The Wombo Combo
A Week of Switch 2 and my Mario Kart World Review
At last, on a grey, rainy 5th of June afternoon DPD endeavoured through UK roads, weather and traffic to deliver the latest of Nintendo’s long and storied lineage to my doorstep. Taunted by pictures online of Kiwis and Aussies already enjoying the console, I opened up that cardboard box to finally get a taste of the Switch 2 myself.
Today’s post will marry together what I consider to be the two sphere of Scanlines’ Journal into one: hardware and software will join hands in one big post. I wanted to wait 7 days though, firstly to enjoy a short break but also because I didn’t want to join the sea of first impressions posts. No disrespect to anyone who chose to post them but I didn’t see the point of making an article that would have no depth to it and boil down to “OMG guyz look at my NEW Switch 211!!” I wanted to sit on the console and Mario Kart World a little and really get to grips with things before I shared my opinions.
I hope you enjoy a quick evaluation of the Switch 2 and my review of the most anticipated Nintendo game since Tears of the Kingdom.
Any Colour the Customer Wants
The Nintendo Switch 2 almost looks like the Darth Vader to the original’s Anakin Skywalker. This console towers over its predecessor in every metric. The Switch 2 is much larger: almost as long as the Wii-U docked on my desk and a tiny bit larger than the Wii-U pad in handheld, it is many times more powerful, it has more features and more storage and most striking of all, the console comes in a jet, matte black that screams premium; it might look similar but it feels quite different from the original Switch, which is arguably more important. From the larger, more satisfying to press buttons and the more textured and durable plastic, to the more sturdy analogue sticks and fan-cooled dock (which puts out a fair amount of heat on the right game) every inch of this console feels like a purpose-built, well-crafted gamer’s machine.
The Switch 2 feels like an answer to the new landscape the original Nintendo Switch helped shape. Since 2017 Nintendo’s hybrid console has become the inspiration for a whole plethora of handheld-focused systems; Sony’s PlayStation Portal, Valve’s Steam Deck, the ROG Ally, it’s no secret what console these products draw inspiration from. In that time, the original Switch has become a kind of punchline with its not-quite modern graphics and dated 1080p/30FPS output (and even that was generous by 2023, let’s be honest.) But with the Switch 2, nobody will be laughing now, its specs blow the Steam Deck pretty comfortably out of the water and at last, 60FPS is the norm, at least at 1080p which is still what the vast majority of gamers use. I myself game on a 1440p monitor and even at this higher resolution I have found the Switch 2 to run like butter most of the time.
All of this does, however, come with a big caveat.
The Switch 1 was already an ergonomic nightmare, uncomfortable to use in handheld mode and unsteady to grip and the Switch 2 is no different, with the added ‘bonus’ of seemingly worse battery life, at least when played with the volume on and at full brightness.
There was every opportunity to redesign the Joy-Con 2’s with extra grip and the new dock means that a ridge could easily have been added to the back of the console for extra support while you hold it but Nintendo decided not to, so 1/3 of the hybrid console’s modes still feel pretty uncomfortable to use, which is a damn shame because the new screen looks really nice, handheld Switch 2 games look like docked Switch 1 games, the speakers are excellent and the annoying Joy-Con wobble has been banished at last.
I’ve tried the Switch 2 in handheld mode a couple of times and like its predecessor, I don’t see myself using it this way all too often. If you are a primarily handheld-based gamer then to be honest, it’s probably the least-comfortable option there is.
The Nintendo Switch, especially towards the end of its life, often felt like a handheld console first, home console second to me but with the Switch 2 it’s the other way around and that’s a change I like.
Excuse the grubby speaker, cleaning it was the last thing on my mind
Colour Splash
Something I didn’t expect with the Switch 2 is how much, despite the continuing lack of the much-missed themes, they’ve managed to reinject personality into the console. Every button and panel on the menu gets a moving, colourful outline when selected, each has its own novel sound effect and animation when pressed and the console itself, even when docked, plays a little jingle when you hit the power button. It isn’t much but it goes a long way in giving back some of that classic Nintendo feeling.
I won’t praise them too much though, just a couple of new colours: a ‘Basic Blue’ or a ‘Basic Red’ theme would have done nicely but we still have nothing beyond depression black and eye-searing white.
Another huge and very needed change was to the E-Shop and social features. It doesn’t run like complete shit anymore! I’m thoroughly skint after this launch but when I went to check the E-Shop for a reminder of what games are actually available for the console it was a painless and smooth experience. I haven’t had a chance to test the Game Chat since I have nobody to play online with but I’ve heard zero complaints so far, other than the fact that the Hori Piranha Plant camera records at an absolutely tragic 420p resolution but you can use any webcam you like for Switch 2 anyway.
