Reviews// Mario Strikers: Charged Football

Each of the lead characters also has their own ‘super’ ability. So, for example, Mario and Luigi are both able to turn into giant versions of themselves, whereas Donkey Kong is able to pull off a ‘thunder wham’ in which he leaps up into the air then crashes into the pitch, helping to clear an area and give himself time to pull off yet another scorching megastrike on goal.

The game also features seventeen different stadia, seven from the GameCube version and ten entirely new arenas including The Vice (Rated Secure); Thunder Island (Rated Lethal) and The Sand Tomb. To keep you on your toes, the arenas also have some interesting interactive elements to them such as the incapacitating electrical currents pulsing around Storm Ship Stadium.

So, to recap on the controls, which you soon pick up playing through the ten-step tutorial, you choose the character you wish to control with the A-button, then control his or her direction with the nunchuck’s thumb stick. If your character has the ball and wishes to pass you tap [A], to lob it a short way in front of him you press [C] or to shoot or unleash a superskill or megastrike shot you press [B]. Additionally, you can use the d-pad to let loose character and context-specific shots. If your character doesn’t have the ball then you can tackle with a quick Wii waggle (oo-er) or slide tackle using the d-pad. Finally, you can unleash various power-ups that you pick up in the game by using the [Z] button. And if all that sounds a little bit confusing, then rest assured, after around an hour or so of working your way through the tutorial in the game the controls really do begin to seem intuitive.

At this point, having familiarised myself with the controls, it was time for me to try out the ‘Road To The Striker Cup’ mode in the game, which is designed and structured very much like the levels in that other Nintendo classic, Mario Kart, in that the first stage seems pretty welcoming, easy and straightforward for a novice player (until the last game at least, which took me a fair few tries to win) and then the difficulty level seems to increase exponentially thereafter. This is not a criticism of the difficulty level in the game however, as I imagine I will be returning to this mode quite a lot in future, in order to notch up my rank. Most importantly of course, get that all important practice in against better AI teams in order to enjoy what is far and away the greatest thing about this game - the online element.

Not only is Mario Strikers: Charged Football the first Wii title to feature our favourite Italian plumber, it’s also the first Wii title to feature proper online multiplayer gaming. I managed to try out fifteen to twenty or so games over the Wi-Fi Multiplayer, playing against a random games journalist based, as far as I was informed by Nintendo’s PR fella, somewhere in central Europe.

Much to my annoyance, he had obviously been spending more time perfecting his game in the ‘Road To The Striker Cup’ mode, as he was far more adept than I was at making space for megastrikes; making good, strategic use of power-ups and unleashing his sidekick’s skillshots at every available opportunity.

Yet despite being given a fairly robust drubbing, I was still left wanting ‘just one more go’ at the end of the online trial session. Damn the fact that I didn’t get his name and email, because I do intend to one day become the unbeatable world champion at this game. Then the bastard would have rued the day… I’d have shown him (ok, enough, I got beat, I’ll let it go).