Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle<\/em> exploded on the scene earlier this year, capped with a heartfelt appearance by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto at E3, and people have been high on it ever since.<\/p> After the curtains fell, I am too, for the most part.<\/p> Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle <\/i>(Switch)<\/strong> Creating doppelganger versions of Nintendo’s own fab four is genius. It’s a move that allows Ubisoft and Nintendo to get a little more creative with their personalities rather than once again push out the stoic Mario and sweet Peach. Now, their Rabbid equivalents are boastful and exhibit sociopathic tendencies respectively. Ubisoft found a way around Miyamoto’s stalwart, lock-and-key mentality surrounding his creations.<\/p> Pretty much every recent Mario<\/em> narrative has been light on exposition, and Rabbids<\/em> is no exception. A giant portal appears over the Mushroom Kingdom, Rabbid things emerge out of it, and worlds collide. Some Rabbids are good, some are bad and ally with Bowser Jr., such is life. There’s a number of groan-worthy moments that are straight out of the Shrek<\/em> playbook (slow motion slapstick), but Ubisoft makes up for it by clowning on Luigi constantly or resorting to insult comedy in a way most Nintendo games would never do. There’s something eerily satisfying about watching a Rabbid let someone fall to their death and snap a selfie while Mario worryingly looks on in disapproval.<\/p> Everything is also simple, clean, and cute, in a way that feels up to par with a first-party creation. Rabbid<\/em>‘s aim is to ease people into the strategy genre, not scare them away from it with stringent min-max requirements and permadeath. I admire it in that sense, as I play plenty<\/em> of SRPGs that involve staring at menu screens for hours on end, and even if there’s technically an armory of weapons to sift through, you don’t really need<\/em> to do it.<\/p> That insistence leads to a compromise of fluff. Exploration zones, which are basically just glorified maps that you move from battle to battle on, focus on leading your party in a linear fashion — figuratively and literally. There’s no fun jump ability or depth to it so finding secret bounties feel unearned, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much more interesting they could have been with even an ounce of influence from Mario RPG<\/em>. There’s slight promise with puzzles like chasing red coins and blue coin bonus zones, but there’s really no work required to best these portions.<\/p> The way coins work is also strange. You can earn them piecemeal through exploration zones or in bulk as a reward for doing well in combat, but they come a little too slowly for my taste. Given that they’re used to unlock weapons (and subweapons like drones or hammers) they gate quite a lot of content, and the way everything is earned feels a little off. Weapons are acquired through chests, some of which are off the beaten path, leading to odd scenarios where you just spent your entire savings on a rifle only to find a better one five minutes later for the same price. It’s not something that actively pissed me off, but it’s a questionable mechanic as I was constantly hoarding my cash instead of buying cool new items to experiment with.<\/p> ![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/v1cdn.jbsgame.com\/455578_RRR-noscale.jpg?w=640&ssl=1\")
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Developer: Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Milan<\/strong>
Publisher: Ubisoft<\/strong>
Release Date: August 29, 2017<\/strong>
MSRP: $59.99<\/strong><\/p>