Game Review: Mario Kart World

Mario Kart World
Developed by Nintendo EPD
Published by Nintendo
Available on Nintendo Switch 2
Release Date: 6/5/2025

Mario Kart World is a kart racing game presented with an impossible challenge; not only does it need to be a successful follow-up to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but it faces the pressure of having an entire console launch on its back, being the only new title of note releasing alongside the Nintendo Switch 2’s launch on June 5th (unless you count a bunch of free and paid enhancements to existing games, which… nope, doesn’t count). Though the proposition may seem like a no-brainer – it is a new game from Nintendo’s best-selling franchise, on a console that sold out millions of pre-orders – the context of its release is rather unique for the Kart franchise, especially after taking the kitchen sink approach to building 8 Deluxe over its 11-year run, in what eventually felt like a victory lap for the series. With new mechanics, new items, and a brand-new open world mode, Mario Kart World certainly is looking to kick off its new generation with an ambitious new take – but can any video game possibly live up to those expectations?

The answer is, unsurprisingly, both yes and no: Mario Kart World is an incredibly entertaining entry in the series, a gorgeous game full of propulsive, chaotic kart racing, and perhaps the best soundtrack Nintendo’s delivered since Breath of the Wild. However, it comes with a few caveats; World‘s incredibly expansive take on world design – both in courses and its new open-world ‘mode’, Free Roam – feel like two-thirds of a step in a new direction, an interested shift in philosophy held back by some underwhelming execution… and, of course, a healthy collection of frustrating Nintendo idiosyncrasies always pulling at the fringes of the Mario Kart World experience.

This dichotomy, between what Mario Kart was and what Nintendo views Mario Kart World to be, is immediately noticeable from the game’s title screen. While the player’s previously played character drives around the game’s landscapes in the background, the main menu presents a suite of selections: Grand Prix, the new Knockout Tour mode, and its online and local multiplayer options. Down in the right hand corner of the screen, away from its settings and achievements menu almost as if it were to be considered an afterthought, sits a prompt: “Free Roam”.

By hitting the Plus button, the game’s familiar modes wash away and players immediately take control of the action previously happening in the background, and the Mario Kart universe opens from a series of disconnected tracks into one, unified world of kingdom-based biomes, all stitched together into one seamless, unified open world. It’s a breathtaking idea, but one almost immediately tempered by the curiosity of Free Roam’s placement on the menu; if this is to be the foundational bedrock of the game’s design philosophy and the true showpiece of the Switch 2’s incredibly increased graphical and computational capabilities, why is it relegated to such a position from the first moment players engage with it?

It’s an identity crisis that becomes more apparent after spending a few hours driving around its open world, which connects the game’s many tracks with bustling highways, off-road passages, aerial sections and across masses of water. While Mario Kart World offers up a few engaging activities and treasure hunts for players to stumble upon, the game’s sense of freedom is hindered by how little happens moment-to-moment in Free Roam – and how little any of it really matters to the core progression of both the game’s unlocks, and developing a player’s core skills.

Each section of the game’s open world features multiple things for players to find; hidden bunches of coins and Peach medallions, P switches that trigger time-based challenges (like collecting coins in a certain order, or completing a bit of kart-based platforming across a section of the map), and Yoshi food outlets, which give Dash Food items that unlock new costumes for each of the game’s many characters. These activities are typically pretty spread out across the map, giving players a lot of non-racing time to experiment with mechanics (like the new dash/wall jump) and discover different shortcuts while getting into the familiar drift-and-boost rhythm that is Mario Kart‘s bread and butter.

They are even a little too spread out; there are long stretches of flat areas all over Mario Kart World‘s open layout, especially in areas that double as course sections for the main game’s 24-player races, where there’s just nothing to do but boost and dash, and look around. And it’s completely isolated from anything else; there are no impromptu races to find, no rivals or enemies (save for the occasional coin-dropping Nabbit running around the world) to battle with, no objectives to complete other than “reach this high place” or “collect X many coins/items; while it never quite becomes boring, the lack of connection to actual racing makes it feel disconnected from the main experience.

It’s also just plain confusing sometimes; with no explanation of the game’s map or its Free Roam mechanics, discovering how to unlock costumes by picking up Dash Food or the simple new 180-degree turn mechanic are not intuitive in the slightest. Though there is an internal logic to the costume unlocks, picking up a Dash Food item and eating it often seems to lead to random results; sometimes a player’s character will transform into something new (like Gondolier Luigi, Swimsuit Peach, or Biker Waluigi)… and sometimes, nothing will happen except a brief speed boost – it’s never explained to the player, so without an obligatory Reddit search, trying to make sense of some of World‘s new mechanics become incredibly obtuse and counterproductive to the game’s racing – which has never felt better.

