Reviews// Mario Strikers: Charged Football

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!