Mario & Luigi: Brothership hands-on: Immaculate vibes meet brilliant nonsense

No hero should have to work alone. Batman trained Robin, Bill and Ted changed history, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, well, let’s just say they went on their own terms. In video games, the most iconic duo is easily Mario and Luigi. Since 2003, Nintendo’s flagship brothers have headlined Mario & Luigi, a spin-off of the iconic Super Mario franchise that places equal emphasis on Mario and Luigi as a team; the cornerstone of this philosophy is how all critical button inputs boil down to the A and B buttons which correspond to Mario and Luigi respectively. The siblings have been enjoying a well-earned vacation for the last decade (since Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam on 3DS), but we caught up with the pair to go hands-on with their latest, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, on the increasingly aging Nintendo Switch. After an hour in their company, it’s clear that there’s little in the way of mechanical innovation in this successor. Yet, the little things, the dressings and accoutrements to this mushroom dish, have left me thinking about it for days. They’re enough to justify this brotherly reunion entirely.Setting sail Mario & Luigi find themselves on Concordia, a colorful ocean planet made up of disconnected islands. It’s up to the pair to reconnect them, through the power of Brothership – or, well, the Shipshape Island. A moving buccaneer ship that’s a giant island itself, it floats all around Concordia in a big loop; a mighty helpful navigational map occupies the top left corner of the screen that allows players see where on its route the Shipshape is passing in real-time.Interacting with the onboard telescope allows Mario and Luigi to target a nearby island, stuff themselves into the Shipshape’s cannon, and blast themselves off to explore. There you partake in the usual series fare – battling enemies and solving puzzles – before finally reconnecting the island back to the Shipshape. My designated Nintendo rep informed me it’s possible to revisit islands after connecting, where Mario and Luigi can and will discover new things that weren’t present on their first visit.Brothership is classic Mario in terms of narrative structure and design in this way, only now with a high seas twist. It’s like someone binge-watched Indiana Jones’ most thrilling scenes while blasting the relaxed tunes of Jimmy Buffett and thought: “What if we made this a Mario & Luigi game?”Plugging back in The Nintendo Switch is over seven years old – old age for gaming hardware – but Brothership proves that even this old dog can do new tricks. The turn-based scraps of Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam remains intact in Brothership, down to its strikingly familiar user interface and the real-time inputs that allow a boost to damage based on timing accuracy.Even Paper Jam’s Battle Cards are back, now dubbed ‘Battle Plugs’, which give Mario and Luigi all sorts of combat perks. A personal favorite: Getting ‘perfect’ timing during combat drops a spike ball on my chosen enemy. I’m a sucker for stacking damage in RPGs, and with this Battle Plug, it never ceased being delicious forcing an enemy to lose more HP after giving them a proper wallop. Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

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