Nintendo finally sent me an invite to buy a Switch 2, so against my better judgement, I bought one. (Backstory: Nintendo kind of pisses me off, from releasing underpowered hardware, to their terrible online play systems, to never discounting their games, to …)

But, you know what, Mario Kart World is pretty good. I expected to be pretty underwhelmed both by the overall gameplay itself (I wasn’t a big fan of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe) and the graphics.

In actuality, the gameplay is pretty great and appears surprisingly deep (if you want to get crazy into wall riding and rails), the tracks are a lot of fun, and the graphics are pretty good. Could they be better? Sure, but they do the job and the game runs buttery smooth and looks great on my OLED. The new Rainbow Road specifically is a joy to race on and a spectacle to behold.

Is Mario Kart World worth a full $500 asking price to get the console and game together? I mean… no… but that’s the Nintendo tax for you.