Mario Kart World |OT| See that mountain? You can drive to it.

Robb said:
Yeah, that's my impression.

Looking at the map with all the roads outlined the entire thing is basically all just tracks. There's not a single region or major area of free-space.
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Every road on the entire land mass is symmetrical?
 
I have more or less been on a media blackout for this game since it's direct back in May. I am excited to explore and experience the game. This will be my son's first game on his own video game system as well.
 
Robb said:
Yeah, that's my impression.

Looking at the map with all the roads outlined the entire thing is basically all just tracks. There's not a single region or major area of free-space.
image
Click to expand...

Shaki12345 said:
It's not an open world, according to the director.

It's an interconnected world.
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It's both. The white "connecting tracks" are important for linking courses in certain modes like Knockout Tour. But in free roam mode, you aren't limited to the tracks. You can drive off the road.

You can see what I'm talking about by looking very carefully:

5rGFqZN.jpeg
 
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BlackTron said:
It's both. The white "connecting tracks" are important for linking courses in certain modes like Knockout Tour. But in free roam mode, you aren't limited to the tracks. You can drive off the road.
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The interconnecting tracks are for all modes since you drive between tracks in the Grand Prix as well this time. And in multiplayer you can combine roads/tracks however you want.

But my main point (in response to fears that track design would suffer because of too much focus on making a open world) is that it looks to me like they didn't necessarily set out to make "open world Mario Kart" but rather wanted to make this interconnected roads concept and then built a world around that. Free roam seems more like a 'now you have some stuff to do while you wait between races' thing to me.
 
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See that mountain? You can drive to it.

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To flip a p switch and then do nothing.

The racing looks better than ever but the open world seems completely pointless to me. It looks genuinely boring. Hopefully there's more to the open world than what we've been shown.
 
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Robb said:
The interconnecting tracks are for all modes since you drive between tracks in the Grand Prix as well this time. And in multiplayer you can combine roads/tracks however you want.

But my main point (in response to fears that track design would suffer because of too much focus on making a open world) is that it looks to me like they didn't necessarily set out to make "open world Mario Kart" but rather wanted to make this interconnected roads concept and then built a world around that. Free roam seems more like a 'now you have some stuff to do while you wait between races' thing to me.
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It remains to be seen whether the "world" is that good or not. We don't need to wait to know whether you can drive on it. It's simply incorrect to say "interconnecting tracks are for all modes", you went on to say yourself there is a mode that does not limit you to tracks so uh...

If the mode is not that good, it doesn't suddenly not exist or something.

I personally plan on turning off my brain in free roam and wandering aimlessly in the beginning. I'm honestly looking forward to this even in a complete loss of "things to do", just to drive around a big map. That's in the game...we can review it later.
 
KH5syE2.jpeg


The footage kinda already showed it, but it being Nintendo and that they can be doing anything with the world since it's Mario…this is a big bummer. Why make it open world?

Maybe visually it could have been a much larger jump had it been like MK8 in that way.
 
Need a counter for the number of times someone comes into this thread just to drop that IGN tweet and then bails. Pretty sure we're already closing in on a half dozen.
 
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BlackTron said:
It remains to be seen whether the "world" is that good or not. We don't need to wait to know whether you can drive on it. It's simply incorrect to say "interconnecting tracks are for all modes", you went on to say yourself there is a mode that does not limit you to tracks so uh...

If the mode is not that good, it doesn't suddenly not exist or something.

I personally plan on turning off my brain in free roam and wandering aimlessly in the beginning. I'm honestly looking forward to this even in a complete loss of "things to do", just to drive around a big map. That's in the game...we can review it later.
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Yeah, I meant outside of 'free roam'. And I agree. I personally just don't think we'll have much to worry about in terms of track design as a consequence of the developers putting all their focus on creating an open world.

If anything, I think this new system will add great variety to the tracks.

Can't wait to play it tomorrow!
 
I'm so damn excited for this game. We're gunning to the top scores in online. I'm praying the netcode is better in World.
 
blacktout said:
Need a counter for the number of times someone comes into this thread just to drop that IGN tweet and then bails. Pretty sure we're already closing in on a half dozen.
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I can't speak for others but I saw the tweet and went to the last page of this thread. It wasn't meant to be a shit post or whatsoever. That wasn't my intention.
 
I'll have to see how much the free roam world's balance of open space and activity bugs me; it's probably going to come down to a personal preference. What I'm hoping for is that the free roaming makes for good "downtime" between the high-energy races and such. You know, not really the main star like the world in recent Zeldas, but still gives a context to everything in a satisfying way. I'm guessing it's not the kind of thing you can drive around for hours in without getting bored, but more a way to wind down for 15 minutes between circuits?

I'm just thinking of how games have kind of an ebb and flow, like RPGs balancing towns and dungeons, or RE4 with its combat and exploration balance. Even if the map isn't jam-packed with secrets it can still have a lot of value in that way.
 
