Here’s how Mario Kart World could improve Free Roam mode
Today, we’re going over some improvements Nintendo could implement to further improve Mario Kart World’s Free Roam mode.
During the marketing campaign that led up to its release, Free Roam was Mario Kart World’s big selling point. At the time, we didn’t know how many secrets it would hold – in fact, we didn’t know much about it at all other than the presence of numerous P-Switch missions. In the end, it turns out Mario Kart World’s Free Roam mode only has P-Switches, ? Block Panels, and Peach Medallions that offer exclusive stickers as rewards. Though I personally am a fan of Free Roam’s relaxed, slow-paced nature, it’s clear that it isn’t exactly what every Mario Kart fan was looking for. Uncovering the open world’s many hundreds of collectibles is fun and satisfying, but there are a number of improvements Nintendo could have made to make Free Roam feel more substantial.
The biggest issue with Free Roam, in my opinion, is that its rewards are not substantial. Sure, you could argue that finding collectibles and checking them off your to-do list is satisfying – and there’s definitely value in that. But P-Switches, ? Block Panels, and Peach Medallions only offer stickers as rewards, and you can only use one sticker at a time to customize your kart. A big change that would have helped Free Roam would be to make the NPC drivers unlockable in the mode rather than through Kamek. Imagine if every course in Free Roam had a special mission that unlocked one of the NPC drivers, or if you could unlock one by completing each of a course’s P-Switch missions. That would create a goal to work towards – one much more enticing than simple stickers. You could have characters like the Dolphin unlocked at Koopa Troopa Beach and Coin Coffer at Crown City, for example. Unlocking these characters as-is through Kamek is incredibly random and repetitive, and frankly it seems obvious to offer a more substantial reward for Mario Kart World’s headlining Free Roam mode.
Another absolutely necessary change to Free Roam is a way to track the P-Switches and Peach Medallions you’ve already obtained on the map. As it is, you have to physically revisit every single P-Switch and Peach Medallion location to make sure you have them. Given that there are 394 P-Switches and 200 Peach Medallions, this is frankly unacceptable – if you put tons of collectibles in your game, it’s only natural that people will want to get them all. Some may argue that you’re not supposed to collect them all, and that you’re supposed to chill out and collect only what you see. That’s fair to an extent, but the lack of a proper map does punish players who decide to collect them all anyway. I recently finished obtaining all the collectibles myself, and at the very end I found I was missing a single P-Switch out of 394, with no way to easily tell which one I was missing. I wound up having to compare my stickers with a friend’s, and eventually we figured out that I was missing a sticker with a Spike holding a cardboard box. Unfortunately, there aren’t any complete lists of stickers online just yet, and we had to scour through YouTube videos until we eventually determined that I was missing a P-Switch near Toad’s Factory. After over an hour of looking, I got lucky and found the missing P-Switch – but I’m sure some players missing one collectible will have a much harder time. Nintendo could easily save players hours of searching by adding in basic collectible tracking. It’s an absolutely baffling exclusion and a quite unacceptable one at that.
Another issue with Free Roam is that there’s no reward for finding all of the collectibles – you don’t even get a special sticker in exchange for finding everything. At least Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom gave you a piece of poop for finding all the Korok Seeds! It’s not a good reward at all, but at least it’s something! Basically, Free Roam has plenty of content, but no real incentive for doing it. If we’re being ambitious, Free Roam could use more of a story mode with concrete missions and goals, but that’s an unrealistic want at this point. What’s more realistic, however, is unlocking characters in Free Roam like we mentioned earlier. It could also be a good idea to include boss battles here and there – there are plenty of wide open spaces this could be possible in, and they could make for some interesting P-Switch missions. There are 394 right now, so why not add in 6 boss battles spread throughout the world to get a nice even 400?
How would you improve Mario Kart World’s Free Roam mode? Do you agree with our suggestions? Feel free to let us know in the comments down below. If you want to learn more about the game, you can check out the official Mario Kart World website.
