2025: Mario Kart World

Blue Shells still upset me a lot

Eleven years have passed since Mario Kart 8 was released. Eight years since it was re-released on the Nintendo Switch, because no one had a Wii U to play the original. Ignoring the deluxe version of the game, this is the longest time between two mainline Mario Kart titles by some margin. As a launch title for the Switch 2, Mario Kart World makes complete sense. It’s one of Nintendo’s best selling franchises, as well as being the Switch’s best selling game. In addition to all that, it’s one of the most consistently high quality titles Nintendo produces. Mario Kart World is the perfect game to launch with a console. Yet, I just don’t click with it.

When it arrived, back in June, I was very excited to get stuck into a brand new Mario Kart. I’d grown bored of Mario Kart 8, especially because I have the Wii U version, so it’s been with me now for more than a decade. As it’s one of my favourite video game series, I wanted something new from Mario Kart. The previous entry was excellent but Nintendo has such a good record with reinventing their biggest titles, that I was excited to see what progress they could make with Mario Kart.

I played it a lot when it arrived, and had a blast doing so. Playing with others was great fun and this was still an excellent Nintendo karting game. As I played more though, whether that be the offline cups or battling online, I just found myself failing to connect with Nintendo’s vision for Mario Kart.

I wasn’t really sure why, as I feel the controls here are fantastic. Karts do feel different, especially after eleven years of Mario Kart 8. There was a lot of muscle memory I had to unteach myself whilst playing this game. Once I got the hang of the changes, and how the karts felt, I started to really enjoy myself. Mario Kart World does a good job of not completely overhauling the basics of the series, but it’s changed enough that mastering it requires a change in how you drive. I enjoy those changes, I think it’s different to its predecessor, which isn’t a negative. Mechanically, the driving in this game feels just as good whilst also being different enough to feel like a new experience.

You also get a much higher number of players in any given race. I was worried this would become somewhat chaotic, which Mario Kart is at the best of times. Nintendo nailed the balance here though. Even when you’re stuck in the middle of the pack, it doesn’t feel too wild. A lot of the time when I was falling back, it was because of my own mistakes. Very infrequently did it seem like I was being bombarded by other people’s items. Of course, it can happen, but that often feels like bad luck rather than a frustrating gameplay loop.

So racing is enjoyable, the karts are fun to drive, where is it that I’m not connecting with Mario Kart World? This game has a couple of big changes, the first of which is obvious - the open world. I was immediately concerned when I saw this, because I wasn’t really sure why Mario Kart needed an open world section. From the snippets Nintendo showed, it looked barebones, so I was already questioning why I would want to drive around a map with nothing in it. Admittedly, there are things to do in the open world. Usually these are tasks like collecting coins before the time runs out, or reaching a checkpoint within a time limit. They’re okay, but there’s nothing fun about driving around a map doing basic challenges, most of which aren’t even challenging. If Nintendo had implemented native split-screen mode for the open world section of the game, it could have been a lot more fun. Right now though, there just isn’t a reason to play this part of Mario Kart World, unless you like driving around alone with nothing to do.

The open world feels like a waste of resources, but it’s not something that gets in your way. I tried to enjoy it, I didn’t understand why Nintendo designed it the way they did, but it’s ultimately a game mode you can avoid. Additionally, it’s possible Nintendo could expand on the open world in the future. When it comes to the design, Mario Kart World looks beautiful in its open world. It just needs something more engaging to do, which is something Nintendo may implement going forward. Mario Kart 8 was much improved years after its release, and Mario Kart World has an excellent foundation to build off, should Nintendo choose to.

One area Nintendo have got it completely wrong though, is the inclusion of ‘intermission tracks’. These are tracks that connect the different courses in the game. For example, you complete Race A, you then have to race on an intermission track to Race B. Call me old fashioned, but I much prefer the classic experience of doing laps round a track. What is frustrating about the intermission tracks is that I don’t enjoy the design as much as I do traditional tracks. To make them more annoying, racing the intermission tracks takes away laps you can do around the next track you drive to. Suddenly you aren’t doing three or five lap races around a track, you’re losing time because the game is compensating for the time spent racing between two courses. Mario Kart World has some fantastic tracks, so it’s infuriating to lose time with them because you’re being forced to race between them. None of these routes are particularly egregious, but they’re inferior to the main tracks the game offers, so I’m unsure why we’re forced to race on them as often as we do.

For me, these routes hurt the flow of the game, which has slowly turned me away from Mario Kart World. There is a lot I like here, and I think mechanically this is one of Nintendo’s best karting experiences. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of fluff that feels like wasted resources on Nintendo’s part. I can accept that the open world may be developed into something more fun as time goes by, sadly I just don’t find the intermission tracks fun. Which is a shame, because they take up a huge chunk of the game, preventing me from getting stuck into some of the fantastic courses the game has to offer. Nintendo have designed them to be integral to the experience, so I’m not sure if they could even revert the changes. I want to enjoy the gameplay loop of Mario Kart World, but Nintendo have managed to bloat a game without actually adding anything of substance.