Mario + Rabbids Sparks Of Hope doesn’t have enough chocolate or peanut butter
A few hours in, the sequel to gaming's most inexplicable gem isn't as bizarre as it seems like it should be
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2017’s Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is one of the stranger things Nintendo has ever signed off on. The company had licensed its famous plumber out to some weird things in the past—Mario Teaches Typing, Mario Is Missing!, and the original Super Mario Bros. movie come to mind—but nothing on par with a turn-based tactical shooter that gave Mario a gun and paired him up with Ubisoft’s intentionally aggravating Rabbids characters. Even weirder: The game was great. The combination worked, and the developers at the Ubisoft studios that worked on the game clearly had some fun playing with the Mario universe.
I’ve only put in a few hours on the sequel, Mario + Rabbids Sparks Of Hope, and while there are some welcome changes to the gameplay, I can’t help but feel like it’s missing a little something. The first game was so audacious, from top to bottom, that seeing another game where Mario is friends with Rabbids (specifically, Rabbid versions of his friends) and going on an adventure that involves shooting bad Rabbids with a gun (even a silly, sci-fi laser blaster) has kind of … lost its novelty?
Sparks Of Hope explicitly moves past the more traditional Super Mario aesthetics of the first game in favor of bringing in some stuff from the Wii’s Super Mario Galaxy games. That means you go to different planets, meet wacky new Rabbid characters, and collect Rabbid versions of that game’s star-like Luma guys. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but Mario Galaxy was already mostly just space stuff, and the new Rabbid planets are just … new video game settings with Rabbids in them.
The first place you visit is a beach world run by a goofy sea god, and while he’s a good friend and I love him, nothing about any of it seems like something that could only be accomplished with the chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo of Mario and Rabbids. There’s just not enough recognizable Super Mario stuff or off-the-wall screeching zany Rabbid stuff for me, which is fine, but … like … if you wanna get nuts, let’s get nuts. Give me some Rabbid version of Mario stuff that isn’t just “Mario but screaming and with rabbit ears,” or maybe some Mario version of Rabbid stuff? Like a horrible shrieking rabbit turned into a lovable cartoon plumber? Or how about Rabbid Samus? Rabbid Link? Rabbid Captain Falcon?
Maybe something cool like that will happen later in the game (I know there’s some Rayman-themed DLC on the way), but at least in the early hours, it seems like more of the same vibe and aesthetics—and it’s absurd to be saying that about a game where Mario shoots Rabbids with a gun. I’m aware.
In terms of gameplay, I don’t have any complaints about Sparks Of Hope. The battles are a lot more action-based, since you’re now free to move around as much as you want, which means you have more freedom to line up your shots or to get teammates in range for area-of-effect bonuses. Beyond that, you have your team shoot at the enemy, then they get a turn to shoot at you, and you win if you kill everybody or run past them and get to a specific spot on the map. Pretty straightforward turn-based tactical shooter stuff, made slightly more interesting by the inclusion of Mario and Rabbids—but not as interesting as it seems like it all should be.