When Nintendo announced that Mario Strikers were hitting the pitch once more, many people were quite happy with the news, myself included. Now that I have had time to enjoy the game and its various modes, is this a premiere league effort or should the series return to the fundamentals?

Unlike other recent Mario sports titles, there is no story mode here, no campaign to become the best athlete in the given sport, just the game. If you are someone who prefers that sort of content in your sporting games, then you are likely going to be let down here, but its absence isn’t a bad thing, as it lets you just focus on playing the game. There are three main modes available to players, Quick Match, Cup Battles and Online Matches and depending on your preferences, you can get some playtime lasting in the minutes or in the many minutes. Before you jump into any of them though, the game prompts you to do the tutorial and it is something that I highly recommend completing, as the game is as much like soccer as Mario Kart is to F1 racing, some similarities, but really their own thing.

The training will give you the basics for passing, kicking, shooting at goal and more and with each move having standard and charged up options, you will want to ensure that you practice them here plenty, as the game will not hold back. Once you are sufficiently trained up enough, you can either play against mates locally or online, or jump into the Cup Battles mode, where you will compete for the various trophies on offer. The cups have some weird names like the Cannon Cup, Muscle Cup and such, but they are not just going to be harder versions of the matches, instead each cup focuses on singular aspects of the game. For example the first cup that you can enter is the Cannon Cup and the teams you face here, will prioritise shooting over anything else, where as in the next one, the Chain Cup, its all about passing. Now you can opt to play these solo, or you can take three friends with you, and if you do that, teamwork will need to need to be a core part of your strategy, because as I said before, the game will not take it easy.

The main reason to compete in these cups, before you take yourself online is that you will earn coins once you win and coins are used to buy gear for your characters. There are four groups of gear, one for each part of the body and within each group there are five options and each corresponds to a focus of the game. If you deck your character out in the Turbo gear, that will boost up your characters speed attributes, making them faster on the pitch, but that speed may lower your strength value, so deciding what gear for what character is crucial. Toad for example is fast but light and while making them faster may sound like a great idea, if they can’t tackle anyone, it makes things harder to have a rounded-out team. Thankfully, you are not locked to a single set, if you equip the Turbo boots, you can add the Trick Gear gloves, which can help to balance things out somewhat, regardless of the combination you opt for, the game won’t stop you, so trial and error is going to be key.

I mentioned Toad before and this seems like a good time to talk characters, there are 10 selectable options from Mario and Bowser to Rosalina and Waluigi – with Boom Boom acting as the goalie for each team. Each character has their own base stats, with larger characters having more strength, but less speed and smaller characters being faster, but weaker. When you build up a team, you can opt to go for all big characters, all small ones or a combination of them, in order to build the line-up that suits your playstyle. The issue with characters though is that there is no restriction on who can select them, meaning that if you opt for a team of four big characters, your opposing team may be created using some of those same characters and seeing two Mario’s on the field is not only weird, but confusing. There were times when I would have control of my team’s Bowser but would be constantly getting things mixed up and that doesn’t account for when characters are powered up with hyper strikes and their colours no longer match what they normally are. Some more restriction on the character selection would be ideal, if only to make the game less confusing, because there are times when it can really be chaotic on screen.

That chaos level ramps up whenever your team collects the Hyper Strike orb, a sphere of power that will randomly appear on the pitch throughout matches and once collected, allows for your side to attempt a Hyper Strike. I say attempt as the game can be quite stingy it how it rewards a successful shot, there are three basic outcomes, you hit the two required zones perfectly and score the two points, you miss one, but get the other and it becomes a toss up on you getting it, or you miss both and then you just wait for the game to reject your attempt. If you are the one kicking, getting the sliding marker in the two blue zones on your gauge will test you, but if your character has gear from the Trick Set, then that blue section is larger. If that happens, it is a guaranteed goal, but more often than not, you will miss at least one and half to hope the game works in your favour, but there is no way of knowing. When you are on the receiving end of a Hyper Strike attempt and its not a perfect shot, you can actually attempt to repel the shot, by mashing down a button and you have to massively spam it, if you struggle with repeated button presses, then you are never going to stop them. This is the only time you will see an indication of a possible rejection of a Hyper Strike, if you are playing against a real people, you can see it, but solo, there is no indication of what is going on.

