#mario-kart-world — Public Fediverse posts

Playing Sonic Racing: Crossworlds has been making me reflect on Mario Kart World. It's so interesting to me. :wlfThink:​ It seems like MKW had a really complicated development, where each race track was probably incredible difficult to slot into a comprehensive and connected overworld. All of the music is probably some of the most well-produced music Nintendo has ever made. I can see from a production standpoint why Nintendo would think it's worth $80. It's just wild how the game is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Like yeah, there's an interconnected overworld with all of the tracks, but it just doesn't work at all. They put all this effort into producing something that falls flat on its face. The intermission tracks dominate the game to the point that the Grand Prix mode is unplayably bad, while fans have made a dedicated Discord server so they can bypass them in the multiplayer mode because Nintendo insists that the online mode's track selection is 80% intermission tracks. And, let's be clear, the intermission tracks are bad. They're straight lines with not many obstacles or interesting alternate paths to take, while they heavily favor bagging because the strategy is to just hang back and get mushrooms so you can speed past everyone at the end of the race. Meanwhile, being forced into an overworld makes the tracks a lot less geometrically interesting and also requires that many of them are rethemed to fit the aesthetic of the area they're put in, to the point they look extremely same-y. The overworld actively makes the game worse.

You'd think the Free Roam mode would be its saving grace, but, uh, definitely not. There are some interesting challenges in the free roam mode, but most of them are just Superman 64-style going through hoops or inane blue coin collection missions. It's nice if you want to just turn your brain off and do some menial work, kind of like the Depths in Tears of the Kingdom, but it's not enough to carry a whole game mode. It's made 10x by the fact that every mission gives you a sticker, which could be a neat mechanic to decorate your car for online mode, but-- unlike Sonic Racing: Crossworlds that lets you put up to 8 decals on your car and pick your color scheme and customize the whole car, Mario Kart World only lets you pick one sticker and it's so small you can't even see it.

The soundtrack, again, probably cost a ton of money to produce, but the Big Band sound makes the game feel really homogeneous. The game's tracks are either Big Band, Big Band + Western, or Big Band + Rock. It all sounds great, but when you're 20 hours in, none of the tracks really stand out from each other. None of it really amps you up or electrifies you like a racing game should.

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds feels the exact opposite. It feels like it was way cheaper to produce, but it punches way above its weight. The focus of the game is the racing, and because the tracks are in their own sectioned off areas, they're actually fun. The soundtrack has a ton of guest artists and varied genres, and while it may not have the vivid instrumentation of Mario Kart World, the music is just a lot more fun.

It's hard to fault Nintendo for swinging for the fences with Mario Kart World, but it feels like they locked themselves in a corner with the open world. They probably realized late in development that the open world wasn't very good, but since they invested so heavily into it, instead of admitting defeat they doubled down and forced it into every aspect of the game. The focus of the game isn't racing, it's the open world, and it's hard not to view that fact as vanity on the part of the developers who saw the intense negative fan reaction and decided to double down instead of fixing it. Meanwhile they didn't seem to put any effort into parts of the game that could save aspects of it, like unlocking proper kart customization in the free roam mode. Mario Kart World is just so overproduced in all the wrong areas.

To be clear, I do like the free roam mode okay, but all the trade-offs it brought to the design of the game make having it not worth the negative aspects it brings. :meowshrug:​

#Nintendo #Mario #MarioKart #MarioKartWorld #Sonic #SonicRacingCrossworlds