Reviews// Mario Strikers: Charged Football

It’s frustratingly quick at first

Posted 17 May 2007 17:09 by
The more you pass the ball between your players the more the ball becomes charged up, until it reaches its maximum charge and glows white. At which point it’s a good idea to have a pop at goal, should you be in position. Controlling your goalie in the game is the first aspect of the game that makes use of the Wii Remote’s motion sensing pointer. Instead of the over-the-pitch view that you play the game in, the view switches to first-person – and you have to point the controller at the balls as they appear on screen and hit ‘A’ to ‘catch’ (destroy) them. Imagine the can-shooting game in Wii Sports or Duck Hunt and you get the idea. It’s a nifty little mini-game that I never tired of returning to time and time again. Every time I played it, I found myself sitting on the edge of the sofa rubbing my game-sweaty palms dry on my jeans beforehand. This is usually a sign that I’m hooked.

The next bit of the tutorial introduces what is far and away one of the greatest moves in the game, the ‘Megastrike’, in which your lead character unleashes a shot on goal of such severity, they have to firstly jump a thousand feet in the air into space (I’m presuming it’s space, as your character turns all black and scary) before hoofing the ball at the poor defenceless goalie.

The game mechanic here is borrowed from any basic golf-game in that your lead striker has to clear (or make) enough space to allow a precious few seconds for you to hold down the B-trigger button to initiate the megastrike. Once initiated, a ‘swing-o-meter’ pops up on the screen and you have to tap the trigger to hit the orange zone as it swings left (your accuracy determining the number of shots you get) and then hit a slimmer orange bar on the right of the gauge as the needle swings back.

It’s frustratingly quick at first, but after a bit of practice I got the hang of it. And those rare few megastrikes I managed to pull off which were (almost) 100% bang on soon had me clenching my fist and screaming ‘get in’ through gritted teeth, as five or six shots flew past my opponent’s hapless goalie.

As mentioned above, each team has a lead striker and the player can choose from the usual Nintendo suspects who they want this key member of their team to be; choosing from a line up including Mario, Wario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Bowser, Donkey Kong, Waluigi, Bowser Jr, and good ol’ Petey Pirahna. Your lead striker is flanked by three lesser sidekicks, each with their own unique (and often hilarious) skillshots and the aforementioned goalie.

The Hammer Brothers’ were my favourite sidekicks to use in the game, as every time they unleashed a skillshot on goal they proceeded to try to scare and confuse the opposition’s goalie by throwing loads of comedy hammers at him, which usually did the trick!
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Comments

Joji 17 May 2007 22:48
1/16
Good to hear its a good game, online play sounds fun but I'm still not down with those friend codes. Meeting and making new friends is the icing on the online gaming cake.
Sid 19 May 2007 00:29
2/16
errrr....ever heard of forums to meet people then just swap codes. Plus you can play against random people anyway. Stop bashing the FC's and get over it.
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A. Prufrock 19 May 2007 12:14
3/16

Excellent review. Well-written, detailed, and some nice little asides too.
Jim 19 May 2007 13:34
4/16
Yes. Well done Adam Hartley.
Coveycom 19 May 2007 17:10
5/16
An excellent honest review, can't wait for launch day, friends codes not a problem thanks to Mapwii.com.
Joji 21 May 2007 11:51
6/16
Just agree to disagree, Sid. I'm not raining on the friend code parade for the sake of it. It's just my view, that if Nintendo were not so scared of the tackling online net play, they'd have looked at a more open system. The online likes of MSN could have them scared them to this

Sure, you can go to a forum, but don't forget a lot of Wii gamers are not hardcore like you or myself. They might not frequent forums. Wii should be letting you meet new people online, the same way 360 and PS3 do. Look at it from the bigger perspective with better eyes.

Still happy to see Wii online at last though.
Webby 21 May 2007 13:15
7/16
I don't have any friends with a Wii ...
EnDoRpHeNe 21 May 2007 13:50
8/16
There are plenty of websites out there that allow you to search for Wii gamers in your area. Or you can have a random game against strangers on the internet so its all cool!

Idiot 22 May 2007 12:34
9/16
Online game without being able to taunt and joke around? Sounds pretty pointless.
NinjaRooster 25 May 2007 02:05
10/16
Glad to hear the online is fun and lag-free. Good thing there is the option to play without friend codes...

Definitely buying when it comes out here in NA

July 30...too far away!
RiseFromYourGrave 25 May 2007 10:01
11/16
yeah great review, i missed the GC original too. i say missed, dismissed is probably the word. im thinking of getting this however, it seems theyve 'nintendo'd' football to approximately the same quality that they nintendo'd racing with mariokart. and its the first wii online game. thanks
OptimusP 3 Jun 2007 18:57
12/16
Goddamnit, i just had my first leaver!
Some guy who only has 2 losses and 13 wins, so i thought, ooh he must be good. Game started ok for me with two early goals, then he scored two goals then me one again then he again, so good even matched. Untill i figured out his gameplan and took a 4 goal advantage with a lot off fast counters, then the counters goes beeping and the game suddenly by accident goes offline...right.

Watch out for oofs with a very very small number of losses, good chance they disconnect, gooddamn lamers.
RiseFromYourGrave 3 Jun 2007 20:50
13/16
they should implement a disconnect forfeit thingymabob feature. or the scoreline before the disconnect is the one that counts, or something. because theres no point even keeping tag of wins and losses if the results are so easily circumvented
Jay 4 Jun 2007 09:30
14/16
If you disconnect, the system takes the current score and treats the game as finished, so the guy will have recorded the loss and you the win.
RiseFromYourGrave 4 Jun 2007 19:48
15/16
thats great stuff, scrap the other bloke's suggestion of avoiding people with inhuman win/loss records
danny 11 Jun 2007 16:32
16/16
hey

if YOU want to play online mario strikers charged my friend code is 107476
I play in the U.K
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