Who is Luigi? that brother. Palette swap. Creeper and Creeper, chattering about Mario’s name while shivering and trembling in various haunted houses. are all true. But there is another Luigi. Luigi in Mario Kart. Luigi stops you in the way and wants to let you know it’s private. Now: Sniper Luigi. Death in the distance. A calm heart and firm eyes. Luigi won the game and brought us all home.
Luigi is the first sniper in Mario + Rabbids, a game that dares to ask, what if you gave everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom a bunch of guns? It’s a scary question, but Ubisoft managed to give it a surprisingly cute answer: You get a knock-on version of XCOM. Mario cover. Peach Healing. Toad goes to Overwatch. and Luigi sniping.
It wasn’t until I got stuck in the sequel: Sparks of Hope that this Luigi business caught my eye. Then it clicks right away. Luigi as a sniper! The farther Luigi’s attack is from the target, the more damage it deals. Hold Luigi high and he’s a god: in action, how angelic, in worry, how… well, glue him to Overwatch and see. Luigi snips across the map, dealing 2000 damage. Luigi watched as his enemy shattered into candy-like shards of stars. Luigi took us home.
Sparks of Hope takes the basic Mario + Rabbids formula, the XCOM formula, and adds some neat tweaks. A new storyline has you leaving the mushroom kingdom and blasting into outer space, moving between wacky planets that look like discarded stages in a galaxy game. There’s a good rhythm here, even though the planets in the Galaxy games are largely defined by how you use your platforming skills to walk through them, so they become playgrounds, soft games, obstacle courses, not to your liking The stylish set arrives here. Anyway, that rhythm: you arrive and have to sort things out for the locals. If you follow the quest lines, there are two main objectives for each planet, but if you’re after absolutely everything, you’ll need dozens of side quests.
I think this part of the game is pretty good. Each planet—fall, winter, and a few others I won’t spoil—has a unique plot going on. Once, I climbed a snowy mountain and unleashed the power of the sun. In another I ventured through the forest and was completely confused. You can explore in real time, collect coins, unlock fast travel points, chat with locals and solve puzzles with the help of two gadgets, one of which allows you to interact with certain objects while the other reveals secrets to the landscape around you Elements. It’s a lot of fun, whether you’re redirecting water in caves – again doing actual plumbing, I guess – or moving statues around spooky mansions.
But the game lives on the battlefield, and that’s where the Sparks really fly. Combat here is an instanced thing, taking you off the map and into a specially prepared area filled with cover, pipes, and other tactical Mario goodness. From the first game, the grid system is over, which means you can run through each character’s movement area in a more dynamic way, finding the right spot to take cover or take on enemies at the perfect angle. Each character still has two action points per turn, but with free actions returning, such as dashing a vandal or teaming up for special jumps, as well as weapons and special attacks (like Overwatch), you can now use action points for the Sparks ability.
Sparks are fun little floating pillow people that you collect as you move through the game. Each spark can be upgraded with a star, and each of your characters can bring two sparks into battle. Spark is very useful and it’s a lot of fun to find the right synergy. May add electricity or fire or some other elemental damage to your main attack. Another may perform elemental area attacks or make you invisible to enemies for a turn. You can manage the cooldowns of Sparks as well as the cooldowns of other attacks, and they can change the trend of battles very decisively. For example, a dominant enemy might have a weakness for electricity, or three low-level nasties might perch on a cliff, perfect for Sparks’ gust attack.
The last part deals with what really stands out in the spark of hope. The characters are great, each has their own weapon quirks and idiosyncrasies, and Spark brings a lot of fun to the battlefield. It’s also nice to equip your team with items that allow them to replenish action points, for example, or throw POW blocks like grenades. But what’s really interesting here is the way the XCOM game slowly morphs into a pool game throughout the campaign with the spark of hope.
Real talk: When I play XCOM, I always play it as a form of American football. There are these heavyweights on the court and they don’t run around and every time I rush them into cover I feel like I’m really pushing them on the court and a devastating wall is crushing in front of it everything. But Spark of Hope is easier and messier than that. Fire Attacks will see your enemies – or your team – run around unpredictably to put out flames, pop out of cover, or possibly grab land unexpectedly. Then there are bad guys pounding the ground, sending your men flying around and landing in unusual places. There are gusts of wind hitting, and at least one level has fun built around a series of wind turbines. New levels after another introduce new things to move your team and enemies in fantastic ways. Midway through the campaign, I was thinking: It’s not where I put my players that matters, it’s where they end up at the end of the round.
Well, it turned out to be very interesting tactics and a stepping stone, as you’d expect from a combination of Mario and XCOM. The character roster is colorful and quirky, encouraging experimentation, and in addition to gear items and sparks, each character has some skill tree that inserts points as they level up. (Characters also automatically flatten on the battlefield.) Add bosses, creative victory conditions, deep cuts in the Mario Universe, and clever battlefield design, and you’ve got something pretty special.
And there are many more. I’ve finished the campaign, but I’m still working on the side quests, the best of which will give you a very interesting battlefield encounter. I think for the next few months I’ll be playing like I’m playing XCOM Hope Spark Bath is going to run. As I play, I look for new character synergies – you shoot everyone into the air and he triggers Overwatch – and new shortcuts to defeating certain bad guys. On top of that, I’ll be looking for new places to put Luigi so he can observe the terrain, pick distant targets, and unleash absolute destruction.
