Mario Kart didn’t need to go open world. It was a much-vaunted feature of Mario Kart World leading up to its launch, and the moments where you’re dropped into the open world and left to just cruise around and complete little missions are, frankly, boring. Thankfully, everything else about the game is magnificent.
Also, to be clear, while the open world itself is an unnecessary extravagance, what Nintendo have done with it for races is clever and massively entertaining. One of Mario Kart World’s new features is the Knockout mode, which is one long, continuous race that starts at one corner of the world and ends at the other, seamlessly stitching together six tracks for a single marathon race. In this mode, 24 racers start, and at regular intervals, the bottom four or so get knocked out. After the last interval the final four are alone on the track to duke it out for that coverted podium spot (and wow does it suck to go all the way to that final sprint only to come in fourth and not even medal).
This mode is so brilliant because it has little stories that emerge as you play. At the start, with 24 racers, it’s utter bedlam with items being hurled around with abandon. It is entirely possible that even the best racer could get slammed by a sequence of item effects and end up being knocked out early on, which is frustrating (yet also funny).
As the race goes on, however, things start to open up. Fewer racers on the track mean that items play a progressively less frequent role in a race, yet also have a potentially bigger impact. You’ll start recognising the people who have hit you with red shells a few times. A breakaway group will usually form, and everyone else scrambles to try and chase them down. And you will remember the victories because, after ten or so minutes without a break, knockout races are so much more intense and exhausting. Winning one feels like a much greater achievement. Nintendo was able to create these experiences precisely because the open world was already there, so it’s a good thing the developers went down this route. It’s just a pity that Nintendo then tried to make the open world itself a feature that you’re meant to explore, rather than just the engine for this excellent mode.
Outside of Knockout, so much of Mario Kart World is comfortably familiar. You can race in a number of cups, play both the balloon bursting and coin collecting battle modes, try to set fast times with time trial, and so on. Tracks are a blend of new and old, though the old tracks have had such a facelift that they’re almost indistinguishable. It took me a solid few moments to realise I’d cruised into a SNES classic.
There are fewer tracks (for now) than in Mario Kart 8, as Mario Kart 8 enjoyed several season passes and SO many tracks via DLC. There was a time when I half-wondered whether this would mean that I would find myself going back to Mario Kart 8 for its variety, but when you play Mario Kart World, you quickly realise that it is a substantial step up in many subtle ways. In still screenshots, the two games might look superficially similar, but the vibrancy of the art and energy in Mario Kart World is a significant and meaningful step up.
Where the game might be lacking in raw tracks, however, it more than makes up for with characters. There are 50 of them in total, with familiar faces like Mario, Toad, Yoshi and Bowser being joined by some truly eclectic options. Cow’s the famous one that has already become a meme, but I’m personally more partial to snowman. He’s so cool (I can’t believe I went through with that pun). For about half the characters, there is also a massive range of costumes that you can unlock, and those add yet more flavour and charm to the roster.
Also, there are Arabian Nights-themed costumes, and Daisy has a Princess Jasmine-style harem costume and… yeah. God, I love that book and what it ended up contributing to the art world.
Thanks to all these unlockables, you’re going to be earning new stuff every time you play for a very long time. After that the multiplayer is, of course, almost endless. Over the last couple of Mario Kart titles, I have been a little disappointed that the tracks keep widening, corners become ever more gentle, and being good at the game comes down to a mastery of triggering the powerslide speed boost and launching items at your opponents. Actual racing skills like cornering are never really tested in Mario Kart now, and for that reason, I find myself very uninterested in time trial, where it used to be one of my most played features in the earlier Mario Karts.
However, there is definitely skill involved in Mario Kart World, and a good and experienced racer is much less likely to be knocked out in the earlier stages of a knockout race than a beginner. Part of it is that most tracks have so many branching paths or semi-hidden shortcuts that there’s a definite skill involved in working out the most efficient pathway through. Another part of it is how carefully the tracks are strung together to maximise the ability to combo up speed boosts from jumps, slides and items. There’s also the need to collect coins, for the addition they provide to your top speed. Where previous Mario Kart games had a cap of 10 coins, Mario Kart World continues to boost the speed for up to 20 coins, and the difference between a racer with 20 and one with 0 is substantial.
In other words, to be good at Mario Kart, you’ve got to be very busy on the track. For returning players, almost all the rules and tactics will be familiar, however, the one and only big problem with Mario Kart World is that the onboarding is hopeless. Nintendo seem to have assumed that everyone playing is a Mario Kart veteran, as there are no tutorials and the “manual” is a tiny icon that takes you to a glossary of terms with little videos that visualise the various controls and commands. I never thought that Nintendo would be responsible for a game so brazenly unconcerned with throwing new players to the wolves, but there you go.
Mario Kart World is magnificent. It features the tight and refined gameplay you expect from the series, a brilliant new Knockout mode, and such colourful energy and vibrancy that it was the perfect title to launch the console. I really didn’t think there was much else Nintendo could do after Mario Kart 8, but I stand corrected.
