![]() ![]() We’re miles away from reaching any kind of zenith, but it became clear just how much hidden depth Mario Strikers: Battle League holds. Indeed we spent longer than we’d care to admit totting stats, workshopping strategies, and counting frames from recorded footage to see how far we could push things. A group of newbies can fire up the game and have tremendous fun immediately, but those like us that take games far too seriously will, in time, take the tech and metagame to levels we can’t yet imagine. Ideally, humans that are within reach for a damned good thrashing when your Boom Boom goalie is just not pulling his flippin’ weight. Playing against CPUs is fun, and challenging, but as is almost always the case with these games, the true fun is playing against other humans. What starts off as a whirlwind of obtuse concepts melds into a choreographed dance of violence and strained relationships. We’re not dealing with Monster Hunter levels of complexity here, but you will have to employ all the tools in your arsenal if you want to take on anything but the easiest CPU, and once you reach this state (which shouldn’t take more than a few hours) everything just sings. The game’s tutorial has a lot to take in at first, but the more you play the more the game’s seemingly myriad mechanics slot neatly into place and become second nature. You’ll need to pass, lob, tackle (a lot), dodge (even more), and take shots at goal in order to win, and it’s nothing short of excellent. Any character unfortunate enough to be tackled into it is stunned for a good few seconds, which is about as devastating as it sounds. Nice.īut regardless of which mode you select, what matters most is the core gameplay, and what core gameplay! The rules are largely the same as real-life football/soccer, but with no referee, limitations on what limbs can be used, and an electrified fence on the perimeter. Your club’s gear and stadium can also be used in any offline mode if you want to keep flying those particular colours despite not paying your broadband bill. This feels a little bit limiting at first, but it certainly helps to push the idea that you’re really playing as a club, and even if a member isn’t online, their choice of character is still having an impact. Each member chooses a character and any gear they’d like to wear, and they are then added to the pool of available players. From this menu you can also choose to jump into matches with fellow clubmates, and interestingly you’re limited with the characters you can pick. The owner can just completely ignore them of course, but it’s nice to see a bit of (optional) democracy at play. The owner of the club has the exclusive ability to customise everything, but other members can vote on what they would like to be chosen. The pitch, the surroundings, the goal design, the fence, the decorations around the goal, there’s so much here to tweak it’s a little bit overwhelming at first. The kits have a decent amount of flexibility in their design, but the real meat comes in the stadiums. This is an online mode where you can create your own club with friends or any old Joe on the internet complete with customisable name, kits, and stadiums. This definitely feels like it’s been designed as the ‘solo’ mode, but the ability to charge in with friends as well is a nice touch.Īnd lastly, if you don’t count training and options, there’s what we believe is the main selling point in Nintendo’s eyes: Strikers Club. Then you have Cup Battles, a sort of tournament-based mode where you and up to three others on the same console are pitted against CPU teams each themed around one of each of the five stats each character possesses in the game. ![]() If you want to play a quick game of Strikers, this is likely where you’ll go. This is the basic mode that most people will bust out when playing with friends, and thankfully you can do so on a single console (with up to eight players at a time), local wireless, and over that new-fangled internet that you might have heard of. Quick Battle allows you to jump into a game right away, setting the duration, how skilled the CPU is, whether or not you want items and/or Hyper Strikes to be enabled (more on those later), and whether the game should take place in the daytime or at night. ![]() When you boot up the game you’ll be presented with various modes. Mario Strikers: Battle League attempts to carry on the legacy of the much-beloved Strikers series, but does this third entry achieve the hat-trick we’d all love to see? Now presumably you’ve chosen some obscure sport that Mario hasn't played because you saw where this bit was going, but that doesn’t change the fact that our red plumber chap has been in a hell of a lot of sports games. ![]()
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