For me, no video game is inherently a slam dunk. I never feel comfortable making a judgement call like that in earnest until I’ve gotten significant hands-on time with a game. Will Grand Theft Auto 6 make a boatload of money? Yes. Do I have any reason to think it will be 2026’s Game of the Year before playing it? No. Even one demo isn’t enough to convince me, and that was true when I played Mario Kart World in April. While it offered some reliable racing fun, the jury was very much out on its open-world pivot, its wider tracks, and 24-player modes. I needed to play a whole lot more.
Now, just days ahead of the Nintendo Switch 2’s June 5 release date, I’ve gotten to spend significantly more time with the system’s big launch game. I spent several hours with Mario Kart World, playing everything from Free-Roam to Coin Runners. That gave me the clearer picture I needed to confidently predict that the multiplayer game will be an immediate staple of the Switch 2’s library. While there are still pieces I’m not entirely sold on, the combination of tense multiplayer modes and relaxing solo exploration makes for a promising launch game that could comfortably occupy hundreds of hours of playtime.
Wherever I roam
My demo was split up into several sessions. The back half was all about multiplayer, as I toured every mode alongside other press members. The first half was what I really came to see, though. I’d get plenty of time to do whatever I wanted in single-player mode. I used that time to win two Grand Prixs, race against a ghost in a Time Trial, and spend some significant time exploring the open-world. That last piece was a bit of a make or break detail, as I walked away from my April demo a little worried that Free-Roam didn’t have much to offer.
And for a moment, that still held true as my demo began. Here, I was free to go anywhere I wanted on the map. I could drive through tracks or go off defined roads entirely and simply explore the scenery. That continued to feel like a novelty at first as I cruised through some detailed, but ultimately empty environments. What this did give me space to appreciate is just how powerful the Switch 2 really is. At one point, I found a ground rail that took me all the way up to the top of a mountain. Naturally, I drove off it once I hit the top. I could see incredibly far off in the distance, with details on the ground in full focus as I glided overhead. It’s a far cry from Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which could barely load textures from that height. As impressive as that was, it didn’t feel like there was much to do initially aside from driving through some stray enemies or getting sucked up by a stray UFO.
Thankfully, I found much more to do as I began to discover the flow of exploration. There are three primary collectibles players find in Free-Roam mode. Peach coins are collectible tokens hidden in hard to reach places. I’m not exactly sure what they do, but they’re a shiny thing to grab. Then there are question mark panels that are hidden throughout the world. Again, I couldn’t figure out what the ultimate goal of driving over them was, but each section of the map does have a few and my progress is tracked on the map screen. It seems like there’s some kind of reward for finding each set housed in and around a track.
The real meat of Free-Roam comes from P-Switches, little blue switches that are found all over the map. When I drive into one, I begin a short challenge in the world. One had me racing behind a pick-up truck and trying to drive into its bed. Another had me grinding up into the sky on vines. Most missions are either coin collecting affairs or races to some sort of nearby finish line, and the ones I played could be completed in no more than a minute, if not seconds. There are hundreds of them to find and their locations aren’t always obvious. Sometimes they’re out in the middle of a desert. Other times, they’re tucked away in a nook on a track. They can seem few and far between at first, but that actually speaks to just how densely designed World’s map is. It’s not that the map is gigantic; I drove from one edge to another in roughly nine minutes. It’s more that it contains a lot of verticality that comes from environments that twist in on themselves. Finding each one seems like a long-term challenge akin to discovering all of Breath of the Wild’s Koroks.
What initially felt a little boring became meditative by the end of my demo. Anytime I had downtime as demoists set up a multiplayer session, I kept naturally popping back into Free-Roam to do a little more. Doing so gave me stickers that act as a sort of in-game achievement system. I can even set one to appear next to my name during races, letting me put some bragging rights on display. I could also pick up stacks of coins here, which go towards unlocking new karts (I unlocked one at 100 coins collected, and then 300, 300, and so on). That goes hand in hand with some other progression hooks, as characters also need to be unlocked whether by racing in Grand Prixs or discovering additional outfits in the world.
