"Mario Strikers" in review: Spectacular party kick with ridiculous scope

This is an article from our content partner "PC Games". Here you can find the original article by editor Christian Dörre.

A full 15 years after Mario Strikers Charged and even 17 years after the original Mario Smash Football on the GameCube, Mario, Luigi, Peach and Co. finally return to the soccer pitch with Mario Strikers: Battle League Football. As you might expect from a sports game featuring the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom, however, this is of course not a realistic fuppes simulation in which tactically-influenced lawn chess is played, but rather a wild, chaotic spectacle that doesn't give a damn about fair play, tactics, or such nonsense as rules.

Accessible arcade fun and schadenfreude are clearly in the foreground. But of course Adi Preißler's legendary saying "Entscheidend is' auf'm Platz" also applies to party soccer. We therefore took to the pitch to find out for you whether the Switch title is a real champion or rather a trivial game with a pretty presentation. Our verdict is quite ambivalent, because Mario's soccer party is fun, but it also scores a nasty own goal that puts the brakes on the game's fun.

You have to be four friends

If you haven't played any of the Mario Strikers series before, but only FIFA or eFootball, you'll have to get used to it a bit. The playing fields are shorter and narrower, and instead of 11 players per team, there are only five teams. The goalkeeper is always a Boom Boom, who is completely taken over by the AI. So you only control the four field players. However, Battle League Football chooses a different path than its two predecessors.

In Smash Football and Charged, you could only choose a captain with special abilities and the teammates consisted of side characters like Koopas or Shy Guys.

In the new game, on the other hand, you put together your team entirely from big Nintendo personalities. You can choose from ten characters. Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Rosalina, Toad, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Wario and Waluigi are at your disposal. Each character has different status values.

While Mario and Luigi are pretty all-rounders, Peach and Rosalina impress with speed and technique, but are easily knocked out. Bowser and Donkey Kong, on the other hand, are rather slow, but heavier and stronger.

Thus, they can't be knocked off their feet with simple tackles, their attacks are stronger and their shots are more powerful. Quite quickly you'll get to know the advantages of each character. With a Wario, for example, you can sometimes pull off a shot from a greater distance, but when the enemy counterattacks well, the puggy creep naturally pants behind.

After a short time you'll get the hang of putting together a balanced team that is tailored to your playing style. Especially in multiplayer, there are sometimes fun encounters between fundamentally different teams. If, for example, a technical team, which wants to shine with its passing sequences, competes against a clumsy team, there is a wonderful clash of the different playing styles.

By the way, if you are not satisfied with a character's status values, you can change them. With each game, and especially by winning cups, you'll earn coins that can be used to buy armor pieces. Thus, if you think Mario should be stronger or Bowser should be faster, you can equip them with the corresponding parts. You won't tinker with the characters either, because before games or tournaments you can always choose whether you want to play with the original version without armor parts or with the upgraded character.

Famously rule-less

Of course, it makes a difference which characters you send out onto the field, but Mario Strikers: Battle League Football has about as much to do with tactical gameplay as Arminia Bielefeld has to do with the German championship.

The games are more ferocious than any open-field clash between Manchester City and Liverpool FC. And there's more brutal re-timing than in any Kreisliga derby. The only difference is that in Mario Strikers there are neither open breaks nor a referee.

Accordingly, you don't have to worry about offsides or foul play. There are no corner kicks, no free kicks or penalties. The whistle just blows, the goals are counted and the whistle blows again.

The lack of rules is also fully enjoyed by the players. Bowser sometimes kicks the ball with his tail, Donkey Kong pushes the ball with his fists and Wario thinks nothing of the word foot in soccer. He carries the pill in his hand, throws at the goal or even uses his mighty paunch for the finish. Each character has his own way of dribbling, passing, shooting, straddling. It's all very well implemented and appropriate for the character in question.

When you are in possession of the ball, you are allowed to play high and low passes, shoot and dodge enemy attacks. Together with the left shoulder button, you can also play targeted passes into the run of your teammates.

Beginners will immediately get to grips with the simple controls and with a little familiarization you'll quickly manage direct passes or direct shots in front of the box. Shots can also be recharged to send them even more forcefully towards the goal.

During this recharge time, however, you'll be standing in one spot, making you an easier target for tackles. So you have to judge game situations correctly to avoid being knocked down. This is not so easy on a higher AI level or against a human player, because the game speed is generally very high. The gameplay is often more reminiscent of ice hockey than soccer. However, this is not meant negatively at all in this case.

