Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle review — tactics fun for everyone

A mash-up with Mario, gaming’s biggest icon, and the Rabbids, an annoying species of screaming, slapstick Minion precursors, should have been a disaster. But Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is another excellent early game for Nintendo’s Switch (it comes out on August 29).

And the success comes from the actual gameplay having little to do with either Mario or the Rabbids. Kingdom Battle is a turn-based strategy game like the XCOM series. But you’d expect something like XCOM to appeal to an older, more hardcore crowd, while Mario and the Rabbids  — although certainly popular with all ages — attract younger fans.