3.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Mario Kart World.

Mario Kart World is really fun, but that's kind of to be expected for a Mario Kart game. To put it simply, this is just more Mario Kart. Besides a few new mechanics, 24 players and the open world aspect, there's nothing really new for the series here. Not to say that's a bad thing, as I found Mario Kart 8 Deluxe kind of perfected the series. But after pricing the game at $80, you kind of set your expectations higher because of that. To start with the positives, the core gameplay is just Mario Kart. If you've played a Mario Kart game before you should expect pretty much the same thing here with a few twists. I like the addition of an extra 12 players, at first I thought this would make matches significantly more chaotic, but after putting 30 or so hours into it I've realized 24 players kind of feels the same as 12 with these tracks, unless you're playing online. I also love the new tricks you're able to perform on walls and railings, after practicing a lot and seeing some crazy people do insane tricks on Twitter, I can already tell this game will have a high skill ceiling when it comes to competitive play. Knockout tour is also a welcome addition to the series, I never expected to love it as much as I did, but I've spent most of my time playing this mode. It kind of goes without saying that the music in a Mario Kart game is really good, but this soundtrack exceeded my expectations in pretty much every way. The new "Mario Wonder"-esque direction these newer Mario games have been going for has really won me over too, I love how expressive everything is compared to a lot of the older games, especially for Mario Kart. For some reason there's a lot that was part of older Mario Kart games that just seem to be gutted with no explanation. For example 200CC is nowhere to be found, I guess there's an argument to be made it could have been too hard to implement with the new tricks system, but I personally don't believe that to be true. Battle mode is almost non existent in Mario Kart World, sure there's Balloon Battle and Coin Runners, but compared to Mario Kart 8's five battle modes this feels like nothing. On top of that the maps are genuinely terrible and way too big even for 24 players, I played Coin Runners online a few times and always had trouble finding other players to steal coins from. I'm also just not a big fan of the unlock system in this game, especially for NPC characters. For some reason all of the NPC characters are locked behind a Kamek power-up that will randomly turn you into a character you may or may not have already unlocked before. I really hate this system as it makes unlocking new characters completely luck based, with certain characters having higher or lower percentages on certain maps. Another thing I dislike is the UI once you unlock everything. For some reason costumes are listed as new characters in the character selection screen. So in order to pick the character you like, you need to scroll through several pages of characters in order to select a specific one. I know that's more of a nitpick but I really wish they were categorized better. One of my most anticipated aspects of this game was its open world, and after completing most of what I could find on my own, I've just given up. I'm extremely disappointed with what was presented to me here as most of it was barren and empty. The most you're able to find are several hundred P switches, several hundred Peach medallions and 150 Question Mark blocks. None of these are really fun to hunt out, and kind of just feel like filler in an otherwise empty world. I spent nearly 10 or so hours collecting all of the question mark blocks and all I was given as a reward were stickers. The whole sticker system is another complaint as you can't really do anything with them besides put one of them on your car at a time. It's just a such a lackluster reward and makes me kind of regret searching to find them to begin with. I unfortunately feel kind of ripped off when it comes to Mario Kart World. $80 as a new standard for Nintendo games is a steep asking price, and I can understand why so many people are against this, including myself. My classic rule has always been translating every $10 into 2 hours of playtime, similar to how a $10 movie ticket lets you watch a 2 hour movie. So if a game is worth $60 I should be able to get 12 hours out of it, Obviously there's exceptions to this rule, but most of the time this system has helped me justify spending ungodly amounts of money on video games without making me feel like I've wasted my money. But in Mario Kart World's case and comparing it to previous Nintendo games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, I definitely don't see why there's a price increase besides Nintendo just wanting more money. There's just simply not enough new content to justify the $80 spent. I know it took over 10 years to get Mario Kart 8 Deluxe into the state it's currently in, but with with a price point at $60 or less, especially nowadays, It's hard to not feel like I'm paying more for effectively the same product with less to do. If you're able to get the Switch 2 Bundle that includes the game for $50 more, I definitely recommend going that route instead of paying $80. While Mario Kart World is fun, It is not worth the current asking price, and I highly recommend waiting for some kind of sale to pick it up.