Mario Hoops 3 on 3

"Mario decides to conquer another sport...AGAIN!"

Mario is back, and ready to play some Basketball! The latest in the Mario sports series is out, but how does it stand compared to the other sports Mario suddenly decided to master?

Story: 1/10

Uh...what story? Mario has suddenly decided he needs to master Basketball, and so another batch of tournaments is started. Oh, and Final Fantasy characters are there too.

Graphics: 9/10

Just to let you know before hand, graphics don't really matter to me. However, they do help me enjoy the game more. The graphics are pretty much the Mario Kart/ Super Mario 64 type graphics. The backgrounds are fun, and the Super shot powers look smooth as well. I really liked the tournament tiers which have 2D sprites of your Team Captain, and when they win they hit a mystery block and go up to the next height. All in all, pretty good and varied, I like them.

Sound and Music: 8/10

The songs are pretty catchy, all though a lot of them are the same song but played differently, and faster or slower. You get all of the usual Mario and friends voices, along with the coin chimes, Star man themes, and koopa shell noises that Mario is known for. The sounds and music are good, they could've used a little more variety. 8/10 just for the pure catchy-ness.

Game play: 7/10

Now for the most detailed part of the review. The game play can range from annoying to innovative and fun. You can do many things with the touch screen, perhaps too much. You tap the screen in any direction to dribble in the corresponding direction, swipe it to shoot a basket, or when you're close, dunk it. But, Swiping also passes it to a teammate, so if your direction isn't quite right you may shoot the ball instead, which I found kind of annoying. When you don't have the ball, you can hit guys to take the ball away, which is surprisingly difficult later in the game, form a shield to block shots, or jump up( once again, by sliding the stylus up) to grab the ball or stomp your opponent. The last part for the things you can do is when you have a ball, you can perform a super shot, which is activated by tapping certain parts of the touch screen quickly twice and you will perform an unstoppable shot. The shot is unique for every character, but what you have to tap, is not.

You can pick up coins by dribbling the ball over mystery block shapes on the court, which gives you coins(if you don't have the ball and you walk over them, you can get an item, which is just a shell, bomb, or banana peel), and however many coins you get, adds on to your score. As you may have guessed, your score can go up quickly, absolutely destroying your opponent, and this is true for the first couple of games, at least. The difficulty increases fast, and soon you won't have any time to collect extra coins easily or do special shots. The farther you get, the less time you have and the more stylus mistakes there will be. It can get very frustrating, which is why I recommend the use of help buttons, which is the game controlled almost completely with the buttons instead of stylus( you can't do super shots however). Gamers who like it easy be warned, this game may eat you alive.

Replay Value: 9/10

There's tons of stuff to do in this game. There's an extra stage in every tournament that you have to unlock by doing something special, multiple basketballs, and hidden characters(including some cameos from Final Fantasy like Moogles and Black Mages!). To get most of this however, you have to get golds on all of the tournaments, including the hard mode you unlock after you beat the 4 tournaments. Multi player is fun, Dribble Race is a fun diversion. All in all, there's plenty to keep you coming back if you don't mind the somewhat cheap AI.

Finale: 7/10

It's pretty fun, but easy to get frustrated. The tons of secrets and characters are fun, and they keep you coming back. I'm hoping for a story though in the next Mario sports game, I'm kinda tired of Mario randomly deciding that he should play a new sport. Also, I think that there needs to be more tournaments, only 4?(8 if you count hard mode but still) It's fun, but really not the best DS game out right now. Pick it up only if you're a Mario fan or have money to spend.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/23/07