There is no sideline, but a board from which the ball bounces back. The board is also electrified and opponents can of course be pushed into it. Also, the passing game in the opponent's half sometimes seems a bit like in NHL when looking for the gap in the defense.

Likewise, of course, there are often fast counterattack situations. There's actually always action throughout the entire game. Dragging out the tempo like in a real soccer game is not wanted and therefore hardly possible.

More battlefield than playing field

If you stand still in Mario Strikers: Battle League Football, you'll get your socks knocked off. This happens mostly in the form of tackles. If you press X, you give the opponent a slap that knocks him out for a moment. However, this is not always enough.

A lightweight like Toad is more likely to bounce off a Bowser than do any damage. So it's a good thing that tackles, just like shots, can be charged up. Of course, this takes a short time, during which the opponent can also escape. However, charged tackles not only have a greater penetrating power, but also a longer range.

In addition, a successful tackle gives you direct possession of the ball and the opponent is stunned for longer. The best thing about the tackles, however, is that you can knock down not only the opponent with the ball, but also his teammate without the ball. In this way, you naturally take away the attacking player's playstations with the ball. Especially in multiplayer with several players, this is a good way to prevent counterattacks. The games can sometimes degenerate into wild brawls. However, this is not disturbing at all, but also provides laughs again and again because of the loving presentation. Of course, such scenes also fuel the schadenfreude familiar from Mario multiplayer titles, but during our test, even the sufferers of certain actions could never be angry with the game, but mostly laughed along. Mario Strikers: Battle League Football never feels annoying or even unfair, as there is no such thing as a blue tank just before the finish line, for example.

Still, Battle League Football makes use of some items familiar from Mario Kart, which occasionally appear in question mark blocks on the field. Some of them can be used by both teams, while others are in the color of one team and can only be collected by that team. As in Mario Kart 8, two items may be saved. The blocks then contain Nintendo-typical tools.

A mushroom makes you faster for a short time, you can shoot green and red tanks, bananas make opponents slip, a star makes you invulnerable for a short time, and if you throw a Bob-Omb, it rolls down the opponents and says goodbye with an explosion. The items fit well into the gameplay and provide additional chaos, but without being too overpowered. Spamming items doesn't help at all. You have to use them specifically to gain an advantage.

The tools listed so far aren't everything, though. Occasionally, a so-called strike ball appears on the playing field. The first player to touch it gives his team the opportunity to fire a hypershot. For this, a shot must be fully charged.

Of course, this is not always so easy, after all, you can only shoot in the opponent's half and the other team will do everything they can to push you away in this recharge time. So you should get some space first, even if you're pressed for time, because the hypershot option won't be there forever, of course.

However, if you manage to charge up the shot, you still have to hit the right spot in a bar on both sides afterwards. After that, the game switches to a great presented sequence in comic graphics, in which the characters fire an individual mega shot.

While Mario, for example, performs a fiery overhead kick that even scorches the goalkeeper's backside, rose cavalier Waluigi shoots thorny vines, Luigi uses a whirlwind and Wario heaves his broad buttocks at the poor ball.

If you've executed the hypershot perfectly, it's unstoppable. If you haven't been accurate enough, the goalkeeper still has a chance to keep the ball. No matter how: If the ball goes into the box after a hypershot, you will be credited with two goals in any case. This is how games that were thought to be lost can be turned around.

Less is not more

Mario Strikers: Battle League Football is really a lot of fun, and of course it's even more fun in multiplayer. Up to eight players can take part in the games at the same time.

Here, one player then permanently takes over a character. In this case, the minor gameplay flaws that are noticeable with a few players are also eliminated. For example, team mates controlled by the AI often don't run free properly. Of course, you don't have this problem with eight human players, as long as they know the game halfway.

But even with fewer people, even alone against the AI, the title is fun. Only the goalkeepers get on your nerves in all modes, since goals are not always comprehensible. Just a moment ago, Boom Boom stopped several dangerous shots in a row, and suddenly he misses a harmless-looking long shot. Nintendo should definitely do some patching here. However, due to the pretty staging and the otherwise fun gameplay, you'll always forgive the title for these moments.

