Gaffer's (quick) Mario Strikers Charged Football review.

[Gaffer]

Mario Strikers Charged Football is a great game for the Wii.


First things first, this game has got nothing to really do with proper football. Yes, the characters do go around kicking the ball with their feet like you do in a 5-aside football game, but that's where the similarity ends.
No, this game to all intents and purposes is actually more akin to an updated version of Speedball 2 found on the old megadrive.

You basically choose a captain, two wingers and a defender (the goalie is always Kritter) and proceed to score goals by ANY means necessary. This includes pummeling opponents into submission, scoring 6 goals at a time a la megastrike, using special skills exclusive to each player to for example, become supersized and trample everyone, and also to use power ups available to all (eg firing off red shells at people).

So far so good, the game has that added Nintendo quirkiness and cartoon hilarity we've all come to expect of an in-house title.

Then we get to the (supposed) best part being the online multiplayer. There are two ways to play. Either with a friend whose code you've mutually entered into your consoles (I can't help but think the dev's mucked up here....rather than use our existing Wii codes, you have to remember ANOTHER 16 digit code that's entirely seperate and put THAT in instead just like DS online games), or online with a stranger in a ranked match.

This is both the pinnacle and the downfall of the game. The good parts are that when playing with someone else on your team, it's GREAT fun. One person acts as the striker and the other wards off opponents.
The other good part is that it's good to FINALLY see Ninty get off their backsides and start up their much promised online system for the Wii. Little touches like always giving you points no matter if you lose, resetting the leaderboard every week, and being able to play against your mates in a "friendly" are great imo....

......BUT, then there are the many negatives. Firstly, if you play on your own, you don't really stand a chance either online in WFC, or offline trying to unlock characters. Even the AI cheats quite a bit (at one point whilst trying to unlock DK Jr I had NO players on the pitch at all......his UFO saw to that).
Then you have the "matching" system which is quite bad too. If I'm ranked somewhere around 5000th, why do I get a random rank game against someone who's ranked 20th? Apparently, your win:lose ratio matters here, but it doesn't seem to work at all.
Additionally, I would have liked the ranking system to take the number of players into account. If I am playing on my own, I would like to only play against other single players because it is virtually impossible to win against an opponent who has 2 players. Conversely, if I'm playing with a partner I'd like to play 2player opponents only as otherwise the matches are too easy for us (when we play aginst someone who is solo). Adding this factor would, I think, have improved things immensely (as it is you don't know if your opponent is 2 people or not, but it's easy enough to tell from their tactics when online).
In fact, you'll be lucky to get online AT ALL a lot of the time....far too many server or "failed getting stats" errors for my liking.
Then there are the Pansies (aka the Disconnectors) who are usually ranked quite high and seem to not like losing....so they DISCONNECT just before the match ends ensuring that not only do they not lose, but that I also do not gain a win against my name. Yes, this happens with any online service, wether PC/XBL/DS or whatever....but I seem to find it more and more here on this game on the Wii than anywhere else.

This means that things end up getting very frustrating rather than enjoyable....and when I stop enjoying a game, it's time to trade it in.

Don't get me wrong, I highly recommend this game if you're a 2 player party that can progress quickly through it, but as a single player and online it can get very annoying, so it has to drop some points I'm afraid. I'd like to award it 3.5 stars, but will generously give it 4 out of 5 instead

[ollie-666]

you have to remember ANOTHER 16 digit code that's entirely seperate and put THAT in instead just like DS online games), or online with a stranger in a ranked match.



its 12 ;P

[ollie-666]

fair review =)

[Gaffer]

OK...you got me

12 it is....but I still would've liked to use my existing Wii friend code. Otherwise it just seems too cumbersome to me.

[ollie-666]

to be fair, apparently you only have one code and its kept with ur Mii, so its gunna be the same for each game =P

[Gaffer]

True, but that's just one code for this game (unless I'm understanding wrong here).

The way it's going, it looks like there will be seperate codes for each online game. So that's on for the Wii, one for MSCF, one for Fifa 08, one for Mariokart Wii, one for PokeyPlops, one for.......... etc etc.

....extremely annoying. I'm pretty sure the next online Wii game will have a completely different code to both MSCF and the Friend Code (again, that's if I'm understanding it correctly that is )

meaning that you'll build up a collection of codes, one for each different online game you have .

[wiimadjay]

and if you end up with a lot of codes for different games, its going to be very annoyying to keep going through your games just to check the code.

[FooFan]

Very fair review

It's a good game, but it's too unpredictable to make it a great game. In most games there's a simple logic to follow. I.E if you do this, at this point, THIS will happen. However, on mario Strikers it seems to be totally random as to whether you score or not sometimes...
This leads to only one thing; Total Frustration Online and offline

The AI gets ridiculously hard in the later games and you've summed up the online experience pretty much spot on. You have to be good at this game to enjoy playing it online because it pairs you up randomly when there clearly should be the option to do random friendly matches or different skill groups.

I'd still recommend it to everyone though

[kungfumaster]

there's something about strikers that really sucks but there's something else that just keeps dragging me back for another shot. it's a bit like heroin, i'ed imagine.

[LandShark]

The thing that really annoys me is if you check your friendly roster and find theres somone online you have to back up and arrange a friednly before u can invite them in and often there busy by then. I think you should invite to a friendly by clicking there name and then connect theen decide game details.