System: Switch 2
Release date: June 5, 2025
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Nintendo Switch 2 is finally here, and with it comes the first new main series Mario Kart game since Mario Kart 8 on Wii U way back in 2014. Mario Kart World promises to be the next evolution of the franchise, boasting a huge world for players to explore. For the most part, this feels like more of a novelty than a huge step forward – but it’s an added bonus in a game packed with content and attention to detail. Mario Kart World is truly a remarkable masterwork of graphics, music, details, and gameplay – and it’s one you should absolutely try out if you’re planning on getting a Nintendo Switch 2 (and are either okay with the price tag or are purchasing the bundle).
After you boot up Mario Kart World for the first time, it only takes a moment to notice that Nintendo’s presentation department is at its absolute best here. The game has a unique art style reminiscent of Shigehisa Nakaue’s 2D renditions of the Mario cast, and the characters are brighter, more vibrant, and more expressive than ever before. Every single driver is packed with tiny details – they look at incoming Blue Shells with dread, they give angry looks to opponents who pass by, and they even have little waving animations you can play using the ZL button. The Mario cast has never looked better, and it’s plain to see the amount of effort, care, and love that went into rendering each and every character. Even the NPC drivers like the Cow and Sidestepper have their own expressive animations – the visual work here is absolutely remarkable.
That effort and care extends to Mario Kart World’s big open world (although Nintendo doesn’t like that term), which we’ll cover later on in greater detail. Visually, the world is jammed full of small details, buildings, plants, and much more. All the moving cars and NPC drivers help it feel more alive, as if it’s a world that could actually be inhabited by the Mario cast. This is further elevated, then, by the outstanding soundtrack. Mario Kart World includes over 200 tracks that play in Free Roam mode, and every single one is absolutely fantastic. The remixes take on a wide range of vibes, from energetic to techno to heartfelt. One of our most memorable moments with the game was driving around Crown City right as the sun went up as a heartfelt piano remix of the Yoshi’s Island opening theme played in the background. Mario Kart World knows one of its biggest strengths is its presentation, and it uses a combination of its gorgeous visuals and excellent soundtrack to create memorable moments – even if all you’re doing is casually driving around in Free Roam.
The only real fault of the presentation is the character select screen, which is organized strangely, to say the least. Most drivers have additional costumes, and you would think all of Mario’s costumes would be within a sub-menu that appears when you select him, for instance. Instead, all nine of Mario’s outfits are different character slots, and the same applies to every other driver with alternate costumes. This creates a lot of clutter on the character select screen, and it also makes the roster seem bigger than it actually is – 50 characters isn’t bad, but scrolling through ten pages of drivers to find Road Ruffian Wario does become a little tedious over time. This could absolutely be fixed by an update – Mario Kart 8 Deluxe used sub-menus for Yoshi and Shy Guy color selection, and we don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case here.
Presentation isn’t Mario Kart World’s only strength. It also has an incredibly high skill ceiling – perhaps more so than any previous game in the series. You can now perform a Charge Jump by initiating a drift while driving forward, which lets you leap into the air and gain a small speed boost. More importantly, however, it lets you jump onto and drive on nearby walls for a short amount of time. This opens up tons of shortcuts and optimizations that simply weren’t possible in previous titles. The Charge Jump definitely takes some practice to get used to, but successfully pulling off a wall jump is incredibly satisfying. In a few years, we imagine speedruns of this game will be fun to watch. In the meantime, Mario Kart World’s items, mechanics, and kart stats all seem fairly balanced – just like with the visuals and music, you can tell a lot of care went into game balance as well. Whether that balance holds up as players optimize character builds remains to be seen, but the developers clearly put a tremendous amount of work into each of the game’s mechanics.
Our favorite new mode is Knockout Tour, which quickly becomes chaotic. In this mode, you travel from course to course aiming to place first. You’ll have to pass through numbered gates, and if your place in the race is lower than that number, you’re eliminated. Knockout Tour feels fluid and provides much-appreciated non-stop action, and in our opinion it’s even more addictive than Grand Prix. Speaking of which, Grand Prix has seen a few changes as well – this time around, once you clear a course you have to travel to the next one via one of Mario Kart World’s interconnected routes. It’s a nice change of pace from previous games, but in a way it makes it a little difficult to tell where the actual courses start and end.
