That Mario anyway. Is there anything our mustachioed friend can’t do? Casting lead. Save princesses. Golf. Tennis. Basketball. Go karting hard. Jump very high. Run very fast. Paint. Play doctor. Fold itself into a paper airplane. Throwing parties. puzzling. role playing. Ride on the backs of far too cute dinosaurs. Mixing cement. Mixed martial arts. pinball. And yes, playing football with the brilliance of Messi and Mbappé combined.
–
Mario Strikers: Battle League is the third installment in a series that may have always underperformed. I mean: Mario is popular, football is popular. Taken together, that shit should make sure Nintendo never has to release another game again, right? If only it were that simple. The first two Strikers are definitely entertaining, but lack the signature Nintendo magic. That special sauce that tops the truly classic Mario franchises. It just feels a little… forced. As if Nintendo thought: Mario is popular, football is popular. All that shit should make sure we never have to release another game again, right?
Also in Mario Strikers: Battle League you play five-on-five, with each team consisting of four freely selectable Nintendo favorites with their own caricatural qualities: Bowser is of course very strong but slow again, while Toad is very fast and technical but on the ground more often than Suarez. Keeper Boom-Boom is the same every game with every team, but hey: that bald fat bastard definitely has cat-like reflexes!
–
– –
Matches last much shorter than in PES or FIFA but can get really chaotic. It then goes like this: ‘Hey, a question mark block! Should I walk there… Then I should actually switch to Peac… Oh shit, is that CPU a supercha… Luckily, a perfect tack… Ho, quick dodg… Hmmm, where’s the ball actually? WHAT??? In my goal???’
A wise man once said: football is simple. But there is nothing more difficult than playing simple football. It could and should be Mario Strikers’ motto. The game trots too often and at unnecessary moments in the well-known Nintendo ailments of ‘wanting to do something special’ and ‘wanting to keep it accessible to everyone’. Because that’s the biggest joke: that’s not Mario Strikers at all. The best player will always win, for the simple reason that he can string his super shots together better, understands how to dodge enemy interception with perfect timing and doesn’t really need those stupid items at all.
It’s the most fundamental problem with Mario Strikers: the game has the appearance of a cozy part-game but, once the tracksuits come off, is tougher on the frame than a Cooper test with the Real Madrid roster. Fire up the game and you’ll be presented with a tutorial that gives most JRPGs the hiccups. I predict that half of the buyers will trade the game back right away.
–
– –
Unfortunately, there is more annoyance. You can’t push animations of super shots. Not. push through. So after an hour you are already for the four thousandth time watching Mario get fire eyes and yell ‘letsa go’. It is absolutely excruciating (although Waluigi dancing the tango with a rose in his mouth never grows old).
Besides that, there is simply not much to do. A few single player cups, multiplayer and that’s it. No Career, no Ultimate Team-like mode and even no options to change the rules of the game, for example. Mario Strikers: Battle League is bare-bones and feels quite unfinished to be honest. Yes, you can earn coins to buy some kind of robotic gear for your players that changes their stats, but they never get any better. Only different. For example, give Mario a pair of iron gloves and he gets +2 for shooting, but his speed deducts 2 points. Might as well pick Bowser! You hardly notice any difference between players. Too little (see box ‘Low-iegie is O-Pie’). The differences should have been much more cartoonish like in Mario Kart, where the choice of your character really has an impact.
Still, with AI being either dumber than Quincy Promes or comparable to Cruyff and Maradonna rising from the dead, the algorithmic rules of the game are actually changing every minute. Deadly in a footie.
–
– –
Sure, Mario Strikers can be fun. Especially in multiplayer when the game is evenly matched, the game sways up and down and there isn’t too much delay in the form of annoying animations or cutscenes. Then the game is reminiscent of the legendary Nintendo World Cup for the NES and Game Boy, a footie where Strikers get at least 80% the mustard but who can never match it. Let alone beat.
Is Mario Strikers even better than PES and FIFA? Well, then that first title for sure, although that is comparable to saying that SC Heerenveen beats my amateur team. If I have to choose between Strikers and FIFA, I choose the latter very lightly, although they are both more Conference League-level than Champions League-worthy. Champions of poverty, so to speak…
–
–
