"An Excellent game… No, wait... Not an Excellent game!"

Mario has busied himself with so many sports that most people figured it was only a matter of time until he began his soccer career, and what do you know? At first glace it appeared this was his best sports game yet. However after playing this game for a few hours, it is quickly visible that this game isn't as great as it looks. This game is actually wearing a mask that fools many people into buying this game.

The game starts off with no story, an early indication of what is to come. I find that games are much better when you start off with a story, so you can understand how your character ended up when they are. When you are simply thrust into a story with no entrance, it makes it harder to take the role of your character. In any event, there is no story to this game which makes it quite obvious what my score as far as the story-line goes will be. 0/10

Here comes what I like to call the mask of this game. The game play. When you first turn this game on and begin playing to play, you will quickly notice how fun it is. The excited crowd, the rough opponents, the shocking walls… however. Don't let the game play fool you as quickly as it has done with so many other people. Sure, playing your first few games is fun, but now you want more. You want to play in the tournaments and unlock new stages and characters. This is where you can really see just how fun and how exciting this game actually isn't. There are very few stages to be unlocked and as for characters, there is only one. One of the worst parts to this game is that when I did unlock the secret character, my game kept stalling whenever I used that character. I wasn't too pleased. After you've unlocked those few things, the game is over. You've completed the game. I finished unlocking all of the secrets within a mere three hours. Not very long. You can unlock different items to use in a match, which is pretty good, but still it doesn't take long. When you're actually playing the game, I also found that when you used a super strike it was to easy to get a goal. Now, after complaining about all the bad parts of the game play, I suppose I should mention the good parts of it, because yes there are some. The fact that there are so many different tournaments you can enter, trying to win a gold medal in all of them could present quite a challenge, especially on some of the harder levels. You can make the computers so difficult, that it really is quite taxing to even win a single match. That's quite good as it will increase the time it takes for you to finish everything, and it will allow you to get some excellent practice. Another thing that is fun, is trying to be presented with all of the fun awards there are. There aren't loads of them, but there are a few and some of them are quite hard to get. So to sum it up, there are fun things to do that will keep you occupied for a while, but the bad things outnumber the good. 6/10

Here's something I can praise about this game, without having to point out all of the bad details, since as far as I can see there are none. The multi-playerablilty. (I'm not sure if that's a word! ^.^) When you get together with other people to play this game, the fun becomes unlimited. There is nothing as satisfying as shoving someone into the wall and laughing at them as they become fried. I know, it sounds horrible, but it really is quite fun! Playing on teams can be confusing at times, but once you get the hang of it, it really is amazingly fun. Simply the best part of the game. There's nothing more to say about this. 10/10

We've made our way to the graphics. Another part of this game which I can praise. However unlike the re-playability, this has little kinks to it which I can complain about. The graphics look pretty good when you play. Not bad at all. However, I thought that some of the characters looked a little deformed. Daisy, I noticed had no hips, which I guess isn't really anything to complain about but it did look kind of odd. Another thing I thought was poor looking was the super strike. It looked kind of like the character was being sucked into a black hole, instead of aiming at the net. It looked a bit odd right in the middle of a soccer game. It also got to be VERY repetitive after about the third time you attempted to do one. Seeing poor graphics again, and again wasn't exactly pleasing. No eye candy here. 7/10

There wasn't very much music in this game. And none of the music there was really sounded great to me. I forgot the tune minutes after I stopped playing the game. It was quite disappointing. The crowd making obnoxious noises was kind of annoying, but I could live with it. I really wanted to hear some catchy tunes, and I never did. 5/10

To summarize this game, I would have to say that it's fun if your going to be playing with a lot of people often. If you don't play with other people very often I wouldn't recommend buying this game. Rent it for a week. You'll probably be able to finish it in that time. If you know that there will be someone to play with often, you could buy it. It is quite fun, but it's way to short. My final score for this game would be 28/50 or 5.6/10.

So my final score for Super Mario Strikers, rounded up is 6/10

Thanks for reading my review!

<('.'^) KIRBY_YOSHI (^'.')>

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/30/06