Hands on with World of Light, a Super Smash Bros. campaign finally worth playing

Like a round of punches on a sprinting Fox McCloud, the Super Smash Bros. series' various campaign modes have always been hit and miss. Brawl's memorable Subspace Emissary, where your favourite characters teamed up in cutscenes offering the kind of fanservice Avengers movies now feast on, also forced you to slog through lacklustre side-scrolling stages. Smash on 3DS had the decent but forgettable dungeon crawler Smash Run, while Smash on Wii U had board game Smash Tour - the less said about that the better - and now Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has World of Light - possibly the strongest offering yet.

World of Light is a web of curated battles featuring characters from the farthest reaches of Nintendo's history and beyond, played out over a vast world map. There are multiple paths to follow, randomised events to navigate and an enormous skill tree you'll need to unlock to boss your way through some increasingly difficult dust-ups. Want to unleash a double Final Smash, one of the skill tree's top unlocks? You have some work on your hands first.

The mode's Infinity War-style premise may remind you of Subspace Emissary's similarly apocalyptic setting, but where Brawl only dusted the game's playable fighters, World of Light wipes out every single Nintendo character you've ever held dear (and Birdo) in one Thanos-sized swoop. Waluigi? Gone. Emperor Bulblax? Gone. Bowsette? Hopefully gone too. Instead of simply resurrecting the game's roster, your job in World of Light is to restore hundreds of beloved background characters, each via their own themed battle.

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