Mario Kart World is the launch title for Nintendo Switch 2, and it builds upon the success of Mario Kart 8 by introducing Knockout Mode, plus free roam in an open-world. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was the best selling title for Nintendo Switch, which many considered the perfect Mario Kart entry. Today I’m going to get into my review of Mario Kart World.

Mario Kart 8 was an interesting game; it started out on the Wii U, then was one of the first games ported to Nintendo Switch as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and went onto sell over 67 million copies, far ahead in first place when it comes to sales of a single game on Nintendo Switch. Later in the lifecycle of the game Nintendo added new courses, extending the lifespan of the game even more. So a brand new Mario Kart game certainly has big boots to fill, and Nintendo decided they would launch their new console alongside this brand new iteration called Mario Kart World.

Mario Kart World is largely an iteration on the success of Mario Kart 8, albeit with some great new ideas thrown in there. As the name suggests, the world is a major new addition, with players driving round an interconnected world in GPs and also Free Roam too. In a major change to the series Grand Prix courses aren’t all stand alone tracks, you drive from one course to the other, which takes up one or two of the allocated ‘laps’ for the new courses.

In another major change, Nintendo has increased the number of players in the race. Previously it was 12, and they have doubled that to 24, in part showing off what the Switch 2 can do, and otherwise filling up the new, wider roads. This is a lot of fun, and makes starting a race very chaotic with power-ups flying all over the place. The roads are filled with other cars, Bullet Bills, Goombas, and plenty of other racers.

Mario Kart World has also beefed up the number of characters in the game, sticking to characters from the Mushroom Kingdom, rather than including Zelda characters (like in Mario Kart 8). We have a couple of variants of characters including the main characters; Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Toad, Donkey Kong and Princess Peach, and then we have NPC characters like Cow, Dolphin and Coin Coffer, plus many other bizarre additions. There’s something funny about seeing Swoop the Bat drive a motorcycle that will never get tiring.

Nintendo have introduced cosmetics into the mix this time with the addition of food. Yoshi’s Drive-Thrus appears all over the map, and you can swing by, pick up a “Dash Snack” and consume the food to change outfits. The outfits are cosmetic changes, but it’s another layer of variation to keep you coming back to collect all the outfits for all characters. We start out the game with a few characters, then as we complete cups we’ll unlock new characters like Donkey Kong, Rosalina and King Boo. The only downside with the costumes are they are reserved for the main characters, the NPC characters don’t get new outfits. It would have been good to see Cow in a bathing suit or an ironic Cowboy hat, but hey-ho, maybe that will come in a future update.

The game looks, sounds and feels great. The graphics and animations have been boosted and this is a fantastic upgrade over the already-great-looking Mario Kart 8. Each character has custom animations for when they do tricks while driving. The music is one of the stand out features of the game with remixed Nintendo classics. I could sit there and listen to the soundtrack all day. One improvement for the future would be selectable music or a playlist feature, similar to an in-car radio or a spotify playlist in-game – that would be a great addition for a future update. This is the best Mario Kart has ever looked which shows off the capabilities of the Switch 2 and the brand new open-world. The best example of Mario Kart World looking and sounding fantastic is Rainbow Road in the unlockable Special Cup. It’s the best iteration of Rainbow Road Nintendo have ever done, and there’s a part halfway through the course where the music changes into EDM – it’s a great moment, and one to savor when you’re going through the Grand Prix mode.

Karting itself has been given an overhaul with new tricks and features. Mario and friends can now Charge Jump while driving which allows players to grind rails and wall ride. You can literally do tricks, jumping off ledges and ridges in the road, which gives you a little speed boost the whole time. It’s easy to pick up and play for all ages, but there’s a decent skill gap in there, and the AI has been bumped up in the 150CC mode, so it’s challenging. No 200CC mode yet, which has perhaps been held back for a future update.

The game feels like a platform that could be built upon in the future, with new worlds, new characters and new courses added at a later date. I don’t think it’s a live-service game quite yet, but you could easily see Nintendo turn Mario Kart World into a platform and add live-service like features to increase the lifespan of Mario Kart World.

The standout mode for me is Knockout Tour, which is a kind of winner-takes-all, battle-royale-esque racing mode where players get knocked out over time. 24 players start, then the threshold will be 20, then 16, then 8 and so on, so players get knocked out over time. While this isn’t new to the driving genre, this is very well implemented and creates some very chaotic and heart-stopping moments as you try and keep above the threshold to stay in the race.

We also have traditional GP, Battle and Online modes. There’s not much more to say about GP, it’s great fun and you’ll want to unlock the Special Cup as soon as you can to reach Rainbow Road. Battle modes are similar to previous entries, bringing back a lot of good memories for me from the Super Nintendo and N64 days with the Balloon Battle. Online is better than ever before, especially given Nintendo’s implementation of GameChat and if you have the camera then you can put your face in the game. If you are playing couch co-op the Nintendo camera will pick up all of your faces, and while it’s a small addition, it turns the fun up another notch given when you are racing you never really look to the side at the other players face – seeing them on screen adds another layer of fun to races and uses Nintendo’s new Nvidia tech really well.

Free Roam is exactly that; you can freely explore the open world. Find alien spacecraft, jump int he back of trucks, and find P Switch puzzles and challenges. It’s good fun, albeit a little sparce in this first iteration. Hopefully over time Nintendo will be able to add more to the open-world. It’s classic open-world issues, it’s an interesting addition, and it’s great to see the interconnected nature of the huge map, but it’s on the empty side for me, so I’ll be spending most of my time in knockout mode.

Overall, Mario Kart World is a solid launch title. It’s not groundbreaking like Super Mario 64 was for the N64, but it’s a solid entry in the Mario Kart series. It looks great, feels great and sounds incredible. It’s a hard job for the team iterating on a near perfect racing game in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but I think the team at Nintendo have built a solid platform here. Knockout mode is stand out for me, and the improved online features make playing with friends always a good time. Free roam could be improved, plus I can see Nintendo expanding Mario Kart World later with DLC packs for characters and racetracks, maybe even new lands to add to Mario Kart World. If you’re getting a Nintendo Switch 2, then I thoroughly recommend you get your hands on this too. 8.5/10.