Mario Kart World — Review

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold over 60 million copies. Following that is structurally hard. Mario Kart World's answer is the right one: don't iterate, reinvent.

The Open World

The connected overworld is the headline feature and it actually works — drifting between courses, finding shortcuts that bridge tracks you've raced separately, discovering new event types in the open spaces between circuits. The overworld doesn't replace the race tracks; it threads them together in a way that makes the whole game read as a single connected place.

The Core Race

The track design is the Mario Kart you know, sharper. Item balance has been tuned across the launch period, and the moment-to-moment race feels great. Drift physics carry over from MK8 but the new shortcut economy — and the way the overworld feeds into time-trial routes — rewards the kind of map literacy the series hasn't asked for since the GBA era.

What Sticks

The open world isn't filler. It changes how you think about the courses themselves — a lot of them now read as sections of a single connected map. The roster is the broadest the series has shipped, and the new event types (rally-style chases, open-track challenges) add range without diluting the central race.

What Holds It Back

A handful of courses lean on familiar Mario Kart visual vocabulary harder than the rest of the package warrants. Battle Mode is competent rather than transformative. The post-launch update cadence will be the long verdict — Nintendo's track record here is strong but not unblemished.

Who It's For

Everyone with a Switch 2. This will be the system's defining multiplayer game for years.