I wasn't a fan of Mario Kart World's free roam mode until I changed my perspective
Long before Mario Kart World was announced, I theorized what Nintendo's next spin on the franchise would be. Mario Kart 8 introduced anti-gravity, and Mario Kart 7 brought us hang gliders, so I was curious what angles were left to explore that would keep the core kart racing experience intact. As we know now, that turned out to be one giant interconnected map that players are free to explore with no boundaries or time limits.
As interesting as that idea was on paper, I remained a little skeptical due to the lack of details Nintendo gave about what exactly I would be doing in this world. The last trailers showed off a few challenges and collectibles, but I wasn't convinced that was enough to justify the new open-world design. My first week with the game only reinforced that feeling. However, I realized my own expectations were at fault — not the game — and have come to appreciate Mario Kart World's world for what it is.
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Exploring is its own reward
Modern open-world games have trained me to expect a million things to do and some little reward hidden under every rock. Even though most of it amounts to busywork that may actually hurt the overall experience (and is a big reason why I have been training myself to be less of a completionist), it feels like a disappointment when a game like Mario Kart World launches with a world that is almost completely empty.
It isn't fair to compare them, but I can't deny that Zelda's masterful take on open-world design didn't influence my expectations as well. Nintendo typically isn't a developer that does things in half measures. We have plenty of examples of franchises it is willing to leave dormant until it comes up with a way to evolve it. If it was going to transition Mario Kart World into a fully open-world game, it must have something there to justify it, right?
I wanted to believe that Mario Kart World's world would be something it wasn't, which set me up for disappointment when I finally took my kart off-road to explore. Despite being told what to expect in all the footage and previews, I was still deflated to find only scattered challenges and some basic collectibles around the world that gave me lackluster rewards. After an hour or so puttering around, I abandoned the mode for the much more interesting Knockout Tour.
A few days later I found myself reminiscing about older Mario Kart games and dusted off a fragment of a memory from decades ago. I never owned Mario Kart 64 but have a distinct memory of playing it at a friend's house. We were playing on Royal Raceway and noticed that one part of the track had us driving by Peach's Castle. The next lap, I broke off the main road and realized I could approach and explore the grounds around the castle just like in Mario 64. There's no way to get inside the castle (trust me, I tried), or anything to do at all here, but it still felt like I had discovered something special — like I found something the developers didn't expect me to.
That memory made something click when I returned to Mario Kart World. Instead of treating the open-world as a delivery method for tasks and rewards, I started viewing it as a space for exploring. I started to find its laid-back approach to activities refreshing in an era where games constantly bombard me with checklists and dopamine loops. Instead of expecting some unlockable or collectible at the top of a hill and feeling like I wasted my time when there wasn't, I let myself appreciate the sense of discovery I was afforded. It brings me back to that time when I believed that if I could just get beyond that wall or over that cliff in a video game, there would be an entire world beyond waiting to be explored.
I can understand why many may be disappointed with Mario Kart World's world — I certainly was. Once I started looking for intrinsic rewards rather than extrinsic, the very act of exploring became my motivation to drive up that mountain or across that body of water. I still don't see myself spending hours here now that I've been almost everywhere I felt compelled to explore, but just shifting my expectations allowed me to enjoy exploring for its own sake.
Mario Kart World is out now on Nintendo Switch 2.
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