Did Nintendo justify Mario Kart World being $80?
Something happened today and we need to talk about it. After Nintendo revealed the price of Mario Kart World for Switch 2, the long awaited sequel to Mario Kart 8 was put in a very difficult position. Along with the fairly pricey upgrade for the console itself, Nintendo revealed that Mario Kart World was going to be £75/$80 USD/€90 which is a huge jump in price compared to the previous title.
Nintendo did announce during the reveal of the Switch 2 that we would be getting a separate Mario Kart World Direct today where they would go into more details about the game and whilst the game looked great, I wasn’t blown away with what was shown off to the extent that I was going to rush out and buy it.
The Direct was Nintendo’s chance to come out and explain why they had made the decision to charge more for Mario Kart World, their launch title for the new system, compared to tother games for the Switch 2. But, did they manage to do that? In all honesty, I don’t think so and here’s why I am not convinced by what I’m seeing.
Grand prix
The first thing shown off in the Direct was the world itself which looks incredible. It’s a really big space and each of the courses carries on with the theme of the part of the world they are set in, which is amazing to see and helps to support some of the variety in the tracks themselves.
The tracks that were shown off were mostly courses we have already seen in the Treehouse Lives or in the initial Switch 2 Direct, but there was one new course which really got some air time which I am curious by. We saw this dark tinged course called Boo Cinema which is so stunning. The idea is that you drive into the screen of the cinema and you then drive the course through the film itself so all of the characters and the course take on a dark tint which is reminiscent of the old cine camera style. It’s going to be a lot of fun to play around that one.
Credit: Nintendo
The Mario Kart World Direct also revealed that some of the courses would be returning courses, which is nice to see old tracks coming back but they have been reimagined. I personally love revisiting the older tracks and seeing some of my favourites make a return so I’m glad this is in here.
The one thing that I did note which made me kind of upset and I really hope doesn’t happen is they only showed us 7 cups in the Grand Prix. I know that a staple of the franchise is you get a limited amount of content and as you play and improve your scores, you unlock more later and I really hope that is the case as only seeing 7 cups puts Mario Kart World to shame compared to the higher number of options in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
The other thing which concerns me about racing in Mario Kart World is the new idea of driving to the next course. This was originally shown off in the Switch 2 Direct, but we did see it get mentioned in today’s Direct as well so it’s worth talking about. I like the idea of driving to a new course, and I want to enjoy that a lot. With the enhanced performance, I was expecting that when you are supposed to drive to the next course before you begin that this would be its own separate race or it would act as the loading screen before you start onto the new track and you race your three laps around the next track like normal. However, that’s not what happens.
Credit: Nintendo
Instead, the drive to the next track is the next track for want of a better way to explain it. So, when you end your first race which has your 3 standard laps around the course, you then get a countdown to begin your next track, but you haven’t made it to the course yet. You then drive two laps to get to the next course before completing your third lap on the actual track. So, where you would get three laps on the first track, in Grand Prix, your second, third and fourth races will see you only race one lap on each track.
I don’t like this at all because it means that the first two laps of those tracks are completely straight roads and there’s nothing to really see or do as you are going to the next course. I was hoping that the Direct would explain this a bit more, but nope. We got no more information other than, you drive to the next course. To me, that takes away from what is special about Mario Kart generally because I like the racing around the course. The addition of being able to drive to a track seems like a great new feature, but in Mario Kart World, it looks like it’s been poorly executed compared to what people where expecting from it.
Credit: Nintendo
What was also mentioned as the big final reward for scoring well in all the Grand Prix races was a colourful track, which by now Nintendo knows that we all know what Rainbow Road is. We didn’t see any footage of Rainbow Road and how this version is going to be different from previous titles, but hopefully it’s going to be as much fun as its predecessors as Rainbow Road on Wii is still my favourite track of all time and I will insist on playing it until the Moo Moo Meadows cows come home.
Generally speaking, I didn’t see anything really exciting or new from Grand Prix mode. You’re still racing in the same way you did before, the structure of each cup is the same. The only thing which is different is the driving between worlds, but I can’t say that this feature makes me excited to play Mario Kart World, but we will see how it all plays when I am able to get my hands on the game at launch.
