Mario Kart World‘s Best Mode Just Got Even Better

5 days ago 10

One of Mario Kart World‘s big novelties is its vast open-world map of race courses that connect to one another. Instead of competing on a series of isolated tracks, racing to the next course across open highways is part of the competition. This has made for some mixed results in traditional Grand Prix mode, where old-school fans prefer the “purity” of traditional closed-circuit loops, but it’s also highlighted what’s so fun about the game’s new Knockout Tour mode. A new free update is doubling down on that by introducing team battles as well.

The way Knockout Tour works is that racers periodically reach checkpoints along the way from start to finish and that each one, the bottom group of performers get eliminated. It’s tense, approaching a checkpoint when you’re near the back of the pack and knowing you don’t have long to catch up before being culled from the match. At the same time, nothing feels better than slowly creeping your way up through the ranks in the nick of time and eventually going on to win the whole thing. The only thing the addition of Team Battles changes is that now a whole group of players wins rather than just whoever is in first place.

“Join up with your Nintendo Switch 2 friends in a group via local wireless or online play,” reads Nintendo’s description for the Mario Kart World version 1.5 update that just dropped. “With the free update, you can now set up Knockout Tour races as a two-team (12 vs. 12) race, a three-team (8 vs. 8 vs. 8) race, or a four-team (6 vs. 6 vs. 6 vs. 6) race. If there are not enough players, CPU drivers will fill the remaining spots.”

While neat in local co-op, where Knockout Tour team battles will really shine is online. Even if players don’t make it past the first few checkpoints, they’ll still be able to monitor the race and cheer or troll the remaining racers with a handful of scripted text barks. GameChat will also come in big here. It’s essentially a way to play online with friends without competing against them, though you can obviously do that too if you want.

Mario Kart World still isn’t quite the game I would have liked it to be at launch but it’s been growing on me, and a steady stream of small but notable additions like this will definitely get it there eventually. Of course, most fans are probably waiting for a bigger DLC or expansion to drop that adds new characters and costumes as well as new modes. We’ll see if that ends up being a paid update for an already $80 game or something players can access directly with Switch Online (which you already need in order to play online multiplayer anyway).

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