The long-awaited day is almost here. In less than 24 hours, players will be able to get their hands on the Nintendo Switch 2. Nintendo's next-gen console hasn't revealed all its secrets yet, but expectations are already extremely high given the price and marketing surrounding the machine. Mario Kart World, the flagship game of this generation, will be available the same day as the console.
For this occasion, Nintendo allowed the press to take part in intense and comprehensive preview sessions. Journalists, including Anh Phan from Journal du Geek, were able to get their hands on the game for an entire day and test almost all the available modes. But what surprised testers the most was the size of the map.
Indeed, Mario Kart World introduces a new concept to the franchise's universe: the open world. Gone are the days of presenting circuits in the form of categorized championships; all the race tracks are interconnected and form a single, massive whole in a closed, freely accessible map. While this looks promising, the trailers don't show us what the map actually has to offer, in terms of activities, lifespan, or replayability. The journalists who have explored it, however, are very satisfied.
Varied and dense
It seems that the Mario Kart World map is much bigger than anyone could have imagined. It took Stephen Totilo of Game File 10 minutes and 12 seconds to cross it from end to end. This is much longer than some other open-world racing games, such as Forza Horizon 5 (around 6 minutes) or GTA V (around 8 minutes).
This is very positive information when you couple it with the fact that many side activities seem to await players between races. Journalists report that there are many collectibles and small missions to complete all around the open world. However, you have to be careful with this kind of data.
You can make well-turned numbers say anything you want. The time it takes to cross a map does not mean that it is bigger or smaller than others. Indeed, not all are on the same scale, and do not have the same density of things to do in the space they are given. In addition, there is a certain notion of verticality that must be taken into account in the calculation.
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