On the software front, besides the operating system, Nintendo have deployed quite an array of free and paid upgrades for its existing Switch library and while I haven’t had the chance to try out too much yet, the very cheap Tears of the Kingdom upgrade pack (just £8: the price of an overpriced, syrupy latte) has spurred me on to replay and finally finish the game after having not touched it for 2 years. It is very hard to overstate how gorgeous it looks now, it runs buttery smooth and left my jaw agape when I first stepped out onto the tutorial sky island once again. Colours pop, shadows and sun rays dance in vivid vistas and every screen is like an oil painting.
I’ve heard Pokémon Scarlet and Violet also look borderline remastered the difference is so stark, to the extent where I think I’ll finally pick this generation of Pokémon up in the near future. I’ve also heard that Minecraft is much better now which was very needed, it was always quite shaky on the original Switch.
An absolute god-send for me is that you can now upload screenshots to the Nintendo Switch app, which means I can finally use my own pictures when I review things on Switch! This is a dream feature and means I don’t have to mess around plugging the console into my PC.
Get A Grip
The Joy-Con 2’s and their grip are the prime-example of hardware that’s much more than the sum of its parts. The upgrades are very minor and the mouse controls won’t be for everyone, however, it all adds up to make for a much superior feeling experience.
To begin with, the lengthened ZR and ZL triggers add wonderfully to the comfort of the controller and reduce some of that cheap and clicky feel the original ‘cons suffered with. Materials across the board are of a much higher quality, gone are the smooth, brittle, toy-like plastics of the original, now the whole console and the ‘con-2’s feel textured and weighty, even better than the Switch OLED. The larger size here helps so much, with the first console I tended to irritate the tendons in my thumb a bit with having to angle myself to hit those tiny, cheap little buttons but on the Switch 2 they are much larger: everything is, the analogue sticks too, which have a nice bit of resistance to them this time.
My only complaint so far with using the Joy-Con 2’s in their grip mode is that the chat button feels really out of the way, and they kept that unpleasant, flat topography for the capture button too.
The new motion control gyros definitely feel slightly better but that’s all I can really say about them, the ones on the original Switch were fine and so are these with a pinch more accuracy, same with the new HD rumble.
Now… about those mouse controls.
The 2 games I bought for the release (besides the Tears of the Kingdom £8 upgrade) were Mario Kart World (which came as a code despite the space for a game box being literally built into the console’s packaging, for fuck’s sake, Nintendo) and the Switch 2 Edition of Civilization 7, which I have played exclusively with mouse controls. I think everyone expected them to be uncomfortable to use and that’s certainly true, however, the transition to using the controls is absolutely seamless, you will eventually get used to using the Joy-Con 2 this way and the accessibility of the analogue stick along with the other buttons make the mouse mode more versatile than you’d expect; I’m more than 600 turns deep into my third Civilization 7 Marathon save and I have no intention of switching to the traditional controller grip now.
If the discomfort is too much though, a normal USB mouse can be used with the Switch 2.
An Intermission
I think that about covers everything with the console itself so far. Overall? I’m very satisfied with it from a hardware standpoint: the jump in power is felt from the very first game you try, the machine looks nicer and I personally felt the price was justified, even if half the internet tells me I should be angry.
At the moment, it seems like the entire internet outside of Nintendo fans wants this thing to fail and it’s really annoying to see, especially when so much bullshit is being spread around.
Yes, some games aren’t on the cartridge, no, Nintendo don’t have a magical button to brick your console at the click of their fingers, yes the analogue sticks are still normal analogue sticks with just some extra reinforcement, no, this doesn’t guarantee drift issues later. Between the irrational Switch 2 hate, the god-awful yearly press cycle coming out of these shitty showcases and Geoff Keighley shows and the seemingly limitless sad Mario-faced thumbnails from Z-tier YouTubers being plastered all over my feed, I’m in one of those moods where I don’t want to be associated with other gamers and I don’t like to feel that way.
Substack is an oasis in a desert of absolute dross, and I’m very glad to be here.
So is the Switch 2 worth buying? There aren’t too many games available right now and I’m really feeling the lack of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond but besides that? Mario Kart World, returning to Tears of the Kingdom to finish the game with all the shiny new improvements and the ability to play Civilization 7 with mouse controls on a console are all keeping me satisfied. If you want more games to choose from, I’d recommend giving it 6-12 months for some of the big-hitters to arrive.