Knockout tour
We then got another look at Knockout Tour which is the new mode for Mario Kart World, but again, nothing new was shown off here that we didn’t already know before.
The idea is that it’s like Fall Guys in that you have to place in the top group of players and if you fall below the threshold you are knocked out of the race.
Credit: Nintendo
My concerns going into the Direct about the tracks being pretty straight here wasn’t really addressed by Nintendo. So, let’s say that the way you are going to do well with Knockout Tour is that you pick the fastest characters which have quick recovery times and that’s it. You will do well enough every time.
Knockout Tour looks like it’s going to be fun, but I am concerned that this mode is really only about speed and less about strategy and the chaos that typically comes with a Mario Kart game and with the tracks being largely straight, I worry that’s going to amplify the issues this mode will have which will make it less fun overall.
New items
The Direct then moved on to cover some of the items that are being introduced in Mario Kart World, and I won’t lie, I was a bit confused in this segment when they showed this off.
There were 6 new items which were shown off in the Direct, but from what I can tell, most of them aren’t really new.
We saw the coin shell which was shown in the reveal trailers, it’s a gold shell which you throw and it drops coins in front of you which you can collect and having 20 coins at any one time will increase your speed so this is a really helpful item to have if you are in a tight spot and need some extra speed. But, what is a nice balance to this is that the coins are dropped so they are available to all players so if someone comes up in front of you, they can follow the path of the coins and take them all for themselves. So, I’m pleased this is an option too.
Credit: Nintendo
Then there was the ice flower which freezes players for a moment. It basically works the same way as the fire flower which knocks players back for a bit if you hit them with a ball of fire. So, having an alternative to this is a good thing.
The definite new item which I love the look of is the hammer. This allows you to throw a series of hammers into the road which can either act as a barrier against other players and cause obstacles or it looks like it can hit them and knock them back for a time. I like the looks of this item and I think this is going to be a lot of fun to play with.
We saw the mega mushroom item which makes you really big and you can drive over other players whilst in this form. This was sold as a new item, but it isn’t. I thought when I first saw this one that I had seen it before and it turns out the item was available in Mario Kart Wii. So, good thing I was paying attention to this one because otherwise I wouldn’t have clocked that it’s actually a returning item, not a new one.
There was the feather item shown off which lets you jump for a moment. This seems to have two uses, one is to allow you to access rails and potentially walls to wall jump or grind for a while, whilst the other use case is to allow you to avoid items like red shells being thrown at you. I love this item. It’s not new, it was definitely in the battle modes for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but if it works to stop blue shells, that’s going to be a really powerful item which I am excited to see.
Credit: Nintendo
The last item that was shown off wasn’t really an item. You can have Kamek appear in the race and cause random things to happen on the track. Nothing too random was being shown off here. But we did see Kamek turn all of the players into a completely different character. I think there are probably more use cases here than have been revealed and I can’t wait to see what mischief Kamek will cause in the race overall.
We also got a look at the food that was being consumed from the reveal trailers which seemed to change the character’s outfits. It’s called Take Out and you make pit stops into Yoshi’s to grab different meals. In addition to the food giving you a small speed boost, the transformation into another costume is relative to the meal you are consuming and this is how you unlock new characters in costumes which you can then select as a new racer. I’m not overly thrilled about this implementation personally because it seems like once you have consumed the food once with each character, you don’t need to do this again so the meal doesn’t actually do much other than give you a speed boost. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t be actively going out of my way to find all of these meals personally.
There’s an interesting mix within the items, but to say that they are all new items is an understatement. There’s some good additions here and with some use cases shown off, it gives us a good idea what to expect when the game does launch, but overall, I feel like the items alone aren’t really going to change the fundamentals of Mario Kart World.
New techniques
From the items, we then got to see two new techniques which you can use in Mario Kart World. After we had seen the wall jumps and grinding shown off players were trying to work out how you are going to be able to jump high enough to take advantage of that and now we have an answer on it.
