The Kart Racer War Of 2025

2025 was a crazy year for fans of kart racing games as we got three big name entries in the genre: Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing Crossworlds, and Kirby Air Riders. And as you might expect, the competition was fierce and the debate over which one is best is still raging on to this day. Since I unintentionally ended up reviewing the tracks of all three of those games, I thought I might as well wrap this little series up by comparing the trilogy and figuring out which one's my favorite. I'll go over each game and pick out what I think are the pros and cons of each, and then weigh them to figure out which one reigns supreme. Beware, I'm probably going to go against the grain a little here...

Mario Kart World 

Pros

• The core movement and mechanics are fantastic. The parkour, wall-riding, air-tricking, and rail-grinding systems add so much depth and freedom of expression to the gameplay loop, but it's just streamlined and accessible enough so that anyone can pick it up and start messing around. The drifts are weighty and have a level of mastery to them, and everything about the steering feels completely polished.
• The track lineup is consistently strong with barely any weak links, and the vast majority offer a ton of varied paths and routes to increase their replay value. MK World's time trials are easily the most fun to watch out of any kart racer solely for how crazy the shortcuts can get.
• The sheer amount of routes, over 200 in fact, help prevent Mario Kart World from feeling too stale or repetitive because there's so many of them that it's hard to actually memorize all of them. Their open nature also once again allows for an incredible level of freedom in terms of finding shortcuts.
• The item system is probably my favorite in any Mario Kart game, perfectly balancing the chaos of earlier games with the more generous QoL features like the double item slot and the Super Horn. The fact that item recovery is the fastest its been since Double Dash also means that being hit doesn't slow down the pace of gameplay nearly as much as it did in prior entries.
• The Grand Prix feels more like a proper campaign than it's ever did, with each of the first seven cups having a rival to fight, and the Rainbow Road getting a lot more build-up to it.
• Knockout Tour is a brilliant addition to the Mario Kart formula that forces you to be constantly vying for the lead so you don't get eliminated.
• Free Roam is mostly a chill affair but I found it a joy to mess around in. There's fun little easter eggs all over the place, the P-Switch missions and Peach Medallions do a great job at encouraging you to master the tech, and simply messing around with the mechanics with no goal in mind is addicting on its own. I didn't really feel like the game was missing a Story Mode or a greater objective, the Free Roam on its own was enough for me to sink 30-40 hours into.
• The open world also serves as a great social hub to hang around with friends. Some of the best online this game offers comes in the intermissions where you're just goofing around in the world waiting for the next race to start.
• Local VS is pretty much perfect. You have the choice to play whichever tracks you want, routes and 3-lap tracks included. As of a recent update, you can even do Mushroom-Only races which are an absolute blast on routes as they turn into a chaotic race to find the biggest shortcuts.
• The roster is really charming and pretty big too with an impressive 50 total characters. The introduction of NPC drivers may seem weird at first, but I quickly grew attached to a lot of the new enemy characters like Para-Biddybud, Stingby, and Peepa thanks to their adorable animations. And speaking of which...  
• Mario Kart World is an absolute visual treat. Every character is animated wonderfully, the environments are bright and vibrant, and the whole game has this cartooniness to it that really stands out. I especially love the ragdoll physics on the vehicle whenever they tip to the side or get hit by an obstacle, really helps add to the chaos of everything.
• And of course, Mario Kart World has my favorite soundtrack of the year. Not only are the new track themes incredibly catchy and memorable, but there's also a massive 200+ selection of live-performed tracks remixes of old Mario tracks in a variety of genres ranging from jazz fusion to rock to EDM.

