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It’s surprising how quickly things change, Nintendo point blankly refused to support efforts to get the Gamecube online and compete with the PS2 and Xbox. Well that’s not exactly true, they did create a modem and broadband adaptor for the console, but did not create any online games of their own.
Only two games from Sega ever used this functionality for GC, both were the shitty Phantasy Star Online titles, and one of them was the opening to pirate games on the cube. Hackers found a flaw in the code of PSO that allowed the uploading and downloading of data from a PC through the broadband adaptor, thus homebrew and pirating finally had a foot hold on the cube.
Nintendo shocked us all with the DS. No one was expecting a new handheld console, and if they were, it would’ve been a new Gameboy, not a foray into PDA technology with touch screens and Wifi. “Is this really Nintendo?” We asked.
Yes, it was!
Not only that but Nintendo started their free WiFi connection service, being able to play WiFi enabled DS games over the internet for free. No subscription or server charges. Finally Nintendo had got it right!
With the success of the service, low and behold we find that the Wii is the next inline to give us free online gaming. Hurrah!
Mario Strikers Charged Football (what a name eh?) isn’t the gentlemanly game you and I watch on a Sunday Afternoon down the pub. No MSCF is more like American Football played by the American Military with hundreds of Punches, Kicks, Explosions and Bombs everywhere.
Most of you will know how these second party Mario games work by now, Mario and his favourite bunch of friends pick a sport (such as Tennis, Golf, Basketball and Football) and turn it into a multiplayer fun fest rather than a true simulation.
As you’d expect, Mario, Princess Peach, Luigi, Yoshi, Diddy Kong, Bowser and all the rest of the crew are here, all with their own special moves and the luxury of being team captains.
They’re all gearing up to beat the crap out of each other all in the name of sport, god bless them all!
Anyone remember Speedball 2 on the Amiga? If you do, you’ll be right at home here.
The first thing you’ll notice when you put the disc is that it performs a firmware update, the is handy as all of you who have not been able to hook your Wii online yet will be the little tweaks to keep your console up to date with the rest of us. Hopefully Nintendo will make this a regular thing as updating firmware via a wireless connection is a bit dangerous, if your connection drops whilst it’s updating your Wii means it could be turned into nothing more than a gibbering vegetable.
Although this title is online enabled, that isn’t the only part of it; there is the usual one player, coop and multiplayer modes to play with.
The main one player game sees you battling your through the cups in both league and knockout style (bit like the world cup), you pick your captain e.g. Mario and then your 3 side kicks (four a side matches here you know).
As you complete the successively harder cups you’ll unlock new and stronger captains, each with even more outlandish special moves to perform.
Being able to play the one player mode, in coop is brilliant fun, but it can be difficult to see which players are yours and those of your team mate, the usual coloured circle underneath each player is the only way you can tell who is who.
The side kicks are the extra players on your team (such as Boo, Birdo and Koopa), again each have a special move of their own but cannot perform the special Mega Strike, unlike Mario and co. There are only a few to choose from and they are not unique to each Captain, so in theory you could have six if the same sidekicks on the pitch alongside say Mario and Luigi.
Multiplayer is as fun as you would expect, up to four people can play (2 on each side) and battle it out to your hearts content. You can even make it more interesting by turning the special moves off if you manage to unlock some of the hidden cheats to be found in the game.
There are the usual training and challenge modes, they’re fun but not really part of the main game, but if you want to finish everything you possibly can in the game, then some of the later challenges are supremely difficult.
Back to the Megastrike I mentioned earlier, it’s a bit tricky to explain, but I’ll try. When your captain is in the opposing teams half he or she has the option of charging the strike, this takes a few seconds and leaves them open to attack, but if successfully pulled off (by holding the shoot button down for several seconds) the player then has the chance to score up to six goals by pummelling them towards the goalie, but to make it tricky you have then have to hit the correct points in the swing meter (like the ones in Mario golf games) to gain extra ball speed. It’s still not that straightforward though as Gameplay switches to an unusual first person mode where the defending keeper has a chance to save the goals by pointing at the shots with the Wiimote.
If anything this game has too many special moves and seeing the ball can get hard, not only that but many of the 17 themes stadiums have their own effects as well, so as you can imagine it can get a bit blinding. This is okay in multiplayer as you all go blind at the same time, but against the CPU, it can give them the advantage.
The game doesn’t go overboard with trying to use motion sensing, apart from the Megastrike and the ability to hard tackle by shaking the Wiimote, most of the game plays as you would expect on a normal joypad, which I think is a sensible idea.
Obviously the main feature of the game is the online mode, but is it any good?
Well yes it is. You can either search for random opponents from whoever is playing online at that time, or hook up with friends you know (once you’ve swapped game codes that is). The game plays just as well online as it does in standalone mode, I haven’t had too many lag issues or random disconnections to complain about, the handy connection quality guide pops up before you play giving you the chance to find another opponent if the ping is too high.
Graphically this title is pretty good, not groundbreaking, but has all the whistles and bells you could want.
On some of the stadiums there is a hint of slowdown, why the developers didn’t scrap some of the background effects to keep frame rates high is quite odd, but it’s never enough to spoil the game.
Lots of stomping tunes and Mario speech is here for all you non deaf gamers, all of the usual quality. Charles Martinet (the voice of Mario and others) must be in the recording studio so often these days what with all the Mario spin off’s are coming out.
Overall, a good game, not great, but good. I feel the special moves are a bit too powerful and easy to pull off. I think the decision of giving all the players on the pitch special over the top special moves was wrong, having your team captain perform the spills and thrills would’ve been enough, but hey, I can live with it.
The online mode gives this game lots of replay value, there will always be someone else to play the game with, even if you’re up at 3 am and eating yesterdays cold pizza, you’ll still be able to have a game of Mario Strikers, who needs a girlfriend?