It’s important to keep your expectations in-check, graphically, the Switch 2 is a little weaker than the Xbox Series S, which is ageing hardware at this point and at the end of the day, it’s a tablet with detachable controllers, the Switch 2 was never going to match something like the PS5; the price point was already an area of contention online, so the lack of an OLED screen isn’t something I’m losing sleep over.
But is the pack-in title: Mario Kart World really worth buying a Switch 2 for? Well, we’ll get to that next.
Kart Blanche
In a year so far defined by vast, heavy-hitting and expansive RPG’s like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Claire (Age 33, from Smethwick) and Avowed I’ve been feeling a little… left out. These are the sorts of games I play once a year then revisit maybe a couple of times in half a decade, these are big-commitment titles that require weeks of focused play with little deviation but I rarely have the ability to focus on one game for that long, so it’s been with a wave of refreshment and relief that I’ve welcomed Mario Kart World at last.
From the moment you boot up Mario Kart World, Nintendo invites you to relax, smile a little, take it easy and just have some fun.
All the usual options are there: Singleplayer, Online, Time-Trials, VS Mode and even Battle Mode, which has been conspicuously absent from any pre-launch marketing. It’s all here to browse and set up races for, all the while underscored by an absolute masterwork of a soundtrack featuring tons of new music and jazzy, big band arrangements of some classic tracks too; I don’t even like Super Mario Sunshine but when a remix of the Ricco Harbour music came on I couldn’t help but smile and get a bit nostalgic. It seems that whenever night falls in the Free Roam, they play a super relaxing rendition of the Super Mario 64 Piranha Plant Lullaby too. I also love Mario Kart World’s rendition of Dire Dire Docks.
If this game doesn’t win awards for its soundtrack, I will declare war.
The atmosphere in Mario Kart World is absolutely infectious, it feels like a big party or festival, it is just so upbeat and colourful and fun, it made the grey, cold, rainy weather outside my window feel like the height of summer.
But let’s get to one of the big-ticket new features: Free Roam. At any moment on the title screen, you can hit Start and the game does a slick transition where you assume control of the character driving in the menu’s background, generally whoever you were playing as last, from there you are free to explore the world to your heart’s content. Aside from gawking at the game’s gorgeous graphics and chilling out to its top-tier soundtrack, there are a load of collectibles out in the open world like Peach Medallions, costumes (which you humorously get from picking up and eating drive-through fast food) and there are also the P-Switch missions, which award stickers for competing in mini-time trials, collecting blue coins and other objectives.
I have to say, considering the Free Roam mode was so central to the marketing and is even alluded to in the game’s name, it feels like the least-developed and impactful addition to the formula.
Don’t get me wrong, it is really fun and therapeutic to drive around as you like, collectibles are fun to grab and the cute references bring a smile to your face but… there’s just so little depth here. The P-Switches and Peach Medallions remind me a little bit of the Korok Seeds in modern Zelda: they’re not there to be completed, they’re barely even tracked in-game, it’s just something to do if you happen to find one. The only content in Free Roam you are really nudged to complete are the Mystery Panels. Worse, the open world is lacking basic navigation features like the ability to place waypoints or even a compass, the map isn’t too useful either. You can’t drive up to circuits and begin a race there manually, you have to return to the menu and set up a race that way, you can’t challenge other characters you find out in the world to a race and you can’t have a go at Time Trials either, Free Roam is completely disintegrated from the rest of the experience and it’s a big missed opportunity. I had hoped I could set up my own Knockout Tours Forza Horizon-style but alas, it’s not possible
Free Roam is a fun little addition and I love unwinding with it but I don’t think most people will endeavour to complete everything in it, besides gathering the 10 Peach Medallions needed and completing the required amount of P-Switch missions and finding Mystery Panels to unlock Mirror Mode.
Wheel To Wheel
In playing Mario Kart World, you will very quickly realise that the skill-ceiling is a bit higher this time.
Tracks are generally easier to drive on thanks to their wider nature and a few new items are extra deadly but the de-emphasised role of coins on your top speed, the higher player count, the frequency with which these weapons of mass destruction are doled out, heavier feeling vehicles and the increase of raw skill in the CPU means that you are absolutely going to struggle to perfect all of the cups in this game and will probably need a few attempts to win some of the harder ones; I think I needed 3-4 tries on some of them. The CPU are no joke now. You'll see them saving mushrooms to use shortcuts, charging up drifts, tucking into your slipstream to get past and even barging you into oncoming traffic, it is such a great change from the brainless AI found in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. We’ve graduated from Nikita Mazepin to… maybe Esteban Ocon.
