A Mario Kart World review (Nintendo, 2025, Switch 2), and your alternatives

It had to happen - there had to be a Mario Kart game that I would only find middling, after mainlining Wii and 8 Deluxe for a significant chunk of the time in my life that I’ve spent playing games.

Mario Kart World represents an evolution, and even a partial rejection, of the track-based formula that 8 Deluxe (I did not own the original 8 on Wii U - yes, despite being a Nintendo Person) absolutely perfected. I don’t believe that more of the same wouldn’t have worked, but Nintendo have gone this route, almost for the route’s sake.

You now have an open world that’s an ersatz Mushroom Kingdom - new and familiar tracks are separated by what feel like anonymous motorways and pitstops. The set-up makes for a nominally interesting ‘free roam’ mode (featuring challenges and collectables that I find utterly depleting despite being willed to continue because completing a vague number of them unlocks Mirror Mode) but robs the Grand Prix’ of their charm by connecting all of the races, so you only end up racing a full 3 laps of a track the first race, while on the others you spend laps driving to the track and then one lap going round the track. This provides plenty of opportunities to get in some of the new mechanics like the kart jump button and doing sick grinds on rails and powerlines, or riding on walls. I appreciate that these introduce additional skill to the game, but I’ve spent a particularly insular week indoors with it, grinding three stars on the 150cc cups (I’ve already decided that I can’t be bothered with mirror mode, actually, because I am going to die at some point), and I still find them a pain in the arse.

Consequently, I find World harder than other Mario Karts, and other kart racers generally, and those 150cc cup grinds really are grinds - also not helped by the racer count ballooning to twelve, so there are shells and lightning going off every thirty seconds, and the CPU proccing mushrooms and blue shells right on the finish line, which has so far resulted in me declaring out loud that World is the worst video game and that Donkey Kong (Donkey K[redacted] I call him) [redacts] [redacted]. There’s always been a bit of delicious swearing at the television with Mario Kart, but the increased number of racers on the screen raises the chaos level from delightful to tedious and frustrating.

That’s the incongruent part of World for me - you have these new skill elements, which are good in theory even if I personally find them cumbersome - they’re meant to be practiced, you’re supposed to learn all the shortcuts - but there’s so many random items going off that being stopped in your tracks at a key point isn’t so random - it’s basically guaranteed. There’s too much going on at all times, which is good from the Nintendo school of a game being candy for the eyes, but Baby Park in Double Dash and 8 Deluxe were also from this school, yet perfectly pitched with 12 racers. With twice as many as 8 in World, I can’t imagine Baby Park being anywhere near as fun in it- which is probably why the track’s not in it.

The time trials are the best part of World, which is something I’ve never said of a racing game of any kind before. They’re the only part of the game that if I mess up in, it’s my fault and I just need to practice and improve. The same could be said for the free roam mode, but that’s not what I come to Mario Kart for, and all colour and joy bleeds out of the world when I switch to (!!) it, so I stopped playing it. Knockout Tour, the new mode with cross country rallies, gives the open world conceit a reason for being and, minus all the chaos making it really hard to maintain a lead throughout for game completion’s sake (truly, the amount of times I’ve been pipped to the finish, compared to previous Mario Karts, is very high), can actually be fun. I wish Nintendo had left the connecting tracks to this mode and away from Grand Prix, which I don’t really want to play any more of because of it.

That’s my conclusion, really - I had a fun week with Mario Kart World, but I don’t want to play it anymore. Nintendo may be iterating on Mario Kart, but not meaningfully, and as a video game, World doesn’t need to exist and it doesn’t make Nintendo’s Switch 2 a must have product, despite it being what Nintendo have pinned all of their hopes on at launch by bundling it in. As a Mario Kart Fan, the Mario Karts I’m itching to return to are 8 Deluxe, the port of 64 to other systems that’s now available, and Wii Deluxe, a real mod that adds hundreds of extra tracks from other games in the series and various other kart racers. That the port and the mod exist is pleasantly surprising to me, and they’ve been great fun to go back to in the lead up to getting to play Mario Kart new one.

Crucially, I don’t need a Switch 2 to play these, nor could the Switch 2 play them anyway. Given this, plus the state of Mario Kart World, plus the fact that it was the entire reason I had any interest in one of these things at launch, it’s fair to say that I think Nintendo have dropped the ball. I’m not even bothered about the next first-party title coming up in July, Donkey Kong Bananza, which seems from the Direct to be so much like Mario Odyssey - a game I also bounced off of; I think I just don’t like 3D platformers - that I just don’t care.

Mario Kart World being fine and only fine, plus Bananza’s Direct putting me into a coma, has made me more aware than ever that “Nintendo game” doesn’t carry the prestige that it did, and so chasing their specific games by buying into their specific closed platforms has no appeal. What’s a person who plays games but who believes all of the above to do? Well, I have a handheld gaming PC now, and it’s the bee’s knees. I like it a lot. I can play the things that I like to, and control the performance at a granular level.

I like that I can play whatever I want (within reason), and however I want - use the control schemes that I like, remap games to be more accessible, and when I am looking to buy a big ticket video game, I don’t necessarily have to be spending $80 a pop. I feel less like a consumer in an ecosystem and more like I have the freedom of choice, which makes not being able to play certain things - middling, or otherwise - a much softer blow.

In summary, then, no matter what you like to play the most - there are other games, other publishers, and other pieces of hardware offering it in a more palatable, consumer friendly way.

Mario Kart World is okay, but it’s no system seller, especially given what’s come before and what’s on the way. Nintendo cannot patent the kart racer, and there are a good number of good ones available and imminent; I just bought Super Indie Karts (Steam Early Access) on sale, and I’m waiting for The Karters 2: Turbo Charged to enter Steam Early Access in a couple of weeks. Given that I’ve written before about being an early access sceptic, you can imagine just how enthusiastic I must be about kart racers to be weighing up options there. And if I’m to credit Nintendo with anything, it’s with failing to scratch the kart racer itch and also failing to sell me their new hardware - I played Mario Kart World on someone else’s Switch 2, thank gosh.