Glotero Mario Kart World Review

I feel like Mario Kart World´s biggest achievement is that it feels fresh. After 11 years, as great as Mario Kart 8 was, I was just tired of playing it. The booster course pass definitely gave Kart 8 Deluxe some extra gasoline, but I thought that it only made it clearer how tired its mechanics felt at that point. It really made me wonder what could possibly be done for the next installment in the series. The answer: A connected, huge Mario Kart world. Now, much has been said about the free roam aspect of the game which has been underwhelming for most, and I do agree on how barren and uninspired it can feel in that particular mode, but honestly, free roam isn´t the key to this game huge success. To me, it is the context of an open world integrated into the races of Mario Kart World that has enhanced the experience as a whole. And what better mode to exemplify this than with Knock Out Tour which is probably the best mode ever introduced into the series. The thrill of starting from a corner of the map and race through the interconnected world down to the other corner with the constant rush to survive its checkpoints is not only super fun, but also visually stunning, varied, and filled with personality. It´s an audiovisual Super Mario fever dream and it is here that the "world" aspect truly shines. Grand-Prix also takes advantage of this by having intermission tracks be part of the first 2 laps, with a traditional track being the third lap. There has been much debate about this new direction for Grand-Prix, but in my opinion, it is a perfect diversion that immediately makes the single player content in this particular Mario Kart feel different to its predecessors and also much more like a journey. Reaching Rainbow Road has never felt more magical. I also felt that this approach allowed the traditional tracks to also feel special on their own, as journeying through them for just 1 lap left you desiring for more. And more you can absolutely enjoy and get out of them, but separately, without compromising the fresh new ideas and sensations that the interconnected world design of the game provides. In this way, it is the best of both worlds as I was happy to discover that even with this much wider approach to design, the actual tracks in the game still felt top notch, with some of them being the best in the series so far. And yet, it was while racing through them in the traditional 3 lap manner that I realized how much I actually appreciated everything that has been added to this entry in the series. Don´t get me wrong, I am a Mario Kart traditionalist, and I would have shamed to all the corners of the earth the omission of classic gameplay, but it definitely felt that if Mario Kart World was just classic Mario Kart, it would have not been enough and I say this while loving the classic gameplay as it also feels tighter and more skill-based than ever. The boost jump and wall-riding adds tons of depth and layers to the gameplay, more than anti-gravity sections ever wished to deliver in Mario Kart 8. Still, while the intermissions are a great way into pouring diversity into the racing experience, it is true that the gameplay conditions and strategy are much different to traditional 3 lap racing and thus not having an option to separate these while playing online, which can definitely be a much more competitive environment, feels a bit out of touch. Sometimes I want the intermissions to be there, and sometimes I don´t and not being able to choose is frustrating for sure. On a similar fashion, while I absolutely have tons of praise for everything added that makes Mario Kart World unique; having only 30 traditional tracks in the game does unfortunately feel like a step down from the massive collection of tracks on Mario Kart 8. It´s an unfair comparison, as 8 grew through the years and was of course, less of an ambitious project than this, but it is how it is. In fact, Mario Kart World is so ambitious that it feels like it couldn´t truly expand on all of its ideas, as Knock Out Tour also only has 8 different excursions and Battle Mode could have been scrapped all together as it feels extremely bare-bones this time around. For all of its successes it feels like compromises also had to be made. I also don´t like how 4 player split-screen is 30 frames per second yet again. Some questionable decisions and a variety of compromises hurts the overall package, but I am still playing it and I am having a blast doing so; and I think that is the biggest praise that I can give it and signifies to me that the objective was accomplished for this one. I was tired of Mario Kart 8, but I can´t wait to play more of Mario Kart World and I am sure Nintendo is going to keep updating it and I couldn´t be more excited for whats more to come.