After playing Mario Kart World for over five hours, it’s clear that all the classic elements that make the arcade racing series great are present. Tense, chaotic moment-to-moment action. Wacky items that can sway the balance of a relay at the drop of a hat. A solid handling system. Even the mechanics that require mastery like drifting are present, with some new ideas like the charge jump layering some new depth to the way players navigate the track.
But there’s one part of this new entry I wasn’t quite convinced of by the end of my session: Mario Kart World’s big, interconnected continent. While I had high hopes that Nintendo would do for the Forza Horizon formula what Breath Of The Wild did for open-world adventure games, I came away feeling more underwhelmed than I anticipated.
