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Mario Strikers Charged was announced at Nintendo’s conference in Leipzig at the end of August by the charming, handsome face of German football player Philip Lamm, smiling down at us from the giant screen behind the stage. Despite his earnestness, apologies for not being at the conference in person and apparent genuine enthusiasm for Mario Strikers Charged, this is a bit disquieting. It smacks of Microsoft’s abhorrent habit of paying prominent ‘youth culture’ figures from sports or hip-hop to say things like “Yo yo, Xbox 360 is in da house” at their conferences, although Lamm thankfully spared us the desperately ‘street’ lingo. Indeed, the entire conference was considerably different from what we’re used to from Nintendo – much of the Wii montage consisted of loathsomely ‘lifestyle’ individuals in Ikea-kitted cream-coloured living rooms, laughing gamely as they enjoyed a rousing game of Mario Galaxy or Tennis. I’m sure I recognised some of their annoyingly beautiful, smiling faces and perfect teeth from the Xbox 360 adverts a year ago. It’s a far cry from the [somewhat more representative] Nintendo advertising of years gone by.
The game itself, though, is reassuringly similar to what we’re used to. In fact it’s almost exactly the same as the previous GameCube Mario Strikers game (titled Mario Smash Football over here), with much of the same appeal and, it would appear, the same faults. But it’s got motion sensing. That’s must redeem it, right? That’s original.
Mario Strikers is built upon the Sega Soccer Slam template – a very hands-on, fast-paced, high-scoring and unrealistic representation of the game of football. It’s extremely fun but, at the same time, extremely arcadey and often a tad unfair (in the same way that Mario Kart is), so proper football fans who spend their time with Pro Evo are likely to be annoyed by its emphasis on fun rather than skill (with the exception, apparently, of Philip Lamm). Just as on the GameCube, it’s riotous five-a-side football with a famous Nintendo character captaining each team. There are items, stadium hazards and other levellers in place by default, but presumably you’ll be able to switch them off for a slightly fairer contest. The rules are, to say the least, loose; indeed, rough tackles, running offside and shoving opponents out of the way or into electric fences at the edges of the stadium are all positively encouraged.
Said shoving and tackling is now done by shaking the Wii nunchuk, with movement handled by the analogue stick – passing and shooting are on the buttons on the remote. This, in practice, is quite good fun during a match. The other chief use of the motion-sensing, though, is not exactly fun. Team captains can perform super shots that initiate a little mini-game in which the defending player has to use the Wii remote to save balls coming out of the air via a tacky on-screen pair of goalie gloves. Despite being quite a dab hand with the Wii controller by now, this is pretty much impossible. It all happens far too fast and it’s entirely likely, in this way, that your opponent will get all the balls past your hapless goalie and score six goals at once. Granted, you can do exactly the same up their end of the pitch a few minutes later, but it does feel a bit cheap.
Those super-shots, too, we hope, will be turn-offable come Charged’s release – although that would leave the game lacking much use of the Wii’s motion sensing controller. And I’m convinced that its release can’t be very far off, either, as Mario Strikers Charged is looking extremely polished. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see this as a launch title, or at least a Christmas one. Everything seems to be in place except a few stadiums, which can’t possibly take long to implement.
If this is to be a launch title, though, Strikers might struggle to distinguish itself against its fellows, for its similarity to Mario Smash Football is too great (and the motion-sensing features a little too arbitrary) for it to be a genuinely exciting prospect. But hey, Philip Lamm likes it. And if it’s as good as its predecessor, than everyone else will probably enjoy it too, at least for a while. It’s not the sort of groundbreaking super-game that everyone seems to be expecting from the Wii, but from what I’ve played of it so far, it’s still great fun.
