I picked up Mario Kart World for the Switch 2, because it’s one of the few first-party launch titles for the system. It’s fun, it’s the Mario Kart you’d expect, with some new characters and items to freshen things up. It also has a open world mode for you to drive around in and a new Knockout mode that uses that open world for new gameplay.

But here’s the thing, I don’t think Mario Kart needed to go big with a ton of characters and a open world component. If I’m honest, I’m not sure we needed a new Mario Kart game, especially not for $80. I’d like to go bit by bit of how this game tries to add more, but maybe doesn’t add a ton of actual value. I want to be clear, it’s still fun, it’d probably be a blast with friends and to play online as well. I personally have had fun, but I still see some areas to critique.

The first thing to talk about is the breadth of characters. There are 50 characters to choose from once you’ve unlocked them all. Then the main characters, like Mario and Luigi, have various different outfits to pick from to spice things up. The only reason I mention outfits is how Nintendo decided to handle this in the UI. If you unlock a new outfit for a character, it technically shows up as a separate option in the character selection screen. This is tough because if you’ve unlocked some characters as well as some outfits, that menu can get bogged down quick. This can give the impression that you have so many different choices and in a way, with 50 unique characters, you definitely do. I guess my question is if those choices actually add any value to the game? Yes, there’s a cow character you can pick and there’s definitely some novelty to it. But I just feel like there’s too much choice, I can’t see someone going through the huge page characters to find one that fits the mood, most likely, someone would just pick one of the well known characters and move on.

They have thankfully streamlined the kart selection. You still have a ton of options when it comes to picking between bikes and carts and you unlock new vehicles pretty steadily. But, what they did get rid of is picking wheels and gliders for your vehicle. This is a very welcome change as you already had to balance the weight class of your driver, kart stats and then you had to manage stats for the wheel and glider. Paring that down definitely helps speed up the process of getting into a game with friends. Although I am curious how many people actually look at the stats as they pick their driver and kart. Playing with kids, they’d just pick whatever looked the best. I wonder if there’s room for a mode that ignores those stats.

The biggest piece to talk about is the open world. I was initially confused on how to enter the open world. It was such a big piece of why this game exists and it’s a tiny option on the main screen. The problem is, I can tell why it’s not front and center. There is almost zero incentive to drive around in the open world. Yes, there are challenges you can do and hidden Peach Medallions to collect. But those don’t give you much, aside from stickers for your vehicle, which I’ve noticed on some vehicles aren’t clearly seen when selected. You can of course collect coins and grab food floating around the map to unlock new outfits. But you can also do those last two things while racing, a much more engaging way to go about unlocks. I feel like they wanted to mimic Forza Horizons as that is also a racing game that takes place in an open world. But it’s a much more engaging space in Forza Horizons. You can do challenges that get you cars, experience or money that all lead to even more unlocks. But you can also just challenge anyone to a race that you come across and there are a ton of racetracks that use the open world in a way that makes sense. Mario Kart World has very specific tracks, but they aren’t natural to the environment like in Forza Horizons. This, I think, makes it harder to add more tracks in the future. Because Mario Kart is known for these crazy tracks and it wouldn’t be as easy to have the normal roads and paths and turn them into race tracks.

It open world also means a lot of tracks don’t have the normal standing start most of the older games had. Most have a rolling start and are more of a sprint than an actual race. This can be weird as you feel like you only have one chance to succeed and do well. Whereas with the normal lap setup, you can maybe try to to do better in a section the next lap. Maybe Nintendo doesn’t think we have the attention span to see the same scenery more than once in a race, maybe this is all to serve the new Knockout mode.

Which, let’s talk about the new mode. I think Knockout is pitched as the highlight of the game and is being used to make a point for the open world. It’s essentially one long race that ties in multiple tracks that requires you to race from one end of the map to the other. At various points there will be a checkpoint that knockouts out anyone below a certain position in the race, say everyone below 8th. This mode can be fun, but I had a ton of times where I was in the lead for a majority of the race to only lose it all at the last moment by a perfect combination of shells. I don’t think anyone thinks Mario Kart is balanced and due to the long form nature of the mode, that is put into even higher contrast since you can lose it all at the drop of an item and you’re out. It’s an especially tough mode to play with friends, because if you’re out early due to some bad luck, you’re stuck watching your friends have fun.

Overall, I don’t think this game is as full featured as I thought it was going to be. I’m also struggling to see how you do DLC for the game, because how do you add new tracks if they’re all supposed to exist on the map? I guess there could be different worlds or portals, but then what is the point of it being open world if you bifurcate it? I don’t know how well Mario Kart does a party game still. I’ve played locally with one person and it’s still fun, but I think the staying power is limited. Same with online, I’ve done some online matches and didn’t really feel a desire to keep racing. It’s not that it was a frustrating experience, I could tell there were players of all skill levels playing, so I was able to hold my own. It’s just that the rolling starts, the new mechanics, don’t really add up to a new experience. It’s the same Mario Kart I’ve always played, I just don’t have to nitpick what wheels i have anymore.