it.
As I said above, I can’t say if you need a Switch 2 or Mario Kart World. I think that if you can, and you want it, you should get it. I know I’ll be playing Knockout Races for a long time to come, and as I finish this review, I know I’m going to want to go get in a few races before I pass out around 5 AM again. If Mario Kart World isn’t the thing for you, though, reader, I hope that whatever you can find that gives you that warmth and sense of weight off your shoulders is similarly enjoyable.
Now if you’ll excuse me, Daisy and I are going to go throw turtle shells at people until they’re barely visible in my our rear view camera.
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