When the Nintendo Switch 2 launches on June 5, it’ll be placing a lot of pressure on one game: Mario Kart World. The racing game is set to be this console generation’s Breath of the Wild, with a statement entry in one of Nintendo’s biggest franchises. The company is so sure about its success, in fact, that it’s charging $80 for it, an eye-popping number that has not gone over well with fans so far. If Mario Kart World is going to overcome that financial burden, it has to be really, really good.
And you probably won’t be surprised to hear that it is. I went hands-on with Mario Kart World at a Nintendo Switch 2 demo event, giving me a deep dive into its open-world pivot, elimination mode, and more. Everything I played was a delight from gaming’s most reliable multiplayer series, but on a much bigger scale. Though I did have a blast with it, the price tag does have me now thinking twice about just how much I enjoyed my races. It’s fun, but fun enough to justify the not so insignificant chunk it would take out of my paycheck? I’m not sure that I’m confident enough to make that judgement yet, and that’s not a great sign for Nintendo’s bold price experiment.
Mario Kart, but bigger
Mario Kart World is a massive expansion of a series that’s only even lightly iterated on its beloved idea. At its heart, it’s still the same old kart racer we’ve been playing for decades. I choose a character and a kart, Drift around on intricate tracks, make other players’ lives hard with items, and try to nab first place. It all feels right in line with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, though if I have any nitpick it’s that drifts feel a little harder to fully get going this time around. The races I played left little room to break into turns wide enough to activate sparks under my tires. Granted, I was only playing 100cc races here, so I imagine I’ll start to get more of a feel once I can dial up the speed. Otherwise, the core loop is still fun and my races were filled with plenty of dramatic blue shell hits that changed the leaderboard.
The roster of racers is larger than usual, with 24 characters to choose from. That doesn’t just include old favorites, but also costumed characters, like a blue Yoshi wearing a pit crew uniform. I’m less sure about how karts are handled here. The demo only had me selecting from a suite of pre-built options that every character could ride on. None had stats, and there was no option to mix and match parts. I’m not sure if this is just the case of a streamlined demo or if Nintendo cut Mario Kart 8’s car customizing, but I hope it’s the former. My car and character choice didn’t really feel like they mattered here.
There’s way more under the hood here, though, and that’s what makes World stand out. The first change I notice is to tracks, which no longer appear to send players through three identical laps. Instead, the races I played were all through long, multi-stage tracks that never loop back around. They don’t feel tightly themed like normal Mario Kart tracks, but rather like more fluid routes through a part of a world that doesn’t just exist to host races. Those tracks feature plenty of callbacks to classic courses, too. One began on a ghostly route that looked like a remade version of Super Mario Kart’s haunted maps. Another sent me through some sandy beaches lined with familiar Super Mario Sunshine characters, like Cataquacks. Tracks feel more fluid as a result, like they’re always switching up the scenery.
And they are, because all of those courses exist on an open-world map that is fully explorable outside of races. I had a chance to free-roam before a race and just spent a while speeding down some side roads, veering off onto a grassy plain, and looking at cities in the distance. Forza Horizon comes to mind when I first see it, though keep your expectations in check. It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of open-world activities to do while driving around. Instead, it’s more so that there are points of interest and events to interact with. One writer told me that he got abducted by a UFO at one point, which let him briefly pilot it around. I’m curious to see if there’s more to do out there, as my joy ride did feel a little sparse, even if it was great to soak in some scenery and get a sense of a wider world outside of races.
The free roaming concept is more interesting in the context of races. The standout feature here is Knockout, a 24–player elimination mode that takes place over six interconnected courses. The idea is that players are driving from one side of the world to another, driving from course to course in one uninterrupted gauntlet. It’s an excellent evolution of the Mario Kart formula that makes a competitive game even more heated. In my game, I boxed out computer players to make the final cutoff in four races. At the end of the fifth, I needed to place in the top four to continue. I had it in my sights … until Bowser skirted around me at the last possible second and kicked me to fifth. It was a thrilling race nonetheless, where the tension ratchets up in each race.
It all looks delightful too, even if it’s not exactly the game that looks like it’s pushing the Switch 2 to its technical limits. The colors are bright, the lines are smooth, and it all runs at a high, consistent frame rate. Still, it’s a cartoony Mario game and that’s only going to look so impressive. Mario Kart World shows off what Switch 2 can do in a more meaningful way, though. The Knockout race I played was so fluid that I didn’t even consider how wild it was that I was able to jump between six completely different tracks with not a single second of loading. It’s a huge accomplishment for the series that shows that improved console power isn’t just about graphics.
Is it worth it?
It was only after I played that I got confirmation that Mario Kart World will retail for $80, and I’d be lying if I said that the news didn’t instantly color my opinion on it. It’s not that it makes me like the game any less. It’s a truly modern spin on a franchise that has always remained static and I imagine I’ll be playing it a lot over the next eight years. But are all of these tweaks really enough to make it as smart of an investment as an air fryer?
I hate that I felt compelled to use the word “investment” here, but it feels unavoidable. $80 isn’t throwaway money for a lot of people. Even as someone with a full-time job, that’s a big wad of cash to drop on one game, even if I will get a lot of play time out of it. I can only realistically do that for so many games a year and that’s where I’m going to be forced to deconstruct something like Mario Kart World way more than I want to. How often am I really going to play it? Will my friends be into it for a few weeks and then move on to something else? Do I even have people over to play games that much anymore? These are questions I didn’t have to consider as strongly with Mario Kart 8 on Wii U. It was still in a price spot where I felt comfortable enough buying it to play for a few months. I didn’t have to do a time-value equation that flattens art to a business-like metric.
Naturally, different players are always going to be weighing these questions at different price points. $20 is a big price to pay on a game for some, while it’s chump change to someone else. But as the threat of recession looms and the cost of just about everything could be about to skyrocket thanks to reckless tariffs, $80 just feels like a lot of money to pay for a cute multiplayer game with some neat gimmicks attached. I had a great time free-roaming because it’s a novel idea for a Mario Kart game, but it’s not a groundbreaking idea in the grand scheme of video games. There are plenty of massive open-world games far bigger and more content-filled than Mario Kart that cost less. Is the value here just that Nintendo had a cool new idea, therefore it’s worth more money? That feels like it only makes sense from a developer’s perspective, not a buyer’s.
I don’t think that will ultimately stop me from getting Mario Kart World, even if it means buying a pricier Switch 2 bundle to save a little. Every new touch here made me smile, just like a Nintendo game should. I’m excited to see how dynamic weather might change races and what other wacky outfits there are for racers. It’s going to be a defining game of the Switch 2 era, and it’ll no doubt be a lot of fun. I just wish budget balancing wasn’t one of its back of the box features.
Mario Kart World launches on June 5 for Nintendo Switch 2.
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