The long-awaited 3rd addition to the Mario Strikers series, Mario Strikers: Battle League Football no doubt has a lot of pressure on its shoulders to deliver.
The first Mario Strikers game to be playable on the Nintendo Switch, Mario Strikers: Battle League Football follows on from the extremely popular Mario Strikers: Charged. I must admit, Mario Strikers: Charged was one of my favourite games as a kid growing up, so my expectations and excitement levels were inflated, however, I didn’t let my nostalgia cloud my review.
Graphics
The first thing I want to mention is the slightly underwhelming graphical style. Coming from Mario Strikers; Charged, which had exaggerated animations and graphics, I was expecting something similar. Obviously, this game and Mario Strikers: Charged are two different games, however it was disappointing when I discovered that the style was definitely ‘toned down’.
The over-exaggerated animations for the Super Strike, the intense sound effects for goals and even when navigating the menus are all gone, leaving this game to feel like a simplified, stripped-back and clean version of Mario Strikers: Charged.
New Game Modes
Mario Strikers: Battle League Football makes up for the disappointing graphics with a new game mode – Strikers Club Seasons. A bit like FIFA’s Pro Clubs, Strikers Club Seasons allows you to make your own club, add your friends and play as all 4 playable outfield positions.
Each players picks their ‘My Striker’ who you can customize with gear to increase certain stats. For example, my Striker is Toad with the Turbo gear that maxes out his speed attribute, making him rather rapid. I like this feature as it means each player will have their own ‘builds’, quite like NBA 2k’s player building system, or again similar to FIFA’s Pro Clubs player building system.
Character Customization
The addition of purchasable ‘Gear’ for each character is a welcome one, allowing you to customize characters stats to match how you want to play in game. Like I mentioned, I put on the ‘Turbo’ gear for Toad, maxing out his speed stat completely.
Even though he is extremely fast, it comes at a consequence to his strength and shooting which means I do get bodied by stronger characters often. This is good as it means you won’t find overpowered character builds as each bit of gear negatively affects one stat whilst improving another stat, giving a universal sense of balance.
Toad and Yoshi are the only 2 characters who you can have more than one of in your team, so yes, a full team of Toad’s with maxed out speed is exactly what I did. Chaos and carnage on the field, with 4 insanely fast Toad’s blitzing the opposition, what more could you want from a Mario Strikers game.
The currency to pay for these pieces of gear is earned by winning cups vs AI teams (like Mario Karts’ Grand Prix’s) or just games in general, which is nice to see as it is avoiding the dreaded microtransactions and sticks to the old and true way of rewarding players for simply playing the game well, rather than offering them the chance to have a instant advantage buy rinsing their bank account.
Gameplay
Additionally, the gameplay itself is very smooth and ultimately fun to play. The passing is crisp, with the ability to combine some beautiful passages of football to score some great team goals. Shooting is a little bit unpredictable, with the occasional weak shots from the halfway line somehow going in, but I suppose that is football.
Super-Strikes, which are when you click the shoot button in time to determine whether it’s a perfect shot (blue bar shot) or a slightly mistimed shot (orange bar shots) after charging up your shot when you team is ‘charged’, are similarly odd, with orange bar shots going in even if you have spammed the button enough to save the shot with your goalkeeper.
Other than that, shooting seems to be accurate to the characters stats, with Toad being recognizably worse at shooting compared to someone like Peach who has great shooting stats.
Tackling and defending I am happy with, although the powered up strong tackle can be spammed in online games, making it sometimes annoying. Maybe that is something that could be tweaked in a future patch, especially Bowser’s animation.
Although I criticized the animations, they are still enjoyable. Each super-shot goal for each character has its own little shot animation and goal celebration animation, which at first is cute and cool (depending on the character) but it does get slightly repetitive after the first few times of seeing the animations.
Animations
Each character has specific movements, animations and playstyles, emphasising the fact that this is a Mario game, not just a football game. There has been much attention to detail in small things such as idle animations, tackles and even how the character get electrocuted when hit into the arena walls that really express each character’s personality, which is nice to see as part of me worried that they would be quite general with character animations and not make it as specific to character.
Conclusion
Game Rating: 8.1/10
All in all, Mario Strikers: Battle League Football is a very fun game to play, despite its repetitive nature here and there. You can rack up endless hours of gameplay solo or with friends, with the option of ranked online multiplayer leagues giving you a avenue to switch too when the single player cups get boring.
Although I have criticized parts of the graphics and animations, they are still ve ry clean, enjoyable and of a high level. This combined with the fast-paced, free-flowing feel of the gameplay and the fresh customization options makes for a great game on the Nintendo Switch. One final thing that I wish they had was maybe a slight increase in the amount of playable characters, however I have a feeling this will be a DLC or something at some point.
I would definitely recommend this game to people who aren’t even fans of football, as it’s one of those sports games that anyone can enjoy. When Mario and the crew are involved, what’s not to like?
Recent Comments