Mario Kart World’s Journeys Are Smooth and Unremarkable

Mario Kart World is an incredibly clean game. As the latest iteration of a decades-spanning franchise, it has been winnowed into something smoothly efficient and entirely absent of blemishes. The series’ hypercolored, candy-coated art style is rendered with impressive clarity on the Nintendo Switch 2’s brand-new hardware. You can launch into a race in moments, whether playing on your own, sharing a split screen or playing online.

In this well-crafted experience, there is very little standing in the way of the fun. Yet once I eventually put down the racing controller, I can only assume this iteration will be as thoroughly erased from my memory as Mario Kart 8 was after its release 11 years ago.

It comes down to the nature of playing these games. They aren’t linear narrative experiences. They aren’t designed to provoke specific emotions at specific times, nor to generate thought or reflections on a theme.

The Mario Kart games are toys, things to pick up and play, to boop and to beep, before putting them back down again. The karts and drivers you can select are collectibles to rotate around and admire, not embody. They’re like video game versions of Parcheesi. They don’t come bearing rich characters, plots or motivations, all useful tools when it comes to creating something that can memorably exist on its own as a piece of art.

When Mario Kart 8 came out for the Wii U in 2014, the most active discourse about it online focused on Luigi. More specifically, the evil way he seems to smirk at other racers while caught on the replay camera that rolls after a race. We couldn’t get enough of the anodyne plumber shooting murderous looks at his competitors. But Luigi wasn’t designed to be a giant jerk. His demeanor was an accident of his default facial expression paired with players’ desire for meaning and humor in a game without much consideration for either.