Mario Kart World’s big headlining feature is its Free Roam, which to us feels more like a wind-down from all the action rather than substantial new content. In this mode, you collect stickers that you can use to customize your kart. You can earn stickers by driving over ? Panels on the ground or by completing missions activated by P-Switches. You can also find coins scattered throughout the open world, and for every 100 you collect you unlock a new vehicle. There are also well-hidden Peach Medallions for you to find if you’re up for the challenge. Some of the P-Switch missions are actually quite challenging and will require more than a few tries – luckily, the new rewind feature and an easy retry button keep frustration to a minimum here. That being said, stickers don’t feel like enough of a driving force to justify scouring this gigantic open world. You don’t actually unlock any characters in Free Roam, and so it winds up feeling like it’s missing a little something – this mode would have seen a big benefit if it included interactive NPCs who gave you specific missions and quests. While we’re at it, why not add on a few boss battles like Mario Kart DS’ mission mode?
Free Roam’s open world is absolutely huge and definitely impressive, and there’s still some good value to be found here. After you do a few rounds of Knockout Tour, it’s nice to drive around and appreciate the game’s great graphics and music while finding collectibles here and there. Unfortunately, there’s another big problem: there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to keep track of the P-Switch missions you’ve completed. Once you’ve finished a mission, that P-Switch will turn gray, but it isn’t marked on the map in any way. This makes true completion of the game problematic – you’d have to manually track down and drive to around 130 P-Switches to make sure you cleared them all. The world map does include fast travel, but it needs more information about what you’ve already cleared. As one last note here, keep in mind that you can only play Free Roam by yourself or in an online lobby with other players – if you were hoping to play split-screen Free Roam on the same console, that doesn’t seem to be possible at the moment.
Mario Kart World has some incredibly solid courses. All of them visually look great and are packed with secrets – DK Spaceport, Airship Fortress, Starview Peak, Cheep Cheep Falls, and especially Rainbow Road are just a few of our favorites. The title has far fewer traditional courses than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but its many interconnected routes help the gameplay feel fresh – it won’t feel like you’re simply repeating laps over and over again. If you prefer to play like that, though, you can easily do so in Time Trials or VS Races. The game’s 24 racers make races even more chaotic, and it’s a perfect embodiment of the Mario Kart spirit. After all, it wouldn’t be a Mario Kart game if you didn’t get hit by several items in a row once in a while.
The character selection is interesting. Each of the primary drivers has outfits to choose from, and you can earn these by eating Dash Food items. They’ll transform your racer into an outfit appropriate for the course you’re in, and this pairs well with the detailed open world to help make the game feel more alive. NPC drivers are arguably the most popular ones, though – you’ve got the Sidestepper, the Dolphin, and of course the Cow as well. There are a few questionable decisions, though – Diddy Kong’s complete exclusion from the game is absolutely baffling, considering he just received a new design but currently isn’t confirmed to appear in any new games. Donkey Kong is also an unlockable character, but you earn him from the Mushroom Cup and not from the Banana Cup. There are some other notable exclusions here like Petey Piranha and the Koopalings, but Diddy Kong’s absence is notably puzzling.
Overall, Mario Kart World is off to a fantastic start. It’s polished to a whole new level, with gorgeous visuals and an excellent soundtrack that’ll get stuck in your head for days or weeks to come. The game runs great docked and in handheld mode, controls great, and is fun online too. The Free Roam mode feels a little lacking and the character select screen is sort of a mess, but these are fairly minor issues in an otherwise excellent game. Some players might feel like the premium $80 price tag isn’t justified by the content, and that’s a fair assessment to an extent – but we can tell that a ton of effort and care went into the final product, and what’s on offer here is incredibly solid. And if Mario Kart World receives the type of future support that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe did, it’s only going to get better from here on out.
