@Zero

I like that this setup allows for 3-lap races pretty regularly. Good mix.

It's a week later and I've got more chunky MKW thoughts!

+Ultimately, I quite like Free Roam. I don't agree that it's lifeless or empty. The addition of cars and hitchhiking NPCs (Yoshis, Toads, enemies) are very simple but go a long way in making it feel lived-in. But you also can't expect to spend hours just getting lost in exploration like you would in adventure games where that's the main feature. And I think that's fine for what it is. I used to try to jump beyond the boundaries in Super Mario Kart's Battle Mode, and geeked out when I was able to drive off-course and check out the castle in Royal Raceway (MK64), so this really has a lot of innate appeal to me. And I was having a good time just roaming about over GameChat with my buddy (thefly) yesterday, and chilling out. Even so...

+The open world's benefits to me are less about Free Roam and more about its impact on the various road trips you can do. Might just be me, but I'm a sucker for environmental transitions in games, and MKW has it in spades. I'm not sure what it is but I really like the feeling of starting off on a snowy mountain, making my way through rocky shoals, going through a beach, then a savannah, then a city, then a desert, all seamlessly blending into one another. It's like...macro storytelling or something, kind of like how Tropical Freeze would naturally bring you through a variety of environments within a world (or a single level).

+The online performance is crazy smooth. Maybe Nintendo's best ever. Amidst all the chaos, I don't think I've seen a single hiccup, with the exception of that weird problem the other day when everything was offline for a bit. Hopefully the days of stuttering online for 1st-party games are over.

+What's kind-of-incorrectly been called "intermissions" overall add a lot of value to the package. Yeah, there's some 32 courses in the game but over 100 of these roads/connections/routes/whatever. I'm still finding new ones, and while not all of them are winners, there are some unique moments in several of them (such as a giant tornado) that you can't find anywhere else.

-That said, I think they should've named each of these and made them easier to find and race upon. I do like how you can play Vs and set your own connected courses, but it would've been nice if they went further with it. Let me save my own cups! Link any four connected levels together, name it and save it. Why not!? For that matter, it really would've been nice had they named each of these roads to give them a little more distinction. You know, Route 43 and the like (Pokemon-style).

-Whaaaat is with Nintendo's weird, limited implementation of online features?? That relaxing drive-around online yesterday would've been even better if sprinkled between the occasional Knockout Tour madness...but there's no way to play against online randoms with a friend!? It even gives you the option to join a Friend's room in the menu, but without fail, it will say "Cannot join" even if there're only a couple of people in the room. This is a massive omission and I hope it gets fixed yesterday.

Overall I probably like this game more than most of the internet. There are some frustrating choices and omissions but by and large I'm all in on the connected road nonsense. I hope we get updates to address some of these simpler features and options.

@TriforceBun

How are you placing in online modes? I'm finding so far that it feels a lot like a party game, even moreso than other Mario Karts. One bad item can send you from 2nd place to 20th place, and then one lucky item can get you right back to the front. What are the winning strategies here?

Hmm, small note. It feels not always clear to me what will count as out of bounds and what won't? I especially noticed this in the Boo Theater where I got called out of bounds just for flying over some chairs even though it was an almost direct route from the launcher and I'm PRETTY SURE I was going to make it to the path before I hit the ground.

@TriforceBun I joined you and played against randos somehow! But with Nintendo it's always like, who knows exactly how anything works.

@Secret_Tunnel I've been surprisingly consistently above average, which makes me wonder if there is any matchmaking or anything, because usually in online modes I get crushed. In battle mode especially I've been doing pretty well, though I haven't gotten a 1st place yet. Always some uber sweat in there with like 15 kills.

Someone else mentioned this above somewhere but as far as the grind rails I don't really know what they add but they do seem to be a good way to get away from the chaos of a race for a bit so I'd wager the best players are jumping between rails and walls and everything as much as possible.

@Secret_Tunnel
On the 3-lap races, normal Mario Kart rules seem to apply, albeit with more people.

For the routes between courses, I find it starts off really luck-heavy, then gradually becomes more skill-based as the race goes on (especially in Knockout Tour). In GP/Vs races this means it's never over until it's over since anything can happen until around the last lap where your driving skills are really tested. In Knockout Tour, it almost starts off as a zany party racer and eventually tapers off into a test of skill as the bottom four keep getting eliminated and the pool of characters dwindles.

I'm not great at this game but I've won a few races and even a single Knockout Tour online. I like to "sandbag" (deliberately hold back slightly) very early on just to cut ahead with some Golden Mushrooms, and then just try my best to get enough of a lead to tank a Blue Shell (or hope for a Super Horn). One thing I try to tell myself to feel better is that with 24 racers per match, the odds are that I'm not going to come in first. Getting 5th or 6th nowadays is like getting 3rd on MKWii/MK8, or even 2nd in the original 8-player races. No shame in being in the top ten places when there are 24 people.