MK World looks genuinly awful gameplay wise. The tracks are even wider than in MK8 and are mostly straights. The whole gameplay looks very boring.
Mario Kart has always been about driving, drifting, optimizing driving lines and stategical use of items and shortcuts, which made it an awesome and exciting fun racer.

But, please, look at this... Mario Kart World has been dumbed down so much, that it lost everything that made "Mario Kart" great. I think Nintendo did this to please 5 year olds, who aren't able to do much more than press accelerate and drive in a straight line.

And Nintendo is really charging 80/90 dollars for this? Just wow...

 
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Mozza said:
I think this needs to be seen in person on the actual console. As HDR conversion to SDR can look pretty bad. It's funny because I have thought the same watching some YouTube videos and wondered where the colour has gone. But some videos look as vibrant as ever. In particular the Nintendo Switch direct trailer. Again this will be a little compressed on YouTube but at least it's 4K. This looks pretty awesome on my LG OLED telly and JVC 4K projector. :)
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Oh yeah, thats what I'm expecting, tho I won't have the game until late this month at least, I'll be playing Switch 1 games for a while
 
Rat Rage said:
But, please, look at this... Mario Kart World has been dumbed down so much, that it lost everything that made "Mario Kart" great. I think Nintendo did this to please 5 year olds, who aren't able to do much more than press accelerate and drive in a straight line.
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I think you're just watching gameplay of people who are playing it like any other Mario Kart.

Just skimming through that video I didn't see them use the charge jump even once.
 
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Rat Rage said:
MK World looks genuinly awful gameplay wise. The tracks are even wider than in MK8 and are mostly straights. The whole gameplay looks very boring.
Mario Kart has always been about driving, drifting, optimizing driving lines and stategical use of items and shortcuts, which made it an awesome and exciting fun racer.

But, please, look at this... Mario Kart World has been dumbed down so much, that it lost everything that made "Mario Kart" great. I think Nintendo did this to please 5 year olds, who aren't able to do much more than press accelerate and drive in a straight line.

And Nintendo is really charging 80/90 dollars for this? Just wow...

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This post reminds me of the dude at my work who said Gears of War sucked because he watched a Twitch stream of it.
 
Rat Rage said:
MK World looks genuinly awful gameplay wise. The tracks are even wider than in MK8 and are mostly straights. The whole gameplay looks very boring.
Mario Kart has always been about driving, drifting, optimizing driving lines and stategical use of items and shortcuts, which made it an awesome and exciting fun racer.

But, please, look at this... Mario Kart World has been dumbed down so much, that it lost everything that made "Mario Kart" great. I think Nintendo did this to please 5 year olds, who aren't able to do much more than press accelerate and drive in a straight line.

And Nintendo is really charging 80/90 dollars for this? Just wow...

Click to expand...

Doesn't seem like the player is doing much.

Tracks themselves look similar to MK8 which had plenty skill ceiling. Nintendo has definitely gradually moved away from tracks with 90 degree angles as turns though, but that happened a long time ago.
 
BlackTron said:
It's both. The white "connecting tracks" are important for linking courses in certain modes like Knockout Tour. But in free roam mode, you aren't limited to the tracks. You can drive off the road.

You can see what I'm talking about by looking very carefully:

5rGFqZN.jpeg
Click to expand...
Always seems to me that the free roam was kinda just tacked on because they could.

The design reason for the world always seemed to be more about facilitation knockout tours and the interconnected Grand Prix than to be an open world.

Maybe others saw it different.
 
Rat Rage said:
MK World looks genuinly awful gameplay wise. The tracks are even wider than in MK8 and are mostly straights. The whole gameplay looks very boring.
Mario Kart has always been about driving, drifting, optimizing driving lines and stategical use of items and shortcuts, which made it an awesome and exciting fun racer.

But, please, look at this... Mario Kart World has been dumbed down so much, that it lost everything that made "Mario Kart" great. I think Nintendo did this to please 5 year olds, who aren't able to do much more than press accelerate and drive in a straight line.

And Nintendo is really charging 80/90 dollars for this? Just wow...

Click to expand...

It needs wider tracks to facilitate more players and the jump boost. The previews I have seen praise the tracks.
 
Ahhhhhh it's getting so hard to ignore all of these videos. I want to watch them so badly, but I know it'll be better if I just wait to experience it for myself.
 
I'm baffled by the lack of interesting playable characters. You'd think that after so many Mario games, they'd have plenty to choose from… but it's frustrating to see crabs and generic enemies as playable characters.

Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, which is clearly a smaller franchise, actually has more visually appealing characters to play.

And in terms of gameplay, Crash Team Racing was already blowing it out of the water back in the day.

I'm very skeptical about this entry, especially since the big new feature — the open world — seems underwhelming based on all the previews… and on top of that, it's 80 bucks.
 
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In less than 24hours this thread will be filled with people who had the time of their life with the game.

Nintendo always delivers when it comes to big titles.
 
