Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle – Donkey Kong Adventure

If you enjoy strategy, you'll have fun with this lengthy expansion, which provides more of everything that made the original game so much fun. Donkey Kong Adventure delivers a brand new solo campaign that's nearly ten hours long, complete with a new world and around two dozen new combat levels. This gives players plenty of time to learn and master new skills, like using Donkey Kong's bongos to lure enemies toward him, then pounding the ground to deal massive damage to all of them. With new weapons to earn and abilities to master, there are goals and a sense of growth to keep a player's interest. Admittedly, the block-pushing puzzles between combat levels can get repetitive, and usually provide artwork and song rewards rather than weapons or skill tokens to improve your character, but most of them can be safely skipped if you lose interest.

It's worth noting, too, that spending a few dollars more to get the season pass (which includes the Donkey Kong Adventure DLC plus plenty of other goodies for the original game, like new weapons) is worthwhile. Fans of co-op play will really appreciate the addition of five challenging new multiplayer maps, each with multiple difficulty levels, that give many reasons to call up a friend and spend an afternoon or two plotting together. Perhaps most importantly, all of the available downloadable content in Donkey Kong Adventure and the season pass are proof that this innovative, unexpected marriage of Mario, the Rabbids, and turn-based tactical play can be more than just a one-off success. It's fun to return to again and again. Hopefully we'll see another Mario + Rabbids game before too long.