This is where a yellow card would be thrown out here, the game is reliant on skill for getting a Hyper Strike and then a repetitive action to repel one and there is nothing for those who can’t do either. Yes you can supplement your blue zone with equipping gear, but that still requires some precise timing to get the shot and if you don’t play with gear, then it’s the base zones for you. The button mashing to stop a kick is even worse, if you can’t do those actions, you are out of luck – this was something that used to happen in games a decade or so ago and thankfully most have moved away from that, but not here. The game doesn’t offer anything else for you, you either make the system work or you don’t get to attempt to stop the shots and for a company that is all about fun, this seems like a pretty horrible way to welcome in less experienced or gamers with disabilities.

Another aspect of the game that started to drag me down was the replays, and to a lesser extent the Hyper Strike animations. I will say first of all, that both of those are fantastic to watch, seeing Donkey Kong breakdance when he scores a goal, or having a team of Toads rush the pitch to help your Toad shoot for the goal is wonderful, the first few times. The problem is that each character only so many goal animations and only a singular Hyper Strike animation, so if you like shooting as Mario and keep going to the Hyper Strike, you are going to see the same sequence play out, each and every time. Replays are much the same, while the games does mix things up with a few different ones for each character, it will also throw in looks at the other team, upset that you scored a goal, I just wish that there were either more of them, or their frequency was reduced, so their impact wasn’t lost.

As I said before though, each of the animations are spectacular to watch and a lot of that is driven by the quality of the visuals that are on the screen. The characters all move with a fluidity that we rarely see in a Mario sports game, but beyond that it’s the games consistent performance that makes things really stand out. As I said before, the animation for the goals and Hyper Strikes are incredible, but even without those, when you have 8 players running around, items being thrown across the pitch, power ups being received and charge shots being taken, the game never breaks a sweat. The pitch itself is wonderfully brought to life, with multiple halves, ensuring that each time you play things can look a little different. Once you start equipping gear, Mario and others start to look less like the happy-go-lucky characters we know and more like someone who has stepped out of a Terminator movie, but they still manage to have a nice layer of charm to them.

There is an area that we need to address and that is the crowds, other sports games are very guilty of this as well and I can understand why, but at the same time, it is a problem. In the stadium seating, no matter the theme, the audience is mostly the same each time with a lot of Yoshi’s, Koopa Troopa’s and such filling the seats. The issue is that they are given the same three animations, meaning when you see the crowd, all the Red Yoshi’s will be doing one or two things and its not random, entire chunks of the space will be doing the same movement. Like I said other sports games do the same thing, I called out Forza Horizon 5 last year for having crowds that didn’t even react, but here all they really needed to do, was add in more variety of moves or more characters and it would feel more alive.

On the audio side of things, there is some good and some ok and for the most part, things are good across the board, the game has a soundtrack, while not something to set the charts on fire, fits within the games setting. The characters all sound as you would expect, so hearing Mario wahoo when you score a goal is great, or when Bowser roars as part of his Hyper Strike, it feels welcoming in its familiarity. Where things are just ok, is again with the crowds, for the most part they are just there, the level of noise they make is consistent throughout each of the matches. When your team scores a goal, your side of the stadium doesn’t erupt in joy, nor when the opposing team scores, which leaves everything feeling like its more akin to them just enjoying some conversations, rather than watching a sport.

Mario Strikers Battle League Football is a hard game to recommend, fans of the Mario sports series of games will find enjoyment here and there is a lot to experience, but it is really something that has to be played with friends, unlike Tennis or Golf. Those who prefer a more solo gaming experience will feel like they are not getting true value for their gaming dollar and it is a justifiable feeling, as there really isn’t anything to do solo, except compete in the cups. Once you take the game online or just play locally with friends, there is a lot of fun to be had in this game, the level of chaos that occurs when matches are close and the pitch is filled with items, it is truly unlike anything else Nintendo have made lately and that really is reason enough to give the game a shot.