Best Racing Game of 2025 - Article
by Evan Norris , posted on 12 January 2026 / 2,887 Views
Unlike RPG and Action-Adventure, two genres that deliver multiple GotY candidates year after year, Racing is something of a feast or famine situation. Luckily, 2025 was a feast year, due primarily to Nintendo's latest hybrid console. All four games on the shortlist appeared on Switch 2; heck, three of them are exclusives. Shin'en, no stranger to Nintendo hardware, once again punched above its weight class with the slick futuristic racer Fast Fusion. Masahiro Sakurai reconfirmed his auteur status with Kirby Air Riders, an unexpectedly deep and content-rich racer with more than a little fighting game DNA in it. Nintendo EPD made a big splash at the launch of Switch 2 with Mario Kart World, which obliterated the spatial boundaries of the franchise. And Sonic Team raised the stakes with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, thanks to an inventive travel ring mechanic.
The Shortlist:
Fast Fusion
Kirby Air Riders
Mario Kart World
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
The Runner-Up:
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has a lot going for it. For starters, it benefits from speedy, nimble, arcade-like gameplay. For another, the game offers many avenues to customize vehicles — whether cosmetically via paint and decals or mechanically via gadgets and parts — which promotes a sense of player agency unusual for the karting sub-genre. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the "CrossWorlds" gimmick, which allows racers to choose a portal to a different world in the middle of a race, makes everything that much more dynamic and unpredictable.
The Winner:
Mario Kart World
Knowing that it would be next to impossible to top Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at its own game, the developers at Nintendo decided to switch gears with Mario Kart World, delivering an ambitious interconnected open world in which the barriers typical of the series fall away. The results are extraordinary. Traditional tracks are now connected to one another by dirt roads, highways, rivers, deserts, oceans, forests, etc., which provides a sense of continuity and connectivity that radically changes the feel of the game. Each cup is more substantial, more visually and texturally diverse, and far more immersive.
But that's just part of the equation. To ensure that players can fully explore and experience all the corners and surfaces of this vast open world, the development team introduced new mechanics like grinding, charge-jumping, and wall-jumping that significantly raise the skill ceiling for the franchise. In a way, for those who know how to leverage its tools and squeeze through its shortcuts, Mario Kart World is a racing-platform game, as strange as that sounds. When all these structural and mechanical changes combine with bouncy, beautiful graphics and a phenomenal soundtrack, you're left with the finest racer of 2025.
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easy choice here.
Not especially. Lots of people have said that MK World is disappointing for various reasons ($80 vs the content, underwhelming open world, emphasis on intermission races online, etc), while a lot of people have been pleasantly surprised by Kirby Air Riders and Sonic Crossworlds.
MK World is still probably the gaming public's overall favorite, but it wasn't the slam dunk one might have expected.
Well it is too expensive for what it offers.
Agreed. There's plenty more that can be done, but the bones of the game are great, and I've really been enjoying it to the point where I can't see going back to older games, especially with 24 players and the Knockout Tours. It's a lot beefier than Mario Kart 8 was when it first came out.
Knockout Tours are insanely fun. Funny that I get DCs a lot on the cabled connection, which doesn't happen in games like Smash. Playing on Wifi is not as good. Don't know if any of you guys has gone through that also.
Nope, I play wired and never had a DC.
I play wired, and have never had a DC on MKW. The game where I have the most issues with wired disconnects is Street Fighter 6.
I'm the exact opposite to be honest. MKW is still a good game, but I much rather go back to MK8 when I want my Mario Kart fix now. None of the changes (24 players, open world, intermission courses) I thought actually made it a better Mario Kart game.
Fair enough, but Mario Kart 8 didn't start out great on Wii U. It only had one battle mode at launch, and instead of dedicated battle courses, they used repurposed grand prix tracks. It was actually compared unfavorably to MKWii and MK7 at first. It took a lot of DLC and patches to get it to where it ended up being, but Nintendo did make it into a good platform-within-a-platform. I'm sure Nintendo will upgrade World. Its racing is also a lot more solid than MK8, and the higher player count means fewer races where only 3 or 4 people are racing.
No nod for Garfield Kart 2? Honestly, this year was the year of the kart racers.
They need to do a new Heathcliff kart game to compete with Garfield. (There was a Heathcliff karting game on Wii).
Tokyo Xtreme Racer got shafted! At least deserved a nomination.