That’s where the open-world idea finally came together for me. I can now see the scenario in which I’d want to roam around. Maybe I’m waiting for a friend to log on and have a few minutes to kill. Maybe I just want to drive around, but don’t feel like doing a whole cup. It’s not so much the focus of World as it is something to pick away with years of downtime. That makes Free-Roam feel like a mode that’s built to last an entire console lifetime rather than something that’s meant to be completed all at once.
Tense races
Free-Roam represents a more casual side of Mario Kart World, one that’s great for lazy Sundays spent lounging on the couch in handheld mode. The multiplayer half of my day, however, showed me just how intense the other end of the spectrum can get. Knockout Tour continues to be the star of the show here, as the elimination mode had me swearing up a storm as I tried to survive to the end. As is the case with Mario Kart, I loved it when I was doing well and cursed it when I wasn’t. When I could lock into a race and show off my drifting prowess or clever mushroom use, I felt like I was playing a very skill-heavy game with lots of nuances.
For instance, power jumping is a new maneuver with lots of potential for hardcore players. If players hold the drift button without pressing the joystick, they can charge a jump. Doing so lets them get up on rails to grind them and ride on walls. It can also be used to give players constant boosts, as landing a jump always gives a burst of speed. I can see a world where high-level players are jumping as much as possible during races to smash time trials. It’s not an easy trick to pull off, though. Even the slightest joystick touch while pressing the trigger will initiate a drift. I found it hard to remember that and often ended up drifting instead of jumping, something that scared me off from using it too much in my demo. I wish there was a separate button dedicated to jumping, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it with time.
While winning thanks to high-level tricks can be euphoric, losing can be a mixed bag. The more I played, the more I felt like World is tuned closer to Mario Kart Wii than any other game in the series. That game was more casual friendly by making it so items could very drastically alter positions in a race. That held true for me in Knockout Tour especially, as having 24 racers on screen at once means that players’ fortunes can change in an instant. I’d be handily riding in first place only to get nailed by a blue shell, lightning bolt, and Bullet Bill in rapid successions. That’s always been the chaotic ethos of Mario Kart, but the mosh pit of items turns the dial higher than ever in tighter portions of tracks. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s a bit of a pain.
That little detail did cause me to do a U-turn on one feature I’ve been skeptical of since April: the wider courses. To accommodate so many players, most tracks feature much wider roads to avoid a 24 car pile up. I feared that would make races boring, but I’m now in support of it after seeing just how overtuned items can be. The wider courses mean that I have more space to swerve away from an incoming Bullet Bill, letting me sacrifice some momentum to avoid a crash. That adds a smart bit of risk-taking that gives me more ways to manage the chaos. Tools like the power jump add to that, as it can be worth storing up a jump and using it to strafe away from an incoming shell. In my most heroic moment, I saved a feather I picked up from an item box and used it to hop over a golden shell as it crept up behind me. There’s more room for big moments here that go beyond simply tossing items and drifting well.
I got to see that in action even more during the balloon-based Battle Mode and Coin Runners, a multiplayer mode where players have three minutes to grab the most gold. Both put me in more contained maps – seemingly eight in total – and tested my ability to maneuver. After a few failures, I started to pick up the nuances of nailing someone with a boomerang head-on or saving my flying hammers for when I could rain them down on two cars instead of one. While these are more stress-free than Knockout Tour, they still show just how tense any World session can be when going up against players who have all of its tricks mastered.
Even after all this time, I’m still not ready to make a final judgement. I’m saving that for my full review, which will come after the Switch 2 launches. While I do feel like I have a good handle on most modes, I need to spend more time with the new tracks as some feel less cohesive than others due to the way they are designed to fit into an open-world. I need to spend way more time in Free-Roam too, as I still haven’t fully shaken my feeling that the novelty will wear off sooner than I’d like.
What I can say without question as of now, though, is that Mario Kart World is a blast whether you plan to play it casually or at a high level. It has a big responsibility as Switch 2’s launch game, but I don’t see it failing to deliver. I already know that it will be the first thing I’ll fire up on June 5 even though I’ve already played it for hours. I’m only starting a new chapter of my stories kart racing career, after all.
Mario Kart World launches on June 5.