Cons 

• Online is a bit of a mess. As of right now, you don't really have a choice between playing routes and 3-lap tracks. If you like solely playing on the 3-lap courses, you're going to be forced to play a route around 50% of the time. And if you actually like the routes, you're gonna have to deal with the playerbase constantly selecting 3-lap tracks every chance they get.
• The routes are very hit-or-miss, particularly depending on the region. I think the stereotype of them all being straight-lines is a bit overexaggerated, but there are quite a few stinkers particularly when it comes to the water routes.
• The Battle Mode is a real let-down only boasting eight overly large arenas built into the open world, and a mere two modes. I do like the Balloon Battle ruleset, but the arena design just doesn't take much advantage of it. 
• Mario Kart World at launch had some rough edges that have thankfully been patched out like NPC drivers only being unlockable through the unpredictable Kamek system and not being able to see the collectibles you've already found on the map.
• There are some weird missing features in MK World. Particularly no stats menu, no individual lap times for Time Trial, no jukebox for listening to the aforementioned massive soundtrack, and no 200cc.
• Speaking of which, this is the slowest kart racer of the year, and the lack of 200cc only compounds that. If you like going really really really fast, this is not the game for you.
• Some of the tracks feel a bit too short and lacking in hazards, likely to compensate for Kamek who's too rare to actually make up for this. 
• It's $80 if you don't get the bundle. I don't think anything else needs to be said about that. 

Sonic Racing Crossworlds

Pros

• The drifting feels really nice, especially if you can get a gadget that speeds up how fast your drift charges since it basically allows you to snake ala Mario Kart DS. I can't understate how much snaking improves this game for me, I'd find Crossworlds a lot more boring without it.
• The gadget mechanic is great and allows you to come up with so many different racing builds. While I personally love my snaking build, you can basically configure Crossworlds to play however you want. Heavyweight builds? Builds focused on stealing rings from other players? Glass cannon builds? They're all valid. 
• The track design is consistently pretty solid, and I don't think there's a single course that's downright bad. While there are less Crossworlds than there are routes in Mario Kart, none of them come even close to being as bad as MKW's worst routes, they all have enough turns and cuts to feel engaging.
• Crossworlds' approach to Grand Prix is pretty great. It takes the rival concept that MKW introduced and fleshes it out even further, and the final race being a mix of the previous three tracks works better than it sounds.
• The Time Trial Mode is probably my favorite in any kart racer to date, it's filled with features to help you improve, the addition of a Sonic-esque ranking system is brilliant, and the fact that completing Time Trials unlocks music makes you actually want to do them.
• This game is incredibly fast-paced especially on Super Sonic Speed. Some tracks will straight-up force you to let go of the acceleration because you won't be able to make a turn otherwise, which I always love to see in these racing games.
• There's achievements and most of them are pretty fun to do, they're a great addition if you need extrinsic motivation in these party games.
• For the most part, online is quick, streamlined, and easy to get into. There's no frills, you're most-likely gonna get a track you enjoy, and the emotes are charming.
• The roster is solid and has pretty much all of the important Sonic characters you'd want, and the free updates are adding even more great Sega characters for no extra cost.
• The soundtrack is very fun and very diverse, lots of catchy J-rock and memorable vocal tracks like Blizzard Valley and Aqua Forest. It didn't make the best first impressions, but I can definitively say that Crossworlds' OST is the best Sonic soundtrack since Frontiers, it's genuinely really good.
• There's an actual jukebox and you can even assign music to races which is a fun addition.