@Zero
I'm still trying to figure this out but I think the regular races work for joining friends, but not Knockout Tour.

24 players is a quarter of the way to Mario Kart 99, so I don't feel too bad as long as I place in the top 12 haha. All about improving on average.

It's interesting comparing this game's soundtrack to, say, BOTW's. With Mario Kart World, you've got 300 phenomenal orchestral remixes of already-amazing compositions... just kinda shuffled together in a playlist that isn't relevant to what you're doing. Whereas with BOTW, the music is a lot more understated, but it's always perfectly atmospherically placed. I prefer the Zelda approach, but MKW does make for good Youtube listening.

So this is what I'm talking about in the Boo theater. I think it finally clicked to me that the other path is where you come INTO the screen but still, why call me out of bounds so quickly just for being in the middle, a logical place to be when you just took a jump, when I could easily fly over to the correct path from where I'm at!? In fact, why is the middle even out of bounds at all!? Why not let you just bump yourself back up onto the course?!

@Zero

Yeah that feels premature, and I've noticed stuff like that in a couple other areas too.

Have you guys found any use for the feather yet?

@Zero Lakitu is usually activated by invisible walls placed outside of the track. If you really want to figure out where you can and can't go you can usually find maps of these walls online

@Stan McStanly That's probably true for this specific theater, but the whole concept of Mario Kart World is that depending on which path you are taking to where, certain parts are blocked off and certain parts aren't. So I don't think there could be a single map for stuff, it depends on context.

Three first place Knockout Tour wins in a row! Welp, maybe it was luck, but now I'm hooked. Good game, T-bun. And is that the Mr. Bozon I see in there?

The random elements are way more tolerable when my friends are the beneficiaries of them. Party games!

Is Trent the new Kenny!?

Wait, where is the old Kenny?

I feel like something obvious is clicking with me that I didn't quite realize before, even though it is well... obvious.

There are a LOT of paths to race through the game. The cups have their paths, but if you're just doing random racing online, whether single races or knockout tour or whatever, you're often racing down paths you never raced before, or racing down paths you have raced but backwards. If you just race cups any given course in the game will have at most 1 path to it in 1 direction, but overall it might have 3 paths between it and other courses that can be traveled in both directions. It's pretty wild.

And even the main "courses" themselves... I could be wrong on this but some seem to be raced a little differently depending on where you come from? Or sometimes just have unique things happen that didn't happen before, like certain enemies appearing or whatever.

Just feels very expansive to me. Yeah, I do still wish the in between roads had a bit more going on but even having raced all of the main cups I still feel like racing is showing me new things.

@Zero

This is why I still like voting for connecting courses online, even though the popular thing now is to vote Random to get the traditional 3-lap races. I can do that in any other Mario Kart game, let me try the 100+ connecting roads here! Some of them are really neat!

Having just finished Breath of the Wild for the third time, I'll reiterate how much I appreciate Mario Kart World's total lack of NPCs, quest logs, and progression trackers. That stuff is like sugar to me: it enhances the world's narrative flavor in a superficial way that does on some level make for a more memorable first playthrough, but at the end of the day it's just there to keep you addicted. I've made the mistake of lurking the Resetera thread for MKW (mainly to see if I can steal any tips and tricks for online play), and it would seem that a lot of the people over there mistake checklists for games. It blows me away that Nintendo is still capable of resisting that and just offering a pure playground with no gun pointed at your head knowing full well it'll cost them Metacritic points.

@Zero
@TriforceBun

This clicked for me more deeply a few days ago too. There's a cool interplay between Time Trial mode teaching you the main routes through the three-lap course, the ? Panels showing you weird little corners of each course you wouldn't otherwise see, and P Switch Challenges drawing your attention to the unique characteristics of the connecting courses. It all comes together to add a nice sense of place to Grand Prix and Knockout Tour.

I do wish the audio balance leaned heavier towards the soundtrack though. This isn't "Nintendo refusing to give us options," this is Nintendo fumbling their sound production and making people think they want options. I get that they might intend for these tracks to just be little background ditties that don't draw too much attention to themselves, but then don't make them all masterpieces that I have to crank the volume for!

Oh man, I just had an obvious thought. If and when they do DLC tracks, how about a Waverace track remake? They already basically have jetski karts / the corresponding physics in the game, they can do the Waverace version of what they did for F-Zero before.

I know there is no guarantee we are getting DLC but it's going to be the biggest missed opportunity ever if they don't give us more.

@Zero

YES PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

I love every time I’m on the water in this game specifically because it feels like Waverace. While a new game is preferable, I heartily second your recommendation!

Here's my wacky prediction: DLC won't be new courses, it'll be Wonder Seed effects on highways. Not a new continent, a denser one.

Hmm, supposedly the new update pushes more of the "intermission" courses when you choose "random" and it gets selected. I played a lot last night and it seems like random now includes the 3 courses you can pick from each time and is weighted a bit towards them. Like half? the time random got selected it ended up being one of the 3 courses.