While Mario Strikers: Charged is no classic, it's a surprisingly polished game that leaves little to wish for.
Not too long after Mario and his friends made their football debut in the Gamecube title Mario Smash Football, Nintendo's multi-talented mascots put on their soccer gear once more in the Wii sequel Mario Strikers Charged Football. The game keeps the fast-paced and accessible arcade-play that is so characteristic to all Mario sports titles, and adds a deeper single player experience, online play, and an attempt at a Wii-specific control scheme. But are these new enhancements enough to make Mario's second football adventure a winner?
One of the first things I noticed while playing Mario Strikers Charged Football was its high pick up and play-feeling. Just like with nearly every Mario spinoff game to date, the game has a learning curve of only several minutes (allowing your inexperienced friends to join in for some multiplayer action at any point), but at the same time offers enough depth to keep the more fanatic gamers interested.
Instead of emulating actual football as much as possible, Mario Strikers naturally tries to give the whole game a strong Mario feeling. Every team consists of a captain, which is a prominent character from the Mario universe (Bowser, Mario, etc.); three sidekicks, which are also characters from the Mario universe, but usually slightly less famous (Koopa, Boo, Shy Guy, etc.); and a goalkeeper, which is always the same character, namely Kritter. There is a total of 12 captains to choose from, as well as 8 sidekicks. Each of them has unique abilities so whether you are gonna play offensively or defensively is entirely up to you.
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As you'd expect, the rest of the game also carries the Mario spirit. That means lots of action, stomping, and of course items. You receive items when you fire a lot of charged up shots on goal, or when your opponent tackles one of your players while he's not in possession of the ball (a creative way to substitute the yellow/red card system in traditional football). Apart from the traditional Mario power-ups, such as bananas, shells, and bomb-ombs, there's also a special item for each captain. Bowser can spit fire, Mario can increase size, Yoshi can roll over his opponents with an egg - you get the idea. These power-ups can be used to either take away possession from your opponents, or to clear them out of your way while you charge the enemy goal.
To assist you further in scoring as many goals as possible, there's the possibility to charge up your shots by either passing the ball around a lot, or holding down the shoot button. It goes without saying that the more you charge your shot, the more power it'll have, but you'll find that even fully charged shots will often be saved by the goalie. This is where the Megastrikes and Skillshots come in. The former can only be executed by the team captain. If succesful, you can fire up to six shots on goal at the same time. You cannot actually control these shots, but you can regulate the shot power. The possibility to score multiple goals in a matter of seconds makes it so that nearly every game is exciting and worth fighting for until the very second it ends as a succesful Megastrike can decide the outcome of the game virtually within the blink of an eye. The sidekicks can't perform a Megastrike, but can instead unleash a Skillshot on goal. Unlike the Megastrike, the Skillshot is character-specific, although it usually consists of the sidekick shooting an object of some wort at the goalkeeper, temporarily stunning him, and thus creating an easy scoring opportunity.
All of this gives Mario Strikers Charged Football the arcade-like feeling and the chaotic touch for which the Mario sports series have become so famous over time. It forms the basis for a game which can be enjoyed in many different ways for up to four players.
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But first things first. For single player, the game's main attraction is Road to the Striker Cup; some sort of campaign mode in which you have to fight your way through 3 cup tournaments. I say fight because Mario Strikers is a lot more physical than your conventional football experience. As I explained in the previous few paragraphs, the football field can be a real cacophony of cartoon violence, with destructive items and brutal tackles. Depending on the difficulty level, the game will start out pretty easy, with the first of three cups being a hard trophy to miss out on. The matches are pretty easy-going, and you have a good sense of what's going on. This overview will get more vague in the second cup, when the AI starts to get evermore dirty and non-forgiving. The third and last cup is all-out war, with the computer players assaulting everything that moves and not offering you a moment of rest. Even words like item-rape, a term previously reserved for the Mario Kart series, come to mind. However frustrating the campaign may be at times, it's a real challenge and completing it actually feels like an accomplishment. Every cup works in essentially the same way. There is a group stage, in which every team plays eachother once or twice, and in the end a set number of teams progresses to the knock-out phase. The last one standing in the knock-out phase faces the reigning champion in the final, which is played in a best of three series. Even though every cup works by the same concept, the teams get more numerous and more difficult to beat as you progress. Two team awards - one for least goals conceded and one for most goals scored - can also be earned.
Apart from the enjoyable and tough cup mode, single players can also test their luck in a few other modes. Firstly there's the Challenge mode, which lets you partake in a dozen of challenges of varying difficulties. Challenges consist of you having to win a game under certain circumstances, such as winning by a certain amount of goals or keeping a clean sheet. Some of these challenges actually are challenges, so expect to be kept busy for quite some hours.
There's also VS. mode (called Domination Mode) in which you can play football games under whatever circumstance you'd like, alone against a computer player, or together with up to three of your friends. Expect either this or online play to become the most time-consuming mode in the game, as it's always fun to test new-earned stadiums, characters and cheats under whatever condition, and like nearly every Mario spin-off game, Mario Strikers Charged Football is an excellent game to play when your friends come over. When more people join in, little will probably be left of the gameplay in that the chaotic aspect will take full control of the game. But who cares as long as everybody's having fun? With or without other players, Domination Mode is my personal favourite mode to play in Charged Football, as you have full control of the circumstances.
