Today’s game is Mario Kart World. I was debating picking up the console because my Switch 1 is broken, but also it’s outrageously expensive. Luckily, it doesn’t seem like I’ll have to do that as it was bought by my family instead for the younglings to play. So now I get to experience it without the massive price tag of the game or console.
My consensus was just kind of “Yep, that certainly is the next Mario Kart”. It’s not anything special in my opinion compared to the others, but also Mario Kart doesn’t really need to be. Mario Kart is the kind of game I throw on when I have friends over. It’s not this big thing I spend hours myself trying to complete. It’s certainly not worth that outrageous price tag though.
One thing I’ve liked about it is the outfits. Horribly organized, but they have some amazing outfits. Like for example Rosalina’s Halloween ish outfit. It’s got this cool design that reminds me of sea anemones.
The character roster feels a bit stretched to meet the goal of racers(looking at you Cataquacks and Cow). They’re fun and funky additions but take up too much space on the roster for me to really justify them being there.
Overall, it’s Mario Kart again. Not something id spend all that money on, but to each their own I suppose. I was also wanting to talk about the races, but there’s a lot to talk about there, and I’m wiped (something I’m sure shows in this post. I’m legit passing out while typing this) after a long day today, so maybe this won’t be the last time this shows up as id love to discuss the races.
I heard its “slow” compared to past mario karts. Care to comment on that? I’ve also been holding off on a switch2, I just can’t justify the upgrade yet.
I wouldn’t say it’s “slow” per se, but it does feel different, and in some ways I believe it’s not as good as its predecessors.
One consideration is that it does not have the 200cc mode that MK8 added after the fact. It’s currently (maybe permanently?) at the default max speed of 150cc.
The biggest difference for me though is the courses. Previous MK games use circuit courses, where you start at the finish line and you race in 3 or more laps in a circle that returns to the same finish line. MK8 fleshed out a bit more by incorporating lengthy straightaway courses, where you start at point A and race to point B, with laps being more like checkpoints along the way. But the majority of tracks in MK8 were still circuits.
Mario Kart World, on the other hand, is primarily straightaway style tracks with only a small smattering of circuits, because it’s attempting to integrate everything with the open world map they made, and those tracks also feel like they have less character. The majority of races feel harder to pace because most of them do not repeat themselves, and there’s less opportunity to learn a lap and do better on the next one within the same race.
There’s also the fact that they doubled the number of characters in each race compared to MK8. MK8 had 12 racers per course, MKW has 24. All of those racers are still picking up items, still tossing red shells and blue shells everywhere, still spamming lightning, etc., so it feels a lot more chaotic.
Accommodating that aspect is the fact that it now takes 20 coins to hit max speed instead of 10, because they assume you’re going to get hit by more things that you can’t avoid, so it can take longer to ramp up your speed from the beginning of the race.
Final notable difference that may contribute to a feeling of “slowness” off the top of my head is that you no longer choose parts of a kart like you did in MK8. You simply choose a racer and choose a cart, and your stats are based only on a combination of those two factors. It is more difficult to optimize for things like acceleration, max speed, and turning because you can no longer mix and match parts that exactly fit your stat preferences.
All of this is just my opinion from having played it, but I think that MK8 is still the better Mario Kart game. Just considering how content-dense it is after years of DLC, and the fact that it still runs well on Switch 2, tells me that it’s still worth keeping around and still a good go-to for Mario Kart nights with friends. MKW is still a fun game, and I’d recommend it for Mario Kart fans looking to change things up a bit, but it tried a lot of new things and not all of them work as well as I think they could have.
I agree with your last point. Mario Kart 8 will probably be my go to for casual friends. I appreciate World trying to experiment but it needs a bit to grow into it’s shoes and figure things out I think
Not OP. I certainly think it is slower, especially with the absence of 200cc, but I also don‘t make much use of grinding/walldriving so I‘m likely a lot slower than I could be. I just generally like MK8 more since a lot of the tracks really have that „this is a filler track between tracks“ feeling to them for me. YMMV.
I had a friend give it a try too. I personally didn’t notice a difference (but also my go to Mario Kart is 64). But he plays a lot of 8 deluxe and kept commenting on how slow it is.
I really like the switch 2, and with my switch 1 being broken for me. It’s much more of a “Buy a new switch 1, and a $100 investment into the new system”. I think I will get one soon, but I think I’m gonna hold off for a bit just to see what exclusive it’s gonna get, because the ones I’ve seen aren’t very appealing to me.
good call. I’ll wait for a few more games to come out then maybe pull the trigger later. I’m busy going through a catalogue of unplayed games like ace attorney and luigi’s mansion (I’m playing couch coop with my significant other through the stories of games we found on sale).
Damn. You just reminded me I need to pick up Ace Attorney again. I played it on my 3DS, got to the second game, then dropped it and proceeded to be it on 3 separate systems. I really should pick it up again because it was so much fun
Shameless plug, but you should join !nintendo@lemmy.world 😀
just did, thanks!