Grant Kirkhope Appears To Have Completed His Work On Mario + Rabbids

He will be missed. My favorite of his is rusty bucket bay.

This series was WAY better than it ever had any right to be. I'm glad we got a sequel.

Ugh. I need to get these....

The series that just shouldn’t have worked, but worked so well!

Hitting bedrock is a great showdown song. I played Donkey Kong 64 not too long ago and also thought the music was great. The music is so innocent and playful. Hopefully this is not the last we hear of Mr. Kirkhope in a Nintendo game.

If I recall correctly didn't Grant compose for donkey kong country?

I wish all his soundtracks were available for streaming

@TheSaneInsanity not quite, he did compose dk64, but not the county series

@TheSaneInsanity That was David Wise!

@WaffleBoat Rusty Bucket Bay and Grunty Industries are my favourite : P

Great games. Both were hours of fun. Both had amazing music

So is a return to DK next?

Looking forward to the DLC, I just finished the main game yesterday evening, and played through the Tower of Doom once this morning.

@aSmilingMan guilty as charged. I waited for a sale knowing it's Ubisoft and they always go down in price fast. Got the gold edition cheaper than the launch price for the standard. But hey, I usually get games at discounts well below 10 euro's, mostly below 5, and often below 3 even, and skip anything more expensive unless it's a GREAT indie physical release with a manual and all that fine stuff.

Not that I need to defend myself, but in my defense anyway: I chose a simple life in financial poverty, and pursuing other riches, but I still like to play a good game on my Switch. Cutting down a lot on my gaming spending budget, I could save money to buy multiple forests to live in. And the state "AAA" video games are in nowadays, I gladly skip most of them anyways, while only the Switch is energy efficient enough to run it on off grid power supply.

Great games. Having said that, it seems that Ubisoft overestimated the appeal of a strategy game in console.

Personally, I know some normies who bought the first game and were surprised and disappointed it wasn’t a platformer.
You could say they should’ve looked at the back of the box, but really, that’s not always how a lot of casuals do think. They see Mario.

That’s how the low effort Mario sports game sell 3+ million units. Name.

Loved the first game. Enjoyed the second though Edge as a character seemed like she had a more interesting plot in theory than in practice.

@Strumpan David Wise as well as the oft-forgotten Eveline Fischer.

@MatthewTaranto Yes, very true!

That's unfortunate; they were both great games with even better soundtracks. Excited to see what Grant works on next, I suppose!

i loved the first one but i don't know exactly why but i can't stand sparks of hope. The music of course is not the problem, but kingdom battle felt way more focused and like mario and team waging a war to protect the mushroom kingdom. I really hate how sparks does the like pokemon thing where all battles (so far at least) take place in like this void. the immersion (never thought i'd use that phrase in a mario game) just felt weird.

doesn't surprise me after he wasn't mentioned in the Mario movie credits, despite using his song.

It's unfortunate this game didn't sell well. Of the AAA publishers, Ubisoft is one of the few that will try something outside of the live service and "dude-bro shooter" category. So to see this fail while Assassins Creed 186 is still pulling in the money, it's just disappointing.

@JohnnyMind Yeah, I love the genre (but got even XCOM 2 Collection only for the first time on the Switch, at 5 euro's, and that is the one they're always mentioning when something is even remotely like it). I played many other in the genre (such as the excellent Phantom Doctrine and Hard West, often available at 2 euro's, for over a 100 hours of fun for me). I'm also a fan of Mario games, and even of the Rabbids to some degree (Rabbids Go Home was an awesome game).

I got my Switch day one, and that was just when I started skipping many big budget releases, and Kingdom Battle was one of them, untill I bought the gold edition very cheap later on, just to have a new game to play, and I fell in love with it. The DK dlc was among the best dlc I ever played as well. My partner back then, and still one of my best friends, also tried it and also got hooked. I recently mentioned on the phone I was playing the sequel, and she started singing the mid boss theme of the first game

I also think I like the fact that any attack has a hit chance of 100%, 50-50, or 0. Because I hate missing multiple 80+ % hit chance attacks in a row for example. Games like Hard West have found a great way to solve that as well, with a "luck" system that runs out when a character avoids lasting physical damage, and restores when they miss an attack if I remember correctly. When luck is too low or at zero, it becomes a certain hit. Much better than 97% chance to deal 10x the damage required to take down an opponent, only to miss and do nothing. 50-50 with dealing cover damage otherwise, is also a great system.

I did like the music in the first Mario & Rabbids game better (it sometimes is too quiet or no music at all in the sequel, or feels desperate while I want it to feel energising and fun), and that the fights were right there on the main map, no alternate dimension or whatever.

Yeah I think Ubisoft has a very bad business model for themselves, making way too many way too big games and forcing every franchise into the same gameplay loop that I'm tired of anyways, with way too many sequels way too fast. And knowing their prices drop just as fast, why would I buy their next game full price, when I can get its five previous titles for a couple of euro's, patched and dlc included, and have about the same gameplay experience (or better, in many cases). It would sadden me to see them fail, as I like some of their games a lot (like Assassin's Creed 4 and Zombi U and Rayman Legends, for example).

Way too much text again, sorry

I wonder if he composed music for the upcoming Rayman DLC.

Ans yes, Ubisoft has to change its marketing. All the Ubisoft games I own were bought on heavy discounts in relation to their launch prices here in Mexico: Rayman Legends Wii U for 250 pesos (about $12 instead of the usual $60 back then), Starlink: Battle for Atlas at 500 pesos (about $25 instead of the usual $70, I couldn't find it cheaper) and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle for 600 pesos (about $30 instead of the usual $70).
I'm willing to get Sparks of Hope and Rayman Legends: Definitive Edition, but Kirby's Return to Dream Land and Metroid Prime Remastered are a priority for my Switch physical purchases before I get anything else.

@aSmilingMan I definitely don't FEEL guilt.

And I didn't sleep on Valkyria Chronicles, quite the opposite, both games on Switch kept me awake several nights. They are indeed excellent examples, andjust fantastic games overall. I also loved one of the most underrated and overlooked first party 3DS games, Codename STEAM. A bit similar in how you take direct control over the characters, avoiding line-of-sight in real time, but the combat is turn based. I already have it, but I recently found it new for 2€99, which almost made me buy a second copy.

@Felixfromdownunder I agree. If I played both games in 5 years I'd probably guess that Kingdom Battle is the sequel. Having the battles take place in the overworld instead of being whisked off to copy-paste land is such a huge improvement.

@karlhendrikse right!? that's my problem with sparks, it's like kindom battle 0.5 in a lot of ways, why does the loading screen come up for just opening the menu? why are the only skins now? why the hell can't you play as rosalina post game? why are the special ability animations all the same now and interrupt gameplay? it's all a death by a thousand cuts for me. i'm sure it's probably a fun enough time but i just couldnt get over how less it is compared to kingdom battle that i stopped playing 5 hours in and then traded it in to get tears of the kingdom for free