Mario Kart World review: Getting there is half the game

Summary

While that kind of item-based back-and-forth isn't new to Mario Kart, it feels like it has been taken to a new extreme by World's more crowded race track. If you're in the middle of the pack, every tranche of item boxes you pass can lead, in short order, to a flurry of near-unavoidable projectiles and item-enhanced opponents cluttering your immediate space. That's especially true in online races, where human opponents tend to be much more ruthless with their item use than even the hardest computer-controlled opponents. That blue "Kaboom!" can send you from first to 17th in a hurry. That blue "Kaboom!" can send you from first to 17th in a hurry. The change ultimately rewards defensive driving, where you do your best to avoid other racers and utilize protective items until you have a chance to rocket into the relative safety of the top few positions. Sometimes, though, there's simply no avoiding a maddening series of bad breaks that can literally send you from first place to 19th in an instant. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey Once you've adjusted to the more crowded field of racers, you'll then have to get used to the odd structure of Mario Kart World's main racing modes. Rather than racing multiple laps around the game's well-designed tracks, you'll spend the bulk of your race time in most racing modes trekking between those tracks across the great expanses of Mario Kart World's, uh, world. Get used to seeing very straight sections like this in most of the game's racing modes. Credit: Nintendo Get used to seeing very straight sections like this in most of the game's racing modes. Credit: Nintendo These inter-course interludes offer a decent variety to the structure, which will see you traveling through desert wastelands, down traffic-clogged highways, along the surface of tiered waterfalls, across frozen tundra, and more. What's unavoidably similar about most of them, though, is their unbearable straightness. Players used to the undulating, crisscrossing c...