Shaki12345 said:
In less than 24hours this thread will be filled with people who had the time of their life with the game.

Nintendo always delivers when it comes to big titles.
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Nah those people will be busy playing the game lol. The thread will be full of fanboys talking about how they watched a clip on YouTube and it looked boring.
 
Robb said:
Yeah, that's my impression.

Looking at the map with all the roads outlined the entire thing is basically all just tracks. There's not a single region or major area of free-space.
image
Click to expand...
I think it's an open world as they did say you could pretty much drive everywhere.
 
BlackTron said:
It remains to be seen whether the "world" is that good or not. We don't need to wait to know whether you can drive on it. It's simply incorrect to say "interconnecting tracks are for all modes", you went on to say yourself there is a mode that does not limit you to tracks so uh...

If the mode is not that good, it doesn't suddenly not exist or something.

I personally plan on turning off my brain in free roam and wandering aimlessly in the beginning. I'm honestly looking forward to this even in a complete loss of "things to do", just to drive around a big map. That's in the game...we can review it later.
Click to expand...
People often miss the point with things like this. I remember just wandering around the Zelda BOTW map just simply sightseeing. It's refreshing just to drive around like in horizons. Then you can race and do all the other stuff whenever you feel like it. It would be pretty cool to meet up with friends at certain locations etc... I will be using the voice chat a lot with this I feel..
 
Rat Rage said:
MK World looks genuinly awful gameplay wise. The tracks are even wider than in MK8 and are mostly straights. The whole gameplay looks very boring.
Mario Kart has always been about driving, drifting, optimizing driving lines and stategical use of items and shortcuts, which made it an awesome and exciting fun racer.

But, please, look at this... Mario Kart World has been dumbed down so much, that it lost everything that made "Mario Kart" great. I think Nintendo did this to please 5 year olds, who aren't able to do much more than press accelerate and drive in a straight line.

And Nintendo is really charging 80/90 dollars for this? Just wow...

Click to expand...

I am guessing there will be a day/night cycle in this.
 
Mozza said:
I think it's an open world as they did say you could pretty much drive everywhere.
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Oh, for sure. It's all fully open. What I'm trying to get across is that I think the open world is there to facilitate the new track designs/philosophy more than anything else.

It's not like they've made parts of the map where there are no tracks at all and you're just supposed to explore. It's all there for racing purposes and everything connects together everywhere seamlessly.
 
amigastar said:
So... where are the reviews for MK World?
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Mario Kart World critic reviews

Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews from the leading critics. Only Metacritic.com uses METASCORES, which let you know at a glance how each item was reviewed.
www.metacritic.com www.metacritic.com

However, these are all "hands on impression reviews" aka unscored until the game officially releases tomorrow
 
amigastar said:
So... where are the reviews for MK World?
Click to expand...

jshackles said:

Mario Kart World critic reviews

Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews from the leading critics. Only Metacritic.com uses METASCORES, which let you know at a glance how each item was reviewed.
www.metacritic.com www.metacritic.com

However, these are all "hands on impression reviews" aka unscored until the game officially releases tomorrow
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Reviews shouldn't be out for quite a while considering Nintendo hasn't given out any review Switch 2 units to outlets.

They're in the same boat as any of us.
 
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Kataploom said:
There's a bunch of new footage, I just don't see myself ever liking it, it all looks too empty, too flat and it's not because the textures are flat or lack any normal mapping but because there are many tracks which large areas covered by a single texture mostly which in the grand scheme of things makes it look like a large uniformed colored flat section from the distance (you have to look close to see detail).

Then the lighting is way flatter than even MK8 with shadows too bright, like the dev team had some kind of phobia to contrast for whatever reason... And everything IMO is mostly because they have to make tracks way wider to space for 24 racers.

There are some tracks with way more detail density that are basically proof of my assumptions on why the game looks so bland to me. The game looks great in close ups and in some sections like water but in general I feel the whole art direction is a regression from MK8, save for close ups of characters new models.

Oh and the new cars design is also bland af, I preferred the more aerodynamic and aggressive approach of MK8 rather than the "cheerful and safe racing" style of this one...
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Update: I changed my mind after seeing this video, goddamn this game is meant to be played in HDR, WTF? This looks like a gen or more behind without HDR no kidding, the lighting is just flat and bland and the textures details get completely lost in SDR, damn, now I'm a believer...

 
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Same here
Kataploom said:
Update: I changed my mind after seeing this video, goddamn this game is meant to be played in HDR, WTF? This looks like a gen or more behind without HDR no kidding, the lighting is just flat and bland and the textures details get completely lost in SDR, damn, now I'm a believer...

Click to expand...

I have been on a media blackout for this game and up to now have only watched the Switch 2 direct 5 mins trailer a couple of times. I could not help myself and had a quick peek at this video and it is simply awesome. I only watched this for a short while but it was enough to convince me this game will look amazing on my LG OLED.... Thanks for posting.
 
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