Cons

• The default settings feel pretty awful. You pretty much need to go into the settings menu and crank down the sensitivity if you want to have a good time with Crossworlds.
• Race Park is one of the worst VS Modes I've seen in a kart racer. The AI rival mechanic is a dreadful grind, all of the team-based modes are incredibly unfun as they force you to stick behind with your team, and the custom match doesn't even let you disable Crossworlds entirely.
• Speaking of which, I don't actually like the Crossworlds that much. With how little of them they are, they got repetitive fast and often feel less engaging than the standard tracks. I also don't like how you don't actually get to hear full music tracks in this game because they get cut off after 40-50 seconds.
• Like with Mario Kart, some of the tracks can feel too short and too lacking in hazards. Unlike in Mario Kart though, there's no Kamek to make up for this.
• The online Festivals are a big mistake. You're not allowed to do standard online races while a Festival is active, so you're forced into team races for the entire weekend. And as I mentioned, I think the team-based modes in Crossworlds are really unfun.
• The single-player content here is the worst out of these three games. There's nothing on the level of Free Roam or Road Trip, but what's especially shocking is that this is the first Sonic racing game since R to not have either a Story Mode or a Mission Mode (or both in the case of Riders!).
• The jukebox doesn't actually let you assign individual music tracks to individual tracks. Instead, you pick a record and it'll play a random music track for each lap which feels oddly restrictive for no reason.
• The vehicle customization simultaneously feels too limiting and too overly-complicated, especially with how clunky the menus are. This is a problem with the whole game actually, Crossworlds' UI is really bad and screams live service game with how many annoying pop-ups there are all over the place.
• Crossworlds' art direction is really bad. The decision to make this game in UE5 really harms it with the harsh bloom and poor lighting. The character and vehicle animations are also very stiff, the textures are rough, and the game as a whole feels pretty sauceless and lacking in visual identity.
• The progression in Sonic Racing Crossworlds is such a massive grind. Many of the achievements require you to do tons and tons of races, and the amount of tickets the game gives you feels way too small for how much there is to buy. The Friendships mode is the biggest culprit as you'll need around 50,000 tickets per character to unlock everything in it.
• While the soundtrack is good for sure, the actual sound quality can sound a bit cheap and muffled on occasion. It's definitely not as crisp-sounding as the live-performed tracks for Mario and Kirby.
• I can't really say that much of what Crossworlds brings to the table feels especially novel within the genre. Like half of its best ideas are ripped straight from the much better Transformed, and the main Crossworlds gimmick doesn't land for me so I don't really see myself coming back to this one over Mario Kart 8 if I ever want a no-frills kart racing experience.
• Not a fan of how the DLC has been handled. The crossovers with non-video game characters like Spongebob and TMNT feel awkward and gimmicky. The DLC tracks so far have felt a lot less polished than the main game ones, and the DLC characters lack voice-lines so what's even the point.
• It's a $70 game with $20 DLC and honestly, it feels the least worth its price out of any of these three games. I put like 15 hours into Crossworlds before getting bored.

