Price: £35
Release dates: US: July 30, Japan: December 31, Europe: Now
Online: Yes.
Other Platforms: None, only on Wii.
Don’t get me wrong, this is Football (Soccer for you cheeky Americans) but with a twisted, is that twisted good? Let’s find out...
INTRO/MENU
First its to be said when you first pop the disc in the Wii you will be prompted to Update, Nobody knows why, the update doesn’t add anything to your Wii that you can use, all it does it let you play the game. The Update hardly takes time about 10 seconds Max. When you do get it start you’re presented with a nice Intro then onto the main menu where you can play different modes. These are: Domination Mode, Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, Road to the Striker Cup, Strikers ABC, Hall Of Fame, Strikers Challenges and the Options menu. Let’s dive into each one.
MENU INFO
Domination mode is, to me, another name for “Quick play”. It lets your Character, team and Stadium and throws you into a match. You can change the settings of the match as you like them to be E.g. you can change how long the match is or how many goals until the game finishes etc... Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, well the titles explains it all. Play against random people online or register your friends “Friend Code” to play against them. I’m glad they let you scan for random opponents because with friends they aren’t always there for a match but with Strangers they are. While playing online you can get points which show how well you are at the game, you also get the basic Info on how many wins, loses and draws you have had. This kind of tells you who the Disconnecters are but it could end up being someone that just really sucks at the game. There is a Leader board to work your way up to. There is different options while playing online, lets look at “Friendly”. This requires you to have someone on your Friend roster which is just a list of your added friends. If you want to play a match against you then they can send an invite asking. Now this was “a must” for this review: Most people are having issues on connecting online - it is Nintendo’s server which is hammered, I guess they didn’t know it would be so popular. At the time I’m writing this review the online is fine, Nintendo must have fixed the server. Let’s dive in more about the Leader board. There is: My season ranking - View those ranked closest to you during this season, Friends - View a ranking of registered friends based upon ranking points, Season leaders - view the 10 ranked players of one season, my daily ranking - view those ranked closest to your for the day and finally Daily leaders - view the top 10 ranked players of the day. Road to the Striker Cup places you in a Tournament with your team. This is where you can win trophies. Is more like a Story mode but with out the story. Not much can be said with this mode as its just tournament based matches until you win all the trophies. Strikers ABC lets you get the basics of Mario strikers charged football. The option is recommended when you first play the game. It will teach you how to score and so various special powers. Hall Of Fame lets you view all the Trophies you have won from the Road to the Striker Cup. And Player cards which you got from Challenges. Strikers Challenges pits you against different challenges to win Player cards. These Players cards are only info about the characters. Finally the options menu - This contains Visual options, Audio options and Credits.
GAMEPLAY/GRAPHICS
Now that we have the very long options out of the way lets look at the Game play, graphics etc...
It can be said that Mario Strikers Charged Football is a very flashy game, it tries its best to be impressive and it works. Random effects from the weather, funny but annoying specials from characters (wario farting....) all work together to make this game really enjoyable. They didn’t hold back on Items. Various items can be obtained by performing a charged shot (more on that later) or shot or when attacked. The long list of Items is: Green Shell - knock characters down, Red Shell - home in and knock down the opponent, Blue Shell - Freezes characters, Spiked Shell - Repeatedly rebounds and knocks characters down, Banana Peel - makes characters slip and fall, Bo-omb - Explosive bombs, Chain-chomp - immobilises all the players it hits, Mushroom - Raises speed for a set time and Power star - Invincible for set time, stunning any players that you touch. With the items, game play, stadium effects all during the game makes this a fun blast - much better than watching proper football. Now don’t get me wrong all this is great but it can be frustrating at times. All this stuff happing and most of the time you don’t know where the ball is! This can make you lose a few points.
MEGASTRIKE & SUPER ABILITIES
Each Character has a different MegaStrick and Super Abilities. MegaStricks are when you hold the B button for long until a bar appears this lets you select how many shots you want to take but this takes a few seconds and a opponent could easily come in and tackle you. Then you select how strong best to get it in the orange bar which is the fastest. When you finally complete that you get a little scene where your character jumps up in mid air and performs are strike. Then the opponent has a chance to save the goals. If you are trying to save a MegaStrike then a menu appears where you control a set of goalie gloves and each ball that appears you have to press A over the ball, if you miss then that’s a point to your opponent. This is called Mega Saves. A Mega Shakedown is when you shake the nunchuck to ruin the plan of a MegaStrike.
OVERALL
This is truly a fantastic game, they are hardly any faults. A big win for this game is of course the online play. This makes you want to always play this game since there is always an opponent waiting for you. Flashy animations, items playing left and right make this on top game. A great game to start the wii’s online.
Graphics - 9/10
Flashing effects, little scenes with the characters celebrating their goal. Very nice - the game is HDTV compatible to make it nicer.
Audio- 7/10
I didn’t write anything since the sounds are very limited, random shouts from players is good but the menu music is the same through out the game. Could be better.
Gameplay - 9/10
Plenty of modes to get stuck in with, online play always available (well sometimes) and a whole load of Trophies to win keep this game going.
Final Score: 9/10
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