When the switch 2 came out to the public, Mario Kart World was already getting something of an unfortunate reputation because of its high 80 dollar price tag.

Switch 2 owners like myself would circumvent this somewhat by buying the bundle that came with the digital download version of the game, but 4 months later and this game still gets a ton of hate online....is it justified? Let's find out.


Graphics: 10l10
This is the best Mario Kart has looked. Similar enough to what happened with New Super Mario Brothers Wonder, Mario Kart World has gone out of its way to update the character designs of the cast making them look great fluid and very expressive. They're also not nearly as jaggy looking compared to what we had with 8 Deluxe.

Characters also have alternate costumes which is a series first, but this will also lead me to my first minor gripe. The character costumes take up multiple pages to access rather than just being selectable palletes when you pick a character.

Say I want to pick Cowboy Mario, I gotta go to page 3 to pick him instead of just simply picking Mario and selecting that as an alternate attire.


Additionally some of the NPCs like the Goomba and Cow don't have any additional costumes at all which I think they should've gotten something.



Sound: 8/10
Mario Kart Worlds OST is really really good, but it's in this weird situation that hinders it. First off, there's no way to listen the OST in full without going to YouTube. The other problem is a lot of tracks will just play at random because they lack a dedicated stage, why is that? I'll explain.



Gameplay and addictiveness:7/10
Elaborating from what I said in the sound category, the reason the game has mixed and random soundtracks is because Mario Kart Worlds main gimmick is Free Roaming, sounds exciting on paper but it's executed so poorly.

In free roam, your not doing much except for either taking photos or following a bread crumb trail of P Switches which will unlock some modes and mostly stickers...

Additionally, the P switches have to be done offline. They will not appear while your free roaming online in between races.


The bigger damage is what was done to the traditional race tracks. Mario Kart World forces free roaming so much that traditional 3 lap tracks are kinda here and kinda not, because a lot of the time the game forces what has come to be known as intermissions. So instead of doing 3 lap races, you race on a highway, dessert, water, or some other area filled with NPC traffic and everything is mostly in a boring straightline.

The actual course your supposed to be on? It might just be the last lap of that track because of how much intermissions overstay their welcome.

They appear cool at first, but as time went on it just made me wonder why Nintendo didn't opt to just do more tracks like a Toads Turnpike if they wanted Mario Kart players to engage in actual traffic conditions.

And in single player grand Prix offline? You can't avoid intermissions at all. It's only skippable to some degree online, and I think can be fully turned off in local multiplayer.


There are clips of people finding shortcuts within the environments in intermissions, but from what I can tell is they're either done in free roam or time trials and all of the require a triple shroom power up. This doesn't change how forced intensions are, and I don't think it's likely these shortcuts will happen in a 16 to 24 online racer lobby.

After what Mario Kart 8 Deluxe gave us, I think innovation and something different for a Mario Kart game was fine, but intermissions feel so forgettable. If this is the format going forward, they need a drastic overhaul.

Story: N/A


Difficulty: 5/10. Its Mario Kart, what can I say? It's easy to pickup and play and it's still a fun bit flawed game.


I've read a ton of complaints about people "sandbagging" which is hanging onto an item like a bullet bill or golden mushroom until the last moment, but I played Mario Kart Wii where a lot of races got decided like that so it's not that big of a deal imo.


Overall: 7/10
I think World is still a good Mario Kart game, but it'll probably live with it's mixed reputation and the $80 tag is unwarranted. I think this game is $60 at best either on par or worse than 8 Deluxe depending on your preference.

It's also not a dead game either, I've gotten into online lobbies from anywhere with 15 to a full 24 racer lobby.

So you can definitely still get some enjoyment, but as I've said intermissions need an overhaul.