In any case, we're sure that the new Mario Strikers is one of those titles that you pull out every now and then when friends are over. However, we're also sure that Battle League Football won't be as long-lasting as Mario Kart 8 in terms of playtime, because the biggest criticism is the scope, which is extremely meager even compared to other Mario sports games. We already mentioned that there are just ten characters available. Since four players are needed per team, the characters are constantly duplicated, so you'll soon get tired of them.

However, the selection of the stadiums doesn't look any better either. You can only play in five stadiums in Battle League Football. Here, too, the appeal is gone relatively quickly. Nintendo has already announced free expansions, but exactly what they will contain and when they will appear is still up in the air. This release strategy along the lines of "take this first, there'll be something later, but we want the full price now" just sucks.

Modi, where are you?

The title commits the biggest foul play when it comes to the number of game modes. There are just three of them: Single Match, Cup Tournament and Strikers Club. In the single game you can - who would have thought it? - you can play individual games alone or in multiplayer. In the tournaments, on the other hand, six cups are waiting to be conquered by you. A maximum of four matches can be played per cup. This mode can also be played with several players or alone.

However, single players are at a clear disadvantage here, because the difficulty level cannot be set freely, but is tied to the cup.

Four of the six cups are unfortunately very easy and thus not particularly fun. It's completely incomprehensible why you can't set the difficulty level of the AI yourself here, after all, this is possible in the single games.

In general, single players are pretty much screwed, because that's it with the modes for them. There is no nice story mode like in Mario Golf: Super Rush, not even the possibility to play a league. It really wouldn't have been difficult to at least squeeze the teams from the cups into a league. Or you could have had the twist here that in the league the teams each consist of only four versions of a character.

Anyway, without much effort, some things would have been possible. But nothing, nada, cero, nothing. For this reason, we have to advise players who already know that they would mainly play the title alone not to buy it for now. In a sale you can think about it. Maybe the expansions will have been released by then.

The Strikers Club as the third and last mode in the game is a pure online mode. Here you either join the club of another player or you create one yourself. If you decide to create your own club, you choose the name, team color and shirt and wait for other people to join you. In Strikers Club, you control a permanent player on the team with your teammates and earn points for winning to move up in the league. This already made a nice impression during the test phase, but wasn't anything breathtaking either. However, we can't yet give an objective assessment of the long-term motivation, because matches were rarely played in the time before the release.

Air to the top

Mario Strikers: Battle League Football is one of those games that you absolutely want to love, because it basically does a lot right in the first place. The presentation is great and the gameplay is wild fun that you want to experience more and more of. But here's the problem: there isn't more. And so you automatically think about what's missing and what things could have been implemented so easily to provide more fun and variety.

Then the love for the game just fades away. The last Mario sports titles all offered quite little content, but Mario Strikers: Battle League Football now goes overboard with the frugality.

The scope of the game is really ridiculously small. At least we now realize that good Adi Preißler wasn't completely right. It's not only the pitch that's important, the surrounding area has to have something to offer as well.

Author's verdict: Masterful in terms of gameplay, but a piss-poor job as far as content is concerned.

Oh, Mario! You really brought joy to my teammates and me with your chaotic excursion onto the pitch. Battle League Football plays grippingly, is spectacular and provides all sorts of laughs. Be it out of schadenfreude or because the action on the pitch is just so wonderfully wild. But after only a short time, there was already a lot of air out of the pill. The cups were won quickly and we also quickly got fed up with the just ten characters and the few stadiums in multiplayer. Why is there no story mode like in your last golf appearance? Why are there no leagues? Why can't you even set the difficulty level in the tournaments? As much attention to detail as has gone into the presentation and gameplay, the rest seems to have been lovelessly slapped together. The promise that something will be added later on is simply too little here.

Rating 7/10

Pro

• Fun and chaotic gameplay
• Great presentation
• Well balanced items
• Character idiosyncrasies are captured visually ingeniously
• Easy to learn controls with enough leeway for advanced players
• Eight-player multiplayer mode

Contra

• Too few characters and stages
• No freely adjustable difficulty level for tournaments
• Goalkeepers not always comprehensible
• Minor AI quirks
• Generally ridiculously small scope

Mario Strikers: Battle League Football will be released on June 10 exclusively for Nintendo Switch. Will you be buying Mario's party soccer or will you be put off by the small scope at release? Feel free to write us your opinion on the game and also on this release strategy in the comments.