Another big addition to the gameplay that raises the bar for mastery is the ability to do a charge jump, which opens up opportunities to grind on rails or even drive on walls but landing a charge jump on straight road will also grant a speed boost. The actual uses here are quite situational to be honest, however, when you start to figure out when and where some shortcuts can be accessed with the technique it is extremely rewarding and it provides an extra defensive option too because being able to jump over projectiles or onto the roofs of oncoming cars, again rewarded with a speed boost, really helps when you’re at the mercy of a racer with 3 green shells and a vendetta.
But let’s stop beating around the bush, I’ve already talked about Free Roam but there’s another new mode we were all looking forward to: Knockout Tour. 24 Racers. A continuous race from one end of the map to another. The slowest are eliminated every few minutes. Absolute carnage, I love it.
There’s no secret: Knockout Tour has been the runaway success of Mario Kart World so far. I have been absolutely in-love with this mode.
For starters, Nintendo gets really creative with how they keep the driving interesting in Mario Kart World, obviously you’re going to be spending the majority of your time driving on the motorways and off-roads between circuits rather than on them, so you get loads of little events happen that almost feel like random encounters. One moment, the entire road might get peppered with Bob-ombs, in another race, you might have a car continually dropping mystery boxes behind it and sometimes you might get a few Goombas on the track or a Hammer Bro perched above the road lobbing mallets down at you. At no point can you switch off in Knockout Tour. This is amped up even more in online play, where the item balance seems to get thrown to the wolves and everyone below the top-5 seems to get a limitless supply of shells, I have managed to win 4 online Knockout Tours so far and believe me, they each took luck, a good aim and a Verstappen-level drive. Whenever I do get knocked out of the race though, I am desperate to hop right back into another one, which is an astounding feat in a game where you can be flattened moments before the finish line, powerless to save yourself.
Before playing Online Knockout Tours, the idea of harming someone’s 9 year old seemed morally reprehensible, but after being barged into oncoming traffic, hit with shells or span out with bananas moments before an elimination more times than I can count, I have to say I’ve softened to the idea.
Part of why the Knockout Tour works so well (although I still wish I could make my own) is that they are each set up in such a way where they get the incremental increase in challenge perfect; the first course is always easy and the last course is always quite a bit harder, no matter which Tour you decide to play.
Strangely enough though, I am starting to miss 200cc in Mario Kart World. In Mario Kart 8 I generally avoided 200cc because about 2/3’s of the tracks in that game felt broken at that speed and borderline undriveable but with Mario Kart World’s wider tracks I actually think the higher speed would have been a perfect fit. My only other minor complaint with Knockout Tour is that I think Blue Shells could do with being just a tad more common, I’ve had a few races in Singleplayer where one CPU has pulled really far ahead and stayed there for the entire event.
A Proud Legacy
Mario Kart World feels like a massive celebration of the series’ lineage and a love-letter to fans in a similar way to how Super Mario Odyssey was a celebration of 3D Mario back in 2017.
Rather than the very long but very inconsistent track list of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, where, let’s face it, a lot of really crap tracks got added to the game (Baby Park, anyone?) the returning ones in Super Mario World are all the cream of the crop: the most memorable and iconic courses you can think of from across 33 years of Mario Kart. Tracks like Shy Guy Bazaar, Mario Circuit, new favourites like Sky-High Sundae and doing my best not to spoil anything, this game’s Rainbow Road is a long tribute to all that have come before, with a few new tricks of its own. It feels extra special this time, with its own grand reveal and fanfare.
Speaking of the tracks generally? Both old and new, they are all absolutely fantastic to race on. I must admit a part of me misses the anti-gravity shenanigans from Mario Kart 8 and there are so many great courses from across the years that it’s impossible to fit everyone’s favourites in but each course in World is just really solid and fun to drive, there isn’t a single bad one. Certainly, none of them are too challenging and the lack of 200cc exacerbates that but I would take a leaner, easier, high quality track list anytime over sheer quantity and a lot of races just devolving into chaos and impossible corners.
If I had to pick a few favourites, excluding the always fantastic Rainbow Road, I’d say Peach Stadium, Bowser’s Castle, the Great ? Block Ruins and Crown City are my favourites out of the new tracks.
There was a moment in one of my races where, after a long and intense drive, me and the closely-packed rest of the top 5 rounded a corner at high speed onto a dusty old course with rainbow barriers, Lakitu popped up with the lap counter, the music began to rise and it was an orchestral arrangement of the Mario Kart Circuit music from Super Mario Kart on the SNES and I suddenly realised this dusty old track was that same SNES classic, it put such a smile on my face to see its age acknowledged but also for the course to be given the appropriate amount of fanfare. It plays great here too, you can absolutely shred it around the corners.
