Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle looks like the crazy cartoon strategy game you didn't know you wanted

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is released for Nintendo Switch on 29 August

There was a wonderful moment in Ubisoft's excellent E3 conference where David Soliani the director of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, a barmy crossover strategy game for Switch, broke down in tears.

Here was a man so proud of his work that the moment of its reveal overcame him. Perhaps what makes this more extraordinary is that Mario + Rabbids is a game no-one thought they wanted.

It combines Nintendo's famous plumber with Ubisoft's wacky creatures the Rabbids, possibly best described as the games industry's Minions (although the Rabbids came first in a 2006 Rayman spin-off). Love them or hate them, everyone tends to have an opinion.

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot as they reveal Mario + Rabbids

The feeling was that it was a mash-up that didn't reflect well on Mario. The Rabbids not fit to button his dungarees. Yet another reason for Soliani's emotion was that he had the chance to work with Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario's creator and the games industry's most revered individual.

Miyamoto had taken a special interest in the project, no doubt to make sure Nintendo's most precious mascot was being treated right, and his only condition was that Ubisoft made a kind of game that Mario had never starred in.

And generally speaking, you can trust Miyamoto on these things. Mario + Rabbids is shaping up to be a delightful, accessible and cartoonish strategy game that is quite unlike any Mario game before it. Yet it still retains much of the plumber's habits and styles.

The setup is this: a vortex has opened over Mario's home of the Mushroom Kingdom and is spitting out Rabbids at an alarming rate.

The more mischievious of the creatures are causing havoc, leaving Mario and his pals to attempt to clear up and figure out what is going on. Joining Mario, Yoshi, Peach and Luigi are four more helpful Rabbids dressed as... Mario, Yoshi, Peach and Luigi.

So you travel the Mushroom Kingdom, picking up coins and battling the rampant Rabbids with a variety of laser-guns. It is a turn-based strategy game so you alternate movement and attack and trade blows with the enemy on the battlefield.

For the initiated, it is much like XCOM-lite, retaining the flavour while making it more accessible for the kids and the curious.

Getting hands-on, it is immediately apparent how easy it is to slip into its rhythm. Your movement is contained to a limited blue area around you, with you able to take up cover or zip through pipes scattered around the kingdom.

Then you have the chance to attack, zapping enemies with a variety of ranged weapons. Floating above the bad guys heads are a couple of informative stats such as their health, how much damage you can cause and the chance of a successful hit.

It is very simple and slick, as you flank and position yourself to deal with threats, while a nice line in tricks keeps things interesting.

If a Rabbid is behind cover, you will have a 0% chance of a hit but can chip away at the wall (or blow it up, if it's an explosive one). You can also move through a rabbid to execute a sliding kick, dealing a small amount of damage before allowing you to attack proper.

And if you find yourself a bit far out, you can walk up to another member of your team and have them throw you further into the battlefield.



The battling is excellent fun and easy to get into. And to keep a familiar Mario feel, there is some nice exploration in a colourful setting.

You go round collecting coins to buy new gear, while there was couple of environmental puzzles, shuffling bridges around to reach a chest (which contains new items) and needing to collect 8 red coins around a shifting maze.

It all works with its silly, Saturday- morning-cartoon style; the rabbid Peach pausing to take selfies while fighting a boss or runaway creatures causing mischief in the background as you explore.

The very idea of this crossover seemed too bizarre to entertain yet, as weird as it is, works both in style and action.

The question is how that strategic accessibility can translate into depth as players progress through the game but, on this evidence, David Soliani is quite right to be proud. Via Source: telegraph