Kirby Air Riders

Pros

• Kirby Air Riders' mechanics are weird, but so damn fun once you get the hang of them. I love how punchy the drifting feels, and the game manages to balance a ton of wacky concepts like aerial movement, taking out enemies to speed up, combat mechanics, copy abilities, and special moves impressively well.
• Each and every vehicle in Air Riders plays entirely differently, but they all have their own strengths that make them viable in any of the modes. Further adding to the complexity is the fact that there are also over 20 racers to play as, each with their own unique strengths and perks, so finding a racer/vehicle combo that synergizes really well feels especially good.
• Air Riders is fast and it doesn't even have speed classes. Even the basic Air Ride mode will have you darting across the track and it feels exhilarating. And in City Trial, you can build up your vehicle to go nigh-uncontrollably fast, and it's wonderful.
• The Air Ride mode has some of the coolest tracks I've ever seen in a racing game. Waveflow Waters, Crystalline Fissure, Steamgust Forge, Cavernous Corners, Cyberion Highway, and the final track are instant classics for their varied biomes, large amounts of branching paths, crazy setpieces, and stunning visuals. You also get all the Air Ride courses from the original game and they feel fantastic with these new and improved mechanics.
• Top Ride is a cute little addition that may have the least depth out of any of the modes, but it's still a wonderfully fun and chaotic battle mode that absolutely trounces any of Mario Kart's Battle Modes.
• City Trial is still the best mode in any kart racing game, and it's somehow even better here. 16 players, way more events and challenges, a new map with shifting terrain, more legendary vehicles, tons of quality of life improvements that keep up the pace, and of course, online play to really help the mode live up to its fullest potential.
• There's an actual Story Mode here in the form of Road Trip, and it's a ton of fun. Road Trip brings together all three gameplay styles into one campaign, and its fast pace and roughly 3-4 hour length prevents it from overstaying its welcome.
• The checklist is easily the most addictive and rewarding progression system in any kart racer, boasting a whopping 750 achievements to chip away at. Despite how overwhelming it may seem, completing the checklist never feels like a grind because you're constantly unlocking stuff and all the missions are smartly designed to encourage you to experiment.
• The customization in Kirby Air Riders is on another level, you can really transform the look of your machines but the UI remains easy to parse through. You also have hats to put on the playable characters, a customizable license card to use online, and garages to display all your vehicles.
• The online functionality is easily the best out of all of these three games. The paddock system is immensely charming and gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to playing matches with friends. All three major modes have online support and their own separate ranks, and while there are events, they're never forced on the player.
• In general, the sheer amount of content in Air Riders is staggering. I'm over 20 hours in and I'm still discovering tons of new secrets, features, and unlocks. There's a ton of online and accessibility features, an incredibly robust stats page, and a wide variety of superfluous features that only make the game feel even more complete.
• The UI in Kirby Air Riders is some of Sakurai's absolute finest, it's all visually-interesting, well laid-out, and easy to navigate.
• Visually, Kirby Air Riders looks incredible on every level. The character animations are wonderfully fluid (especially for Lololo & Lalala who are a joy to watch with their constant character switching), the tracks look gorgeous and cinematic, and the game is filled with thrilling and snappy visual effects that accentuate everything. Sakurai's art direction is also at its best here, with some Road Trip sequences in particular giving off Subspace vibes in the best ways possible. Simply put, I'd argue Kirby Air Riders is one of the most stylish kart racing games I've ever played.
• And of course, the soundtrack by Shogo Sakai and Noriyuki Iwadare is incredible. The main themes are massive ear-worms, the track themes are all incredibly catchy and varied, and the remixes of old Air Ride tracks are lovingly crafted and often surpass the originals. There's also a music player and a functioning My Music feature so you can listen to whichever songs you want in City Trial.
• It's a $70 game... but it actually feels worth the price in terms of its content and production values. And on top of that, there's no DLC, no microtransactions, and no live service bullshit whatsoever. It's a complete package through and through.

Cons

• Kirby Air Riders isn't going to be for everyone. It's a very unconventional game and a lot of people have bounced off of it. But that's not even really a con, is it? I'd rather a game be entirely itself even if it alienates a more mainstream audience.
• The music player doesn't show who composed each track which is especially jarring in a series otherwise great at crediting its composers. I'm genuinely desperate to know which songs Noriyuki Iwadare was responsible for.
• The roster feels like it has some gaps. In particular, the lack of Adeleine or Ribbon anywhere in the game is baffling.
• One or two events in City Trial cause the framerate to dip a noticeable amount. You could argue it adds to the chaos, but I found it distracting.
• Road Trip doesn't randomize the missions with each playthrough, so I can definitely see it getting way too repetitive if you try to beat it with every character. 
• The Time Trial modes don't have any online leaderboards, you're just racing against yourself here. 
• There's only 18 Air Ride tracks which means this game has by far the least amount of courses out of these three games. That being said, the other modes do make up for this, especially if you count the nine Top Ride tracks and the 50 Stadium events.

So... Which One's The Best?

It's Kirby Air Riders, obviously. I don't even think it's especially close. Mario Kart and Crossworlds both have their share of pretty blatant flaws, but I could look past them in Mario Kart's case because it pushes the genre forward in so many exciting ways. I love the parkour system, I love the interconnected world, and I love the more chill and lax approach to kart racing. It's a very cohesive game and all of its design choices, both good and bad, feel like they're contributing to one deliberate vision. Crossworlds is a more traditional and safe kart racer that lacks some of Mario Kart's more baffling omissions, but I also find it a lot more boring and a lot less remarkable. Kirby Air Riders, at least for me, is the best of both worlds. It has the sauce and the mechanical ambitions of Mario Kart, and the greater breadth of options and features that Crossworlds touted.

Winner: Kirby Air Riders