N-Philes

Mario Strikers Charged

Posted September 11th 2007 by Gareth Trinkwon.

How do you stop a Mario Strikers from charging? You take away its credit card! Ha!

Thought I'd start off with a little joke. But in all seriousness, credit cards have very little to do with Mario playing soccer in space, especially when it's over the Nintendo WiFi Connection, because that service is free. Credit cards only come into play if you haven't bought the game already, and in that case, boy do I have a great review for you to help decide if it's worth buying.

In Mario Strikers Charged, the series' jump from GameCube to Wii yields a few fun gimmicks, a handful of well done improvements, and on the whole a very fun game in the vein of its predecessor, Super Mario Strikers. It's simple enough for Grandpa to play, but he won't confuse it for Wii Sports after he's on the wrong end of a 26-0 final tally. Strikers Charged is much more of what we in the industry call an "actual game" that offers real content and takes more than 2 minutes to master.

The game starts you off by giving you the option of picking of one of the Mario World's ultra-reknowned celebrities as a team captain. Having done that, you're all set to pick your team mates, which is where we see the first of the sequel's improvements: Strikers Charged allows each member of your team to be an entirely different character. Before you just had a gang of Koopas or Toads on your team, with no variety. You can now say, pick the slow but strong Monty Mole as your defender, and pick faster, more skilled strikers as your other team mates. To my slight disappointment, your goal keeper still isn't selectable. He's always a member of the dastardly Kremlin Krew of Donkey Kong Country fame.

The aim of the game is simple: score goals. What, you expected anything else? Get the ball from your end of the pitch to the other side, and then shoot towards their goal and hope the goal keeper was sleeping or something. Actually scoring a goal is another matter entirely, though. Simply shooting at every opportunity will rarely get you very far, because the keeper is rarely sleeping. No, you have to make sure that ball is white hot first. This is where the new "charged" element comes into play. By passing the ball between your team members, the ball begins to gather up an energy charge, and the more successful passes that the ball runs through, the brighter it gets. When it becomes white hot, it's prime shootin' time, and you'll have a lot more luck scoring a goal.

To mix things up a little, each member of your team has his or her own stats to make them unique. Characters such as Wario and Monty Mole are slow and lumbering, but can pack a fairly powerful tackle, while characters such as Daisy and Boo can zip around the playing field with speed and try to get an early start on the goal scoring. Additionally, each character has his or her own unique special move, performed by charging their shot. Even squad members, which in the first game only really differed in basic stats, each have their own special attack to launch on the enemy goal. The Hammer Bros. will throw a volley of hammers at the dazed goal keeper before smacking the ball past him and (hopefully) into the goal, Shy Guy will call on the assistance of a Bullet Bill and kamikaze straight into the goal keeper, and so on.

The Mega Strike, a skill possessed only by Team Captains, has made an evolution since the Super Strike of the original Strikers. Instead of simply firing a shot that is worth two goals, the Mega Strike actually fires multiple balls at the hapless goal keeper. Just like the original Super Strikes, Mega Strikes can completely change the outcome of a match within the very last few seconds. Unlike the first game, though, the enemy keeper still has a chance to block the incoming balls and stop you from scoring. The number and speed of the balls are based on timing button presses after charging up a shot; if you time the move perfectly, you'll rain down as many as six shots at lightning speed, which, believe me, is a real butt to catch. The camera pans behind the goal and lets the keeper block the incoming shots by aiming at the balls with the remote in kind of a fast-paced shooting range minigame. It all adds a level of skill to the game rather than simply having the goalkeeping completely random.

The game's controls are simple enough to get used to. A passes, B shoots, C uses any item that you might have picked up and the D-Pad slide tackles. Motion control comes into the play when you wave the remote, which causes your character to lunge at the nearest enemy and hopefully result in them losing possession of the ball. I found myself using this move over the slide tackle 90% of the time, because even though it leaves your own character stunned for a moment, it seemed far more effective at stopping them.

The game is as hectic as you'd expect from a sports title involving Mario, and one main reason is that the fields are so small and cramped. Passing the ball between your team members to charge it up is easily hindered by enemy characters intercepting it and taking possession. When you actually do have possession of the ball, actually getting enough room to score can be extremely difficult. Because the pitches are so small, there's rarely a moment that you'll find an area with no opposing team members nearby, making it a nightmare to get enough time to stop and charge a shot. To make things worse, progressing through the single player mode often relies on you not losing a single match. You'll be hard-pressed to find a more frustrating moment than winning by one goal for the entire match, only to have that meddling Diddy Kong launch a Mega Strike and score another three goals in the last five seconds. It's a fast-paced game in general, and against the computer or a skilled opponent, it can be frustratingly difficult. Strikers Charged will certainly draw the line between seasoned gamers and Wii Sports grannies.

Of course, the biggest draw for many gamers out there is that this among the Wii's first true online titles (and first in the PAL region). The game allows you to connect to Nintendo's WFC service and link up with fellow Strikers from around your region and kick off for a few matches. The online interface is smooth and easy to use, and although it provides no chat lobby or any way to communicate with your opponent, it does a good job of quickly finding a player to match, and lets you know how good the connection quality between you is before asking if you want to continue. It also keeps a track of your score, global rank, and even assigns a "Striker of the Day" for those annoyingly skilled players you'll no doubt come across while playing. It's nothing amazing and it's unlikely to garner a following on the level of Xbox Live, but it's free, and it's a far cry from what we saw back when Mario Kart DS launched the WFC.

Strikers Charged, like most Nintendo titles, is well presented throughout, though the graphics could have probably been pulled off on the GameCube's hardware. Even so, plentiful special effects like sparks and flames flying throughout the course of the game keep things lively. The whole game has a kind of sci-fi look to it, too; menu screens seem to take place in some kind of futuristic/metallic room, complete with holograms showing the captains of the teams playing next. It's all pretty weird to see in a Mario game. Even the soundtrack is pretty funky, and it's unlike anything you'd expect from a Mario title. The menus have epic little tunes getting you pumped for the upcoming match, and each stage has its own set of ambient sounds and music. In the event of a sudden death at the end of a match, the game's main theme kicks in to pump the excitement up while each team desperately tries to get the last goal to win the match. Other audio touches like character voices and punts, scuffs and bangs are present and do their job well.

Steady Beat - Mario playing soccer in space

is kind of hard to mess up.

It's certainly not going to win any awards from the hardcore soccer fans, but Mario Strikers Charged is a fairly solid sport-em-up with a twist for those looking for something a little different. It improves and innovates on the original Strikers formula about as much as you'd expect to, and it runs a nice line between Wii gimmickiness and straightforward Nintendo gameplay. Be warned, though, it's not an easy game. Both the single player campaign and Wi-Fi multiplayer will have you waving your Wii remote at the sky with frustration. It's just fortunate that waving it back down can vent off that frustration by checking Toad into an electrified fence.

Posted in: Reviews

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