When Mario Kart World is on one of its many race courses, it offers the most refined, insanely chaotic version of its iconic kart racing gameplay to date, packing each race with 24 cars (offline and online) that are constantly picking up new powerups and drifting into speed boosts across the game’s huge, diverse landscapes, both new and familiar (there is a lot of course remixing here… though with such fun, iconic courses, one can’t be mad about the presence of Wario Stadium and Koopa Troopa Beach). Racing is fast and dynamic, its slightly-weightier physics combining with its new power-ups – like the Hammer and Mega Mushrooms – to make the slides, impacts, and slipstreams of Mario Kart feel incredibly good; when Mario Kart World‘s constantly-changing tracks and dense player count combine for some truly unhinged, tense racing, one can feel the excitement behind every refined element of game design.

But that feeling always comes with some sort of compromise; like Grand Prix mode, where the traditional four-race system has been shifted into a weird monstrosity – after the first race, players are thrown into multiple point-to-point races before typically finishing each of the game’s seven (*cough* eight *cough*) cups with a one-lap race around the destination of each Prix journey. While the moment-to-moment racing is fun, the rhythm between these races – especially when the point-to-point segments become small clumps of bunched races spread across wide, straight lanes of track – in the single-player Grand Prix mode feels a bit off, like an unnecessary halfway step between the traditional cup structure and the game’s new Knockout Tour mode, which is really the bread and butter of Mario Kart World‘s new identity.

Knockout Tour is a refined, battle royale-adjacent version of Mario Kart World; each “tour” is one long race broken up into segments; at the end of each, four racers are eliminated, until the final four race for the checkered (well, rainbow in this case) at the end. These races are where World‘s identity of fast racing in an expanded world, like Mario Kart‘s take on a psychotic road trip, feel most refined; each race is an incredibly tense experience, especially online, where the skill parity of the majority of players (enhanced by the game’s incredibly balanced weapons, which are scattered all over each track) make each segment an unhinged fight to avoid elimination.

And boy, when Mario Kart World shines, it shines; led by an incredible visual design (marking Mario’s entry into 4K gaming, though I mostly played at 1440p/120hz when in docked mode), World‘s aesthetics are warm and inviting, incredibly colorful and sharp, full of the intricate character and vehicle animation that really show off the Switch 2’s vastly improved capabilities. It also helps World features perhaps my favorite soundtrack of the entire Kart series, a fast-paced, jazz-infused take on the familiar, bombastic tones of Mario Kart, driving home the game’s relentless pursuit of acceleration and pace. It’s an arresting, engrossing experience – which makes its frustrating elements and half-commitments even more maddening, when they intrude on the incredible vibe the game creates in its best moments.

Some of these issues are admittedly minor – and others, like the divisive Grand Prix design and the half-empty open world areas, can be unnerving for those who’ve spent the last seven or eight years anticipating something different from Mario Kart World. The rest, like the game’s insanely convoluted ways to join friends to play online, the lack of introduction to the game’s new mechanics or ideas, or how it doesn’t explain costume unlocks can be region and character-specific, feel strangely undercooked for a game in development for so long; over time, these little flaws and shortcomings add up to an experience that is always juuuust a bit compromised by idiosyncratic design choice, and the game’s strange refusal to let go of its own past, even as it ambitiously charts a path forward for the franchise’s future.

That dichotomy sometimes becomes maddening (like why is the character selection screen designed the way it is – it’s so unnecessary!) – but when Mario Kart World gets onto the track and everything on its periphery fades, it delivers some of the finest racing action the series has ever seen. Change isn’t easy, and while I certainly appreciate Mario Kart World‘s willingness to ease millions of gamers who’ve played the series for decades into embracing its new identity, it comes at the cost of the game feeling like it has an entirely cohesive identity, what new elements and ideas it does offer compromised by its attempts to to make sure it remains familiar to its long-time audience. A fantastic game I can’t wait to see grow and evolve for years to come – but one that is a bit more befitting of the confusing, muddled launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, than of the generation-opening, celebratory masterpiece it could’ve possibly been.

Grade: B+