Mario Strikers Charged Football was only the second Wii game after Pokémon Battle Revolution to feature online play, and unfortunately, it shows. To avoid lag problems, you can only play against players on your own continent, which is quite a huge letdown. The online play itself, however, works pretty well. There's little to no lag, and the game plays much like in Domination Mode, only there's an overload of people who will want to exploit every glitch in the game, which in a way strips the game of the manner in which it was originally intended to be played. This makes the online mode a kind of lackluster experience, although the developers are not to blame, and there'll still be people who'll enjoy this sort of play. Still I'll have to conclude that the online mode has some serious issues and could've been a lot better, although we must keep in mind that this is only the second Wii game ever to go online, and in a way it planted the seeds of online play for games like Brawl and Mario Kart Wii.
So, apart from maybe the online mode, the game's ground concept is a very enjoyable one, but how is this game clad technically?
Graphics certainly isn't one of this game's weak points. Not only do the models of characters and stadiums look very good: the animations are also running exceptionally smooth. Even the opening video (no, it doesn't contain in-game footage, but still) looks awfully impressive, and is somewhat comparable to the likes of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. While obviously not as impressive, the smooth looks have also been transmitted to in-game animations. Like the fast-paced gameplay would suggests, the menus and artwork all have a kind of grainy look to them, and remind us a bit of the FIFA Street series - a series which probably comes closest to Mario Strikers in terms of gameplay, as well. However, all the grainy, flashy menus and rough artwork can sometimes seem a bit over top, and even approach the border of cheesiness on some occasions. However, these are mere details which all come down to the eye of the beholder, but I can hardly imagine that it will keep someone from concluding that this is one of the better-looking Wii titles, and it certainly was around the time of its release.
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The characteristics of the sound department form a good combination with the graphical style of the game. The music consists mostly of rock-like tunes which are nice to listen to (at least to most of us), but won't distract you from the game too much. Every team captain has his own set of tunes (of course complying with the character's personality) which are played before and after the match and after they score a goal. It's nothing groundbreaking, but at least it's a nice little touch that shows us, in combination with other features of the game, that the developers have really made an effort while creating this game.
Of course Mario Strikers Charged Football IS a Wii game, so the obvious question is how much the Wii controls add to the gameplay? I'm afraid the answer is 'not much'. You use the Wiimote + Nunchuck combination most of the time, as if it were a Gamecube controller. The only time during a match where you actually capitalize on the Wii control system is when you take control of the keeper as your opponent tries to perform a Megastrike goal. You see the footballs come sailing at you, and must point your Wiimote at them and press the A button to prevent them from going in. You can also waggle the Wiimote to make a dirty tackle, which is bound to add some extra spice to the gameplay, but again, it's nothing out of the ordinary. The WiiMote also makes for an efficient way to navigate through the menus, but obviously that's not what motion controls were primarly created for. On one hand it's a shame that the Wii controls don't get more involved, but on the other hand it's also good to see that the developers didn't include a gimmicky control scheme just because they could - something which happens all too often these days.
All of this is enough to keep you busy for quite some while. It will get boring eventually, like any other game, especially when you're playing alone, But until that time you'll have a very profesionally created game that impresses in several areas, and slightly disappoints in but a few. Online mode is the biggest letdown, as it doesn't really add much to the overall enjoyment of the game, and benefitted mostly on the fact that it was a novelty without offering substantial depth to the overall gameplay. There are some other, much more insignificant flaws. The ball, for example, is hard to spot at times, in the chaos of the match, and the AI often dances on the border between being really competitive and being downright unfair. These issues won't keep you from enjoying the game in any noteworthy way, but they're just some small cons that'll have some influence on my overall verdict. They won't keep me from stating, however, that Mario Strikers Charged Football manages to maintain the excellent reputation of the Mario sports series, and that this quality product is a good addition to everybody's Wii library as it's simply one of the most worthwhile games available on this console to date. Impressively enough, the developers have managed to find a nice balance between reality and fantasy in that the game includes enough of the traditional football spirit to attract people who actually like the sport while at the same time being unconventional enough to appeal to people who have never taken a particular interest in it. In conclusion, Charged Football isn't as addicting or essential as Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. but it is a well-crafted game that is bound to be a hit with your friends, or just with yourself if you have a particular interest in this kind of game.
Report Card:
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Graphics: 8.5/10
Sound: 9.0/10
Technique*: 8.5/10
Lasting Appeal: 9.0/10
+ Good graphics and terrific design
+ Good music
+ Both a fun party game and a challenging single player game
+ Nice balance between the sport itself and the chaos that always comes with Mario games[/color]
- Very so-so online experience
- Lack of Wii-specific controls don't really make it feel like a Wii-exclusive game
Score: 82%
* Technique is a grade for originality, controls, and some other related aspects.