Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle – Nintendo

I absolutely love this game. I have never played anything like this, no XCOM style games, no games at all really except for just really easy stuff, games that don’t require much thought, like Mario Kart. I didn’t think I would like this one, but I gave it a try. I’m 37 years old if that makes a difference, but I would say that this is a family-friendly game. There is some potty-humor, some flatulence and sometimes Beep-O (the leader that looks like a robotic vacuum) has an attitude and he may swear but the swear words are in this form – #{98880d97af0555a3a517c8aae666eeb64e7bd6d49cbbe05617dcb138f6e48200}&$! – and it only happens 2, maybe 3 times. I think that would just fly over a young child’s head. There isn’t any blood or gore and it’s not incredibly violent – sure, you’re “shooting” and blowing up characters, but it’s tasteful – they just sort of disappear instead of piling up around you. Some of the puzzles are surprisingly difficult, or maybe I’m just not nearly as smart as I thought I was. I had more trouble figuring a few of those out than I would like to admit, lol.

I was frustrated at first, even though looking back the game starts off incredibly easy. I just had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. It definitely gives you a chance to learn the ropes, so if you are like me and have never played this style game, you CAN easily pick it up. It does get increasingly difficult, and pretty quickly. If you are skilled at these types of games, I wouldn’t worry about it being too easy altogether. Once I got the hang of it I could not put it down. I just beat the final boss last night and I was thrilled to find that there was more to the game after that – you can go back and do more things and find hidden “Ultimate Challenges”.

The animation is fantastic. The scenery is beautiful, the characters are adorable, the bosses are really cool. Rabbid Peach is my favorite – she’s a social media obsessed diva. She’s always stopping to take selfies of herself with her cell phone and when the team loses a match or challenge she yanks off her wig and crown (off camera) and throws them towards the other 2 team members. It’s just really cute, I found myself laughing out loud a lot during gameplay. The soundtrack is marvelous.

I have come across a couple of glitches in the game – the “A” button sometimes stops working and I can’t do anything – I can bring up the menu with the “+” button but it’s just scrolling through really quickly, I can’t select any of the options. All I can do is close the software and start again at the last saved point. During the last few chapters of the game I had some trouble with the software closing on its own – an error message that said something like this software has encountered an error and needs to close. Hopefully, those things are fixed with future updates or patches, if that’s possible.

I am very happy that I went outside of my comfort zone and gave this game a try. I hope there are more like it in the future. I give it a 10 out of 10. 🙂