Mario Kart World is full of these little moments where you feel very seen by the developers of this game, where you almost get a pat on the shoulder and a smile when they roll out something they know long time fans are going to love. You can even play the entire Free Roam map in Mirror Mode but accessed via a method only those who played Super Mario 64 would find intuitive.
Access to Donkey Kong and a photo mode has been revolutionary for my mental and emotional health
Loathsome Liveries
I don’t have many complaints with Mario Kart World but one of my bigger ones is just how limited the kart customisation is, the topsy-turvy number of costumes and how completely pointless the stickers are.
I’ll preface this by saying I agree with the decision to scrap wheel and glider customisation: it added bloat to the kart select menus while often having a barely perceptible effect on gameplay, that being said… the stickers are a downgrade. Pretty much every free-roam collectible or mission in Mario Kart World awards you with stickers to put on your kart, the trouble is you can only use 1 at a time and even then, on some karts the stickers don’t even appear at all! In a world where Forza lets you paint designs anywhere you want on your car and pretty much every other racing game that isn’t Mario Kart allows you to change the colour of your vehicle it feels a bit backwards that I can’t place stickers wherever I want, in any amount I want, or at least paint my kart. I wanted to plaster my Kongmobile in bananas.
Costumes are perhaps the one thing that actually, genuinely disappointed me. You’d expect each character to have 2 or 3 with maybe the main cast: Mario, Luigi, Peach etc. having a few more but in actuality it’s even less balanced than this. Mario and Luigi and the gang each have around 10 costumes each while my boy DK has just 1! Diddy and Funky Kong aren’t in the game, wouldn’t it have been cool to be able to dress as them at least? Well, then Nintendo couldn’t sell them back to us as DLC. Worse than that, quite a few of the characters don’t have any alternate costumes at all, the beloved Cow tragically falls into that category, even a palette swap would have sufficed.
Despite my complaints, I want to say just how refreshing it is that you unlock all of this in-game: characters, costumes, the lot. In an industry where we’re being nickeled and dimed for cosmetics, where 2/3’s of a fighting game’s roster are locked behind DLC and costumes are £10+ it feels great to unlock this stuff with Mario coins and not Pound Sterling.
A Race to Remember
For those who chose to abstain from the Switch 2 for now, I imagine you’re looking to answer 2 questions in reading this review: is Mario Kart World good and is it worth buying a Switch 2 for?
Emphatically yes. Unless Donkey Kong Bananza is on the same level as Super Mario Odyssey, or Metroid Prime 4: Beyond somehow manages to dethrone Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Mario Kart World will almost certainly be my game of the year.
There’s been this silly narrative going around before the Switch 2’s launch that the launch title being ‘only’ Mario Kart will hurt the console and that Mario Kart World is ‘just’ a spin-off with little appeal to more serious gamers and while I do think the Switch 2 is a bit thin on the ground right now… I can’t disagree with this sentiment about Mario Kart enough. This is a franchise with immense cultural cachet and enduring popularity among casual players and the Nintendo faithful alike. In Formula 1, whenever a race turns out boring (usually Monaco) the first joke made is that the drivers should get banana peels or shells to throw; I had a group of non-gamer friends in college who hadn’t played a Mario game in their lives but met up every weekend to play Mario Kart Wii together. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the 5th best-selling video game of all time.
Everybody loves Mario Kart.
Hardcore Nintendo fans sometimes live in this bubble where they think people are only interested in the next big 3D Mario or a new Zelda, or the return of X Nintendo sports series they loved on the Gamecube as a kid and it could not be further from the truth.
Mario Kart World is a magical silver bullet for the Switch 2. This game is a wonderful piece of entertainment where a long absence, a rich legacy, a plethora of great new ideas and a big hardware boost all intersect to create an experience that I won’t forget anytime soon.
If this is any indication of the years to come, then I cannot wait for the treasures the Switch 2 library will hold.
VERDICT: Simply lovely. Game of the Year.
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Really appreciate this in depth post and your honesty about the console and Mario Kart World!
Sounds like a fantastic time and well worth the investment.
A well thought out and balanced review on the internet... Is that even possible? 🙂 I enjoyed reading this, thank you. I never get anything the first day it is released but I will get a Switch 2 in a year or so once I see more games specifically for it - got plenty of games on my backlog to catch up with first!