Features// Girl Gamer: Returns From Serbia

This week Pocket Frenzy returned to England after a somewhat traumatic (no games) trip behind what was formally the Iron Curtain.


One of the things I have missed most, besides a nice cup of tea, a sit down, curry and being clean, has been gaming. The last three weeks of festivals may have broken me mentally, physically and emotionally, but the news that our regular de-camping crash pad has been furnished in our absence with a Wii and, even better, a game I haven't played yet: Mario Strikers Charged Football, did more to perk me up than the Brillo pad and Dettol I took into the shower.

I'll just make it clear before I go any further that I am not a huge fan of football games. When reminiscing with newly made friends about games whilst on the beach, in hedges or on Serbian buses there was always the inevitable 'Pro-Evo moment' where I just had to sit back quietly and think about Oblivion until they were done. It is a sign of our collective aversion to football games that my friend Anita, on joining in, asked if she was supposed to kill the other players, but in spite of this unpromising start I found myself soothed by the familiar characters and intrigued by the oddities and special abilities and, soon, getting rather into it!

One of the joys of any Mario game is the bizarre extras that spice up whatever standard game type they've delved into and the most obviously Wii-centric embellishment here is the Megastrike attack, where by pointing the Wiimote and pressing [A] you have to defend your goal against an onslaught of balls (no, I refuse to make a joke there. You can't make me. Do it yourself if you must!). Seeing as I play Halo on a sensitivity of 4 at my most capable and co-ordinated, this feature - post bodily abuse - essentially saw my dismembered football gloves thrashing about the screen in a manner distressingly similar to that of a mime at a rave.

At first our enjoyment was hampered a little by the fact that, in a move which demonstrates comprehensively the bumbling but loveable nature of my friends, Nick who had purchased said game had bought, not an extra Nunchuck to give us the opportunity for two-player gaming, but a Nunchuck cover instead. To put this in context rather worryingly, he's the sober and sensible member of the team. This purchasing oversight didn't mean we stopped though. Oh no. We merely took it in turns to play whilst sitting in the Comfy Chair (of legend) which, for people who haven't sat on fabric in what seems more like years than weeks, is a joy not to be belittled.

As soon as Argos opened again we were down there with filthy money in our paws, returning to base idiotically pleased with ourselves. Tackling, we found, is definitely the best bit.

With no ref it can, and for us did, result with such constant, brutal and uncalled for fouling that we ended up waggling our Wiimotes like a succession of Parkinsons’ victims who've been on a steady diet of Pro-Plus: which, actually, isn't too far from the truth. On my return to England I've drunk enough tea to make a mollusc put Prodigy on and get out its glow-sticks.

After a few games we were all getting the hang of it nicely and wondering why we found the controls so hard to work at first. Then a newcomer asks for those same controls to be explained and we all have to stop for ten minutes to try to remember, so instinctive has it become.

Like most Mario games that I've played this one is very more-ish and it kept us entertained well into the early hours with its rolling cows, electric fences and, somewhat surprisingly, tactical play! But then this is a group of people who laughed at a goldfish for ten minutes. It did have a rather funny way of swimming. Really.

I'm not, to put my cards on the table, totally impressed by the Wii as a console. As my new man, summarising our collective misgivings fairly succinctly, put it "When it's computer o'clock I want to move as little as possible whilst still being conscious". This prompts the usual round of Wii-RSI stories.

It has to be said that my aches and pains from weeks of sleeping rough on beaches lapped by water polluted by raw sewage and dead bodies; a tent filled with beer to resemble a sticky paddling pool; train station platforms manned by sexually assaultative toilet attendants and, laterly, the handbrake of what used to be my VW Polo (before, one would presume, it was attacked by the mud monsters of Studio Ghibli) have not been aided by what can now only be called a Wii-marathon. I have a horrible feeling that, in the same way as all driving games are compared to Mario Kart, now all football games will have me tutting over them in disgust for not being Mario Strikers Charged Football. I find myself actually considering buying a Wii solely for this game. But then, I have missed gaming.