What do you get when you take a group of Nintendo characters, dress them up in cleats and body armour, and throw them onto a playing field? You get Mario Strikers Charged, the sequel to Nintendo and Next Level Games' popular GameCube soccer game, Super Mario Strikers. Next Level Games has taken some time and made some serious improvements to the the game, cleaning up the interface, adding new characters and new power moves, updating the graphics and giving some extra control to players through use of the Wii Remote.

One of the first things anyone should notice when the start up the game is the simple interface. There's not a lot to speak of, and that's mostly to do with the fact that the game is an arcade-style sports game. There are options for a couple of different play modes, tutorials, settings and the hall of fame. From there, it's up to whoever is playing how they want to play. Excluding online play, up to four players can play on the same team, and in online play, each host can play with one guest, for a total of four players.

Gameplay

The controls for Mario Strikers Charged are relatively simple. A passes, B shoots, you move around using the Nunchuck's control stick. There are some more advanced moves like chipping the ball forward using the Z button, which is also used in combination with the A or B button for lob passes or shots, power ups, which are activated using the C button, hitting (there are no fouls), which is done by shaking the Wii Remote, and sliding for the ball, which is controlled by the D-pad.

Playing the game itself is quite simple too. After a quick run through the tutorials, or a read through of the instruction manual, anybody can get a hang of the controls, from charging up the ball through holding shots or quick passing, to pulling off six shot Megastrikes. Heading into the Road to the Striker Cup, you'll find that the first cup in the series is quite simple and easily passable, not to mention a lot of quick fun to play through. Once that cup is done though, the difficulty level jumps tremendously, and with that the speed of play. And speaking of speed of play, I was surprised by how slow the load times for the game were. While not slow compared to some other systems available, when compared to other games on Nintendo systems, Mario Strikers Charged loads in turtle time. Going from the menu to a game is relatively decent, but going from a game to the menu is just awfully slow. There is no reason it should take that long.

Getting back to what I was saying about difficulty, the rapid rise in difficulty applies to the Striker Challenges as well as the Road to the Striker Cup, and that is quite unfortunate. The game certainly provides a great challenge, something lacking in many games these days, but the jump is far too fast to adjust to easily. This brings me to another point concerning the challenge level in the game. The opponent CPU artificial intelligence in this game is great! The higher difficulty levels really do provide for good opponents. The only problem with that is that my own team's CPU controlled players couldn't keep up.

I would often find that the CPU controlled opponents would always be able to organize themselves well and attack every one of my players immediately, sometimes before I even managed to gain control of that particular player. The same could not be said, however, for my own CPU controlled players, who would often run after the ball, but not attack the opponent player that had it. Instead, that player would stand around, waiting for me to take control and attack. They also couldn't organize themselves well enough when on attack or defense for me to properly control offensives or to defend my own zone.

The other problem which is slightly connected to this is the inclusion of strange or foolish Striker Challenges. Though most of the first few Challenges make sense, and go up at a reasonable difficulty incline, the following Challenges can simply be inane, not to mention almost impossible to complete because of the problems that were mentioned earlier. One particular Challenge that comes to my mind is the Yoshi vs. Wario Challenge “So far behind...”, in which Yoshi has to recover from a 5-0 deficit with only 1:08 left on the clock. Though I can certainly see how Yoshi could end up in that kind of situation – Yoshi's sidekicks are all extremely slow, while Wario's are the fastest sidekicks available (with some extra special moves to boot) – it makes no sense to give that kind of a goal within those very slim chance parameters.

Multiplayer and Online Play

One of the great things about this game is that all of the gameplay modes (that does not include tutorials) can be played in either single or multiplayer, though the Road to the Striker Cup and Striker Challenges will only allow for the players to control one team. This provides for a different, and very fun, way to play the game. And since the up to four players can play at once, there are quite a few choices of combinations for players to try when playing with, or against, each other.

In Domination Mode, players can freely select which team they want to play on, so they can play one on one, two on two, four against the CPU, three on one and so on. It doesn't matter if there are one, two, three or four players playing. The gameplay, on the field, doesn't change in any way from single player play, so it's easy to jump right in.

Online play has a couple of different options to choose from. You can choose to play against friends from your Friend Roster, or play someone from the Ranked section. The difference between in house multiplayer and online play is that you can a maximum of only two players from each connecting Wii can play, and they can only play on their side. Choosing to play against a friend is essentially like playing in house one on one (except that you don't see them unless they're in the same room on a different Wii).

Going up against players from the Ranked section though, is something different. When you choose to play against someone from the Ranked section, the game randomly selects someone for you to play against. This means that no matter where you are on the board, you could end up playing against someone much higher or lower than you in rank. That can be a bit of an annoyance when you're only starting out playing online, or when you're somewhere in a medium rank, but suddenly get thrown up against a much higher ranked player.

I found it annoying, and a little disappointing that the selection for playing Ranked players was random. I recall Reggie Fils-Aime talking, back before the Wii launched, about games that would put players up against other players of similar skill levels, letting them gain experience as they went. It doesn't seem they did that with this game. Hopefully we'll see it with future titles.

As far as connection quality goes, Mario Strikers Charged delivered beautifully. Out of a hundred or so games that I played over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, only one had lag. There were a couple of times that I mysteriously got disconnected from the server while searching for opponents, but other than that, the quality was almost always four stars, and there was no lag.

Environment and Graphics

I've got to give it up to Next Level Games for the improvements that were made between Super Mario Strikers and Mario Strikers Charged . There really is a difference there, and it's quite noticeable. The characters look better, there is more detail in both the characters and the environments, and it just looks good overall.

The character models were specifically impressive. It's not that they look very realistic, because that's not something I'd really expect out of a game with the Nintendo characters in it, but they just look well done. I especially like the fact that it looks like the characters are actually wearing the padding and the rest of their equipment, rather than just being textured on. And if they were textured on, it was a very good job.

The environments were also impressive. I just so happened to like the character work better. Though simple – they are only soccer fields after all – they still had quite a bit going on, both in the foreground and the background. The look was clean and they each had their own fun and cool style to them, so it didn't look like you were playing at the same arena at any time.

Sound

There isn't really much to speak of as far as the sound goes, other than to say that it was also well done. You really feel like you're watching an out of the ordinary soccer match. The atmosphere from each arena was dead on to what should be expected of each type of location, the sound effects and the music were well timed and clear, and the voice work, though minimal, was great – all of the character voices match to previous games.

Trying the game out with the surround sound – it works in Dolby Pro Logic II – I found that the only really noticeable sound coming out of the back was the cheering. Then again, I wouldn't really expect much else out of a soccer game where your perspective is from the stands. Overall, though there was nothing that made me go wow, the sound was exactly what should be expected, and that's all I really would ask for.

Conclusion

Mario Strikers Charged is a really good take on arcade style soccer simulation. Though it has some problems with a difficulty level that jumps way too quickly, and can become very frustrating in single player gameplay, it redeems itself quite well with great multiplayer play, both in house and online. Though the Ranked section of online multiplayer plays well, I really would have liked to see it organize games based on both opponent's skill levels.

Gameplay: 6.8
Environment and Graphics: 8.8
Sound: 9
Story: N/A
Fun: 7

Verdict: Rent or Buy It