| Super Mario Strikers review |
|
Poor Mario must be knackered by now. Not content with playing tennis, golf and basketball, he's recently indulged in baseball, dancing and snowboarding. Now it's the turn of the beautiful game, or sot-cher as they call it over the pond, to be given the plumber touch. To help with this task, Nintendo have called in Next Level, a group founded from the team that created the much-underrated game Soccer Slam for Sega.
Not wanting to stray too far from a winning formula, Super Mario Strikers plays very similarly to their earlier title. Games are five-a-side affairs, with one team captain (taken from the usual miscreants), a generic goalkeeper and the other three being one of the other Mushroom Kingdom inhabitants (Toads, Koopas, Hammer Bros or Birdos). Each character has their strengths and weaknesses, so it will be a question of playing and finding which suit your playing style.
There is only one rule when playing: there are no rules. Whichever team sticks the ball into the scorebag the most wins, but it's the manner of doing so that is pretty much no holds barred. There are no fouls, no free kicks, and no throw-ins either as each playing arena is surrounded by an infinitely high electric fence. Controls are fairly simple with the usual pass/shoot/lob available, along with sliding tackles and shoulder barges. Each captain can also perform a super shot which is worth two goals if it goes in as opposed to the normal one.
Taking out opponents is positively encouraged (especially if it means stuffing them into the fence) but tackling someone without the ball "rewards" the opposition with an item. Items are also awarded for performing charged shots, which have a higher probability of going in than normal. The items available are what mark the major difference between this and Soccer Slam.
Not content with simple speed-ups and invincibility, many of the others are designed to cause as much chaos as possible on the playing field. Blue shells fly about freezing players, bob-ombs do their exploding thing, chain chomps destroy the opposition... despite the obvious nature of cause and effect, part of the skill within the game comes from knowing when to deploy them. Do you throw a shell out to stop a player clean through, or hold it to allow an attacking opportunity when you next get the ball? Super shots take time to charge up, which often requires an item or two to allow some breathing space to pull it off.
Having the items available for use is what may make or break the game in the eyes of some people because they can be that powerful. Likewise with the super shots. There is also Bowser to contend with as he can invade the pitch randomly and mess things up. Wisely enough though the choice to turn on or off all of these features and more has been included, which means there can no complaints about any aspect of the game spoiling your fun.
The combination of player numbers, items and the sheer end-to-end attacking nature of the game means that the action never sags, never drops and is at minimum, rather frantic. This both provides a constant on-the-edge approach to play, but on the other hand, also can require the reactions of a Jedi and the stamina of a marathon runner to survive mentally until the end. Last person standing (or sitting) indeed, especially if a cup is being run where up to seventeen matches each can be played. Thankfully progress is tracked match by match so a break can be taken, but strangely this is hardly noted in the game or the instructions themselves.
Due to the intense nature of the game, it may be hard to play it for sustained periods of time; the fact that it is also simpler in design than say Winning Eleven means matches are not as varied or diverse in action. Not that there is an inherent problem with this, as the game is very much designed to be pick-up-and-play; it succeeds wholeheartedly in this aim and is highly enjoyable from the off without having to learn complex button presses or intricate ball-passing moves, although being able to think one step ahead and constructing flowing moves will be of great benefit in the higher difficulty levels. As is the nature of games such as these, multiplayer is where Super Mario Strikers truly shines with up to four players being able to take part, even to the degree of having all on one team. It certainly produces one of the most competitive and chaotic experiences of recent times when four humans are going hammer-and-tongs at each other for several minutes.
Super Mario Strikers is an evolutionary step beyond Soccer Slam, and gives the small-team football game a new breath of life, trumping its predecessor and stamping other similar games such as FIFA Street into the ground. It can't compete with the Winning Eleven series, but never aimed to or wanted to; what it does, it does well, and that is provide a highly entertaining, competitive, in-your-face game that should always be good to break out when something other than "real" football is desired.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
System: Nintendo GameCube
Genre: Sport
Developer: Next Level
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1-4
Version: United States
Reviewed: Jan 2006
Writer: Mat Allen
|
Pros:
- Simple to play, difficult to master
- Incredible fast-paced frantic action
- Multiplayer brings out the best/worst in people
|
Cons:
- Possibly a little too frantic for some
- May not stand up to long periods of play
|
|
|
Super Mario Strikers Video: 11.2MB
|
| |
|
|
|
