MSC's arcade style soccer/football is a joy to play and the online aint too shabby.
Beating the cups rewards you with more stuff, like characters and stages. Campaign will last you quite a while as well but MSC isn’t designed as a single player game. Local multiplayer is done in Domination mode, which is essentially versus mode. Here you can choose and tweak all the options for a match, making match’s with numerous games and each game # minutes long or first to # goals wins. Also the CPU difficulty can be changed, there are 5 levels. The first 2, Rookie and Professional are easy, Superstar and Legend are the best choices and Megastriker is difficult. You can also unlock cheats to turn off or on various things, for example, you can get a cheat that lets you play matches without items. These cheats only work in Domination mode however; so wi-fi mode online won’t be able to be tweaked. Wi-fi mode is always a 3-minute game with everything else turned on. While the lack of online tweaking is a shame it is still lots of fun, in fact MSC is a great deal of fun in any multiplayer mode.
There is another mode with several challenges, like winning a game when you’re behind 2 points or playing a game with a weak goalie. These net you more bonuses and goodies. A tutorial mode is available as well and brings you through the basics nice and simply. Then there is an options and hall of fame mode where you can twiddle with settings and look at the goodies you received.
MSC is all about violent checking and frenzied pandemonium ensuing on the field. You can slide tackle or check your opponents, this naturally knocks them away for a while letting you get at the ball. Checking players without the ball will give them items however. The player with the ball can use a move called deke, defensive dodges, these are character specific and the only defense you have against items, checking and obstacles on the field. The electrified borders and on stage obstacles when added to the stew of chaos that is MSC, makes for one fun, crazy and silly game of soccer/football.
Your team is composed of a captain, 3 sidekicks and a goalie. Each captain is a character from the Mario universe and they all have varying stats unlike in SMS. Stats are broken up into movement, shooting, passing and defensive ability. Pretty self-explanatory, your going to want to test-drive each character to get a feel for which one accentuates your style most. Sidekicks each have their own stats as well, but don’t load your whole team with the characters with the best shooting ability, because most likely they will have poor movement, which will leave you with a crippled defense. So a balanced team will take some time to find, but there is a team that suits your style. The goalies are CPU controlled, but if the goalie has the ball you control them. Also you choose each sidekick you want and their position on the field, unlike in SMS.
Besides the new team stats feature, MSC introduces the megastrike. In SMS there was a captain only move called the superstrike, which is simply replaced by the megastrike. The megastrike baseball power meter (activated by holding down the shoot button long enough) first presents you with a meter that when you press it, it determines how many shots you will take. Then is comes back around and determines the power of the shots. You can get up to 6 goals, if you shoot six balls and get the meter into the sweet spot. However, the goalie has a little mini-game where they block the oncoming shots light gun style. The megastrike is a welcome replacement for the superstike, which could only get one goal and boiled down to luck if it would be blocked.
Items and onstage obstacles are also present in MSC. Items are gained by doing charge shots or if someone is checked without the ball their team gets an item. You can hold 2 items at a time, also captains have their own special item only they can use. Without items the game is at the perfect level of mayhem, because checking and on stage obstacles are already on and those two are enough already. On stage obstacles are a new addition to MSC. Some stages tilt, some have meteors that impact and some have lighting that snakes through the field. In SMS the on stage obstacle was that Bowser would occasionally drop down to the field and run amok, now he is playable as a captain.
While some thing in MSC don’t make sense, like your characters jump down from a platform high up in the sky before a match onto the field, it all is in good fun and after a while you just take it as it is and accept the weirdness. In the end when all the elements are added up, red card hits, dekes, electric borders, obstacles, items, megastkikes… it can be declared that there is no soccer/football game quite like MSC out there. So if you want a realistic soccer game get FIFA or something else, but MSC is a fun arcade soccer/football game that almost anyone can enjoy. The game has a low-medium learning level, after a few matches anyone can learn the gist of the game. On words MSC is hard to describe, but once you play the game everything starts to come together more. The tutorial mode is also helpful for newbies. MSC allows you to play with 2 people on one team, so you can have 2 versus 2 or 3 versus 1 locally in addition to the 1 versus 1. Online you can bring a guest with you so online its 1 v 1 and 2 v 2. Online also has leaderboards.
Controls.
Z- lob, if you hold Z as you pass or shoot it will become lob pass or a lob shot.
C- use items.
Analog stick- move.
Moving nunchuk- switch items.
B- shoot, hold to charge up the ball and unleash more powerful shots/passes.
A- pass, use in tandem with analog stick to determine whom you pass it to. Without ball possession it switches your character.
1- pause.
D-pad- slide tackle, if you have the ball it dekes.
Moving remote- checking.
When you hold down B, you character will charge the ball, charging the ball is important in MSC. In SMS doing a “perfect pass” was the thing to get easy goals, in MSC you must either charge the ball or pass it a lot to charge it up. When the ball is charged it will glow white and if you shoot with a white glowing ball it will be much more powerful than a normal shot. Also before a character receives the ball from a pass, you can press A or B to do a 1 touch pass or shot. Essentially you pass/shoot the moment you get the ball, one touch shooting is very effective. For example, you get the ball charged up, then if you pass it to someone and you hold B down as the ball is coming towards that character he/she will shoot it the moment they come into contact and it will be more surprising for the goalie than if you were to simply receive the pass the shoot it. Pros- - Great local multiplayer.
- Online multiplayer works well, a great foray into online by Nintendo.
- Everything is “more” in MSC than SMS, more stages, characters, cups and bonuses.
- Checking people into the electrified fences on the boundaries never gets old.
- Arcade style soccer/football is fun to just play by yourself.
Cons-
- Single player has a good amount of appeal, but not that much.
- The friend code system for online gets annoying, but works well nonetheless.
- The chaos on the field can get too chaotic at times.
Difficulty- Variable, you choose it.
Learning curve- 1 touch moves, megstrikes and lob passes are pretty confusing at first. About 1/2 an hour to learn MSC.
Value- MSC is worth the 50 dollars if you have someone to play with locally or enjoy online play. The online has no communication methods at all as well, but it still is great. The campaign/single player is not worth the 50 dollars, so I would wait for the price drop if you can’t play online and don’t have someone to play locally with. MSC is definitely worth a rent at least; some people will really enjoy the arcade style and superb gameplay, while others may not like it as much.
Mario Strikers Charged is a worthy addition to the Mario sports universe and a great arcade soccer/football game all around.