Mario Kart World is the best Mario Kart game I have played. Sure, I have only spent a couple of days with this game, but it only keeps getting better the more I play.
Immediately you are starting up on the menu and you have an option to immediately jump into free roam. Basically, wherever your character is in the menu on the map, you just immediately begin playing the game and exploring this beautifully crafted world.
As someone who just prefers to be in a world and enjoy the atmosphere without the clutter that is prominent in many open world games, I love this world. And yes, I am the guy who prefers Breath of the Wild over Tears of the Kingdom for this exact reason.
It reminds me back when I was a kid and I would play make-believe with my action figures. And sometimes when my action figures needed to go travel to places, I would boot up a game like Crazy Taxi and drive these characters to different location and then continue playing in my room.
Mario Kart World is a perfect encapsulation of that and I understand that this might sound super negative, but I look at it positivity, hahaha. I would just love to have played this as a kid, being able to explore the dinosaur world and then you see all these like sugary treats somewhere in the Peach’s Castle.
This world is so well thought out and allows my imagination to flow and I freaking love it.
They added awesome new features added to Mario Kart World. And look, I’m the guy who is not a fan of Mario Kart 8m, in fact, I really just enjoy Mario Kart Double Dash. And World has so many new features. You can grind on rails now. You can do wall rides. You can do a bunch of cool flips and trick in the air multiple times. You know, you can just keep on tricking and tricking and tricking. They added so much movement to karts. That is just awesome.
Speaking of movement, this game allows you to decide your choice of navigating the world as you’re racing across these maps. Yes, you can say that there are many shortcuts in each of these races, but honestly, shortcuts aren’t always the correct choice. The way I think about these are they’re more strategic paths that you have to choose.
Some tracks will be riddled with people on them. So you’re like, you know what? I’m going to take the road less traveled because guess what? I’m not going to be hit by thousands of Koopa shells. That is your prerogative. That is what you can do. And I love that.
Speaking of which, this game continues to get more and more chaotic through its 24 player races. I didn’t realize how much I would love this, but whether you’re facing against CPU, against online players or your friends, it’s just absolutely insane with the amount of items being thrown at you at the same velocity they were in previous Mario Kart games. Making the Grand Prix & the new mode Knockout Tour so much more chaotic & fun!
The Grand Prix is unlike other games, you’ll do your first few laps on the first map, but the second, third and fourth races, you’re actually traveling in between race one, race two, race three and race four. It makes it feel like one grand race! It adds so much variety and allows you to experience this world as a whole. It really feels like a cross country race.
Speaking of cross country races, Knockout Tour is just a cross country race. You are going between five to six different maps and you are traveling across them. You’re not doing laps, you are enjoying the traveling across this beautifully crafted Mario Kart World. And it is so freaking cool.
If you’ve ever seen the 70s movie Cannonball Run or you’re a big fan of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 7, Steel Ball Run, it’s basically that. As you get through different checkpoints throughout the race, players are eliminated. You basically going from 24 players all the way down to 4. And it is absolutely thrilling, especially if you’re in online mode where every single human player knows that if they don’t hit the checkpoint, they get game over. So everyone is throwing all their items at once to pass a checkpoint.
There are so many times where I’m just about to get past the checkpoint and either someone hits me or someone ahead of me starts to get hit and it knocks me back so many places. I have lost knockout races just by being a few millimeters away from the checkpoint.
And I am having the best time of my life, smiling the entire freaking time. It is just absolutely wonderful. And not to mention the music in this game is absolutely incredible. They pay tribute to some of the most awesome tracks in Mario Kart. It is so wonderful to hear all of these different remixes. Thank you all for reading my love of Mario Kart World!
