10 Upcoming Video Games Being Sent Out To Die
5. Mario + Rabbids: Sparks Of Hope
It can't be overstated just how much of a surprise success Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was back in 2017. Despite considerable fan skepticism that it'd be anything more than a cynical, half-baked crossover between the two beloved IP, it ended up a surging critical and commercial success.
It's surprising, then, that it's taken Nintendo an entire five years to assemble a sequel, with Mario + Rabbids: Sparks Of Hope set to release October 20.
Now, there aren't any major worries about the game failing to deliver quality-wise, though some fans have expressed disappointment at Ubisoft doing away with the original's popular grid-based battle system.
Yet all in all, Sparks of Hope may struggle to differentiate itself as anything beyond "more of the same," even with its more open, less-linear level design.
Again, this isn't to say that Nintendo or Ubisoft thinks Sparks of Hope is a doomed project, but it's clearly not a priority offering for either company.
Hopefully as its release approaches they might start pushing it more, but at present it feels like it might just come and go while making only a fraction of Kingdom Battle's cultural imprint (and, therefore, commercial success). It'd be great to be wrong about this, though.