Mario Strikers: Battle League Review
A game of two halves.
Rating: ★★★½
It's finally here. The waiting is over. Mario Strikers has officially returned, this time with a rather boisterous addendum of "Battle League" and a whole slew of new gimmick play styles, and an entire graphical overhaul.
On the surface, Mario Strikers: Battle League is a game that is so polished that you can almost see your giddy-faced reflection in it.
The expanded controls offer greater versatility and solutions to high pressured problems, the graphics are "classic Nintendo" in that they are so full of personality and charm that it feels like your emotions are being wrung from you like a wet towel, and the high octane action is just so relentless that with the right friends this has the potential to be the perfect party game.
However, this is a potential that often feels like it's inhabited by Nintendo's own road mapping and confusing decision to present players with an almost anemic Day One experience, especially when compared to the other games in the Mario Strikers library.
A single-player Challenge Mode for each player, 1 vs 1 mode and the ability to set up fun handicap matches, pitches that contain hazards and special effects, these are features MISSING from Battle League that were in prior titles, meaning that from a single-player experience all you have access to are a series of incredibly easy knockout tournament cup modes (that can be completed in just under an hour and a half) a quick play mode and the new and much-touted Strikers Club mode, although one has to wonder if this has been so hyped because it's the only mode that's actually new.
It's rather deflating to have burned through the single-player content in an afternoon, and with little incentive to replay the cup mode, it means that I'm just twiddling my thumbs until my friends also pick up a copy of the game. At least in the downtime, I can look at the new "gear" options which affect player stats depending on what you equip. However, you best not look too close as the stench of potential microtransactions is ripe in that area, as is the fact that it's all rather pointless.