Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope review - snooker in space

Who is Luigi? The brother. The palette swap. The cringer and creeper, chattering Mario's name as he quakes and trembles in various ghost houses. All true. But there is another Luigi. The Luigi of the hard stare in Mario Kart. The Luigi who barges you off the road and wants you to know it was personal. And now: Luigi the sniper. Death from a distance. A cool heart and a steady gaze. Luigi winning the game and bringing us all home.

Luigi was the sniper in the first Mario + Rabbids, a game that dared to ask, what if you gave everybody in the Mushroom Kingdom a bunch of guns? That's sort of an awful question, but Ubisoft managed to provide a surprisingly lovely answer for it: you'd get a knockabout version of XCOM. Mario taking cover. Peach healing. Toad going for overwatch. And Luigi sniping.

This Luigi business didn't click for me until I got stuck into the sequel: Sparks of Hope. Then it clicked instantly. Luigi as a sniper! Luigi with an attack that does more damage the further away from his target he gets. Stick Luigi up high and he becomes a god: in action, how like an angel, in apprehension, how like...well, stick him on Overwatch and see. Luigi sniping across the map, wracking up 2000 points of damage. Luigi watching as his enemies shatter into candied star bits. Luigi bringing us all home.

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