It’s here everyone! Mark this page, for it is my first Switch 2 game review *insert fanfare*

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was the best selling game on the Switch, despite it being an enhanced port of a Wii U game. So in my eyes, making the next Mario Kart game a launch title for the new machine made complete sense. When the Switch 2 was first shown, a new Mario Kart was the game it showed a few seconds of and was its first launch title. Now let’s get into this game.

Mario Kart games have quite a prestige to them and Worlds continues that. Whilst the core elements in 8 are still here there have been quite a few changes too. First up gone are the Zero Gravity sections (here’s the F-Zero fans hoping now this means a return of that franchise) Instead we have the Rail and Wall Riding. While at first that might seem like a downgrade in track design, I have found it’s meant that many of the tracks instead have some truly great impressive technical short cuts when you start mastering what the game can do. Underwater driving is also gone but instead our carts turn into would be jet skis when they hit water so those that are good with trick jumping can get some considerable speed or hitting waves at the right angle too. The speeds I’ve seen certain time trials completed with all this is very impressive.

Obviously for those that came off 8 Deluxe with its huge booster course expansion, there are not as many race tracks as that but that’s comparing several waves of dlc to the base game and what we do have is some of the most impressive track designs and races I’ve seen in a long time. 8 Grand Prix, 7 at the start with special unlocked at the end with 3 speeds plus Mirror Mode to unlock. Each starts with your standard multi lap race but then from then on driving to the next track becomes part of the race, which includes avoiding traffic.

A new mode for this game is the Knockout Rally, which turns into one long race set over multiple tracks or at least journeys to tracks where the bottom 4 people get removed at every checkpoint. Let me tell you, doing that online and getting into the last section of the track, oh makes your heart beat rapidly. Though with this mode more than any you will get frustrated from poor item luck, be it suddenly being cheated out an item box at the last second or getting that awful gold shell item when you needed literally anything else. Which leads to my main issue with online…

When online you have a points system. While I am all for getting points if you do well, you lose points for doing badly, meaning you can lose points in things that are entirely luck based, given the party nature of Mario Kart races this is just a bad idea. Getting punished for things beyond your control just because RNG decided to mess with you, it goes against the very nature of the game.

A lesser complaint is to the unlocking of what are called the NPC characters. You may have seen pictures of video of the cow driving about in the game, that’s what’s called an NPC character. While the “normal” ones have multiple outfits you can unlock by finding food in the game, NPCs are just single things and often very jokey. While a good number are available from the start, others need to be gotten by being turned into them by the Kamek item. This can be quite random and some end up being very rare because they are tied to locations, essentially forcing me to put on a two player mode and try to force Kamek to appear.

But I’ve yet to talk about the big feature of the game, the one the World title is attributed too. For as shown by Knockout Rally just being one long race, or Grandprix driving from track to track, this isn’t just a road, it’s a world, everything beyond the track is also there, and in Free Roam you can explore that. Suddenly structures that maybe were just in the background, are explorable as are the areas  between tracks in the open. While there are plenty of things to find in there with semi rewards, namely these little icon things you can have next to your name from finding ? panels in the tracks, or completing the P switch missions all around or the sneakily hidden Peach coins, sometimes it’s just relaxing to have a drive around, these last few days I found just doing Rail Grinding along the railway lines to go all around the map was a nice way to see the place. I even took a few pictures. It’s a fun mode to just get lost in like any good Open World game.

I could keep going on about it, but as I mentioned in the above paragraph, it’s a game to play and get lost in, discover the sights. Do I have issues? Yes but I also hope those get fixed. While I don’t like the point system and hope it gets removed, I want that one car I keep seeing a large number of people online use removed, basically a bit of a balance patch. It is worth noting this is the most expensive game on the Switch 2, at £75 it is one you need to think about on buying. BUT with that I have to note, this has no Bonus or Collectors’ edition or dlc (currently) so for what it’s asking it contains more content without dlc than others whose price balloons to above that cost. It’s a lot upfront though. Still I’ve been enjoying this game a lot and has been the first time playing Mario Kart online, to the point I find it hard to go back to what I normally do burning time on Mario Kart with just playing Grand Prix against the computer, the madness of those races is, well madness.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