Credit: Nintendo
Charge jump is a new feature which allows you to jump with increased height depending on how long you drift for in a straight line. Finally we’re not just limited to having to turn in a drift and it has some other usage! It looks like the longer you hold the drift, the higher the jump which will then give you access to some of those secret paths and alternative routes which were mentioned in the Switch 2 Direct.
The other new technique shown off is one which I don’t think I will use all that much which is called Rewind. As the name implies, if you mess up a manoeuvre and you want to try it again, you can rewind your screen and try it again. However, what was pointed out during the Direct was that this only affects you. Not other players. So, if you do it, you are going to be at a disadvantage because you will be put back behind everyone else all for the sake of reworking what you just did. It is worth pointing out that Rewind is only available in Free Roam and solo races so it’s not going to be available during online play which I am so thankful for as that would be incredibly detrimental to everyone. But, the fact that it only affects you and not other players is probably a good sign that most people aren’t going to use it unless they are trying to hone a skill in Free Roam.
Free Roam
Speaking of, we also saw more of what Free Roam is going to offer. Now, this is where Nintendo really had a chance to pull the punches and tell us exactly why this game was going to be $80 because up until this point, other than a couple of features, everything was basically normal Mario Kart. So, with a large world which you can explore at your leisure, it was a good opportunity to show us all why Mario Kart World is going to be the best Mario Kart experience and they really didn’t deliver much.
There were questions going into the Direct about what would make Free Roam exciting and many were talking about story modes or additional quests just something which would make the world come to life.
Credit: Nintendo
What was shown off to date was quite barren and empty so players need something to give Free Roam some substance and what did Nintendo reveal you can do during your explorations around the world? You can find hidden P switches which will activate timed missions, there are hidden coins to collect and hidden panels which are question blocks that show you a message saying you activated something. There was no mention as to what doing all of this results in, but I’m guessing there may be an internal achievement system and when you’ve completed them all you can unlock new racers or something else. Who knows though, we will have to wait to see what happens with this.
The camera mode was also shown off again which is exclusive to Free Roam. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t call this a feature I would want to use all the time exploring the world. I would really like to be able to use the camera mode in races to take pictures of my friends mid action or if I had been knocked out in Knockout Tour to be able to showcase my friend winning or getting someone with a really good item, but sadly, you can’t do that.
I do really like the look of Free Roam, but in all honesty, I don’t think I will be using it all that often because once you’ve completed a Grand Prix run or played a few rounds of Knockout Tour, you don’t really need to explore the world. The idea of hidden objectives which I can discover is interesting, but I’m not excited about discovering these when the world looks so empty to begin with. Maybe I will try this with friends, but otherwise, I’ll be happy just playing races.
Is Mario Kart World worth $80?
So, after a really short Direct that had a lot of information thrown into it comes the really big question that Nintendo needed to answer at the end of it all. Is Mario Kart World worth the $80? Is there enough content for you to discover that this is going to be the best Mario Kart experience you have ever had? In all honesty, I don’t think it is worth it.
Yes, there are new features and modes to discover in the form of Free Roam and Knockout Tour but when these were first shown off in the reveal trailers, they felt more like DLC modes for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe than anything else.
Credit: Nintendo
There are improved graphics and animations in the characters and level designs from Mario Kart 8 but that comes with newer and better hardware than both Wii U and Nintendo Switch.
Mario Kart World looks like a really polished game, but in what should have been the opportunity Nintendo had to allay my concerns about how the game plays and give me a good reason to see why this game is worth so much, I really didn’t see it. Am I going to buy the game? Yes, because I enjoy Mario Kart, but I’m not happy about the price of it. From what I’ve seen today, the cost of the game is more akin to the price which I paid for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (about £30-£40) than the £75 that Nintendo is insisting I pay and if it weren’t for the fact it was bundled into the Switch 2 and I was able to pre-order a Switch 2 fairly easily I would probably be looking for cheaper ways to play Mario Kart World than what is currently being offered.
Are you excited about Mario Kart World or are you sticking with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? What did you think of the Nintendo Direct? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll see you in the next one.
