It has a bizarre tone, and its quite pretty, and funkadelic soundtrack and its pretty good really.
The controls are spread over the nunchuck and the wii remote quite efficiently, with minimal use of gestures, infact, you only get shake on either hand to achieve things, no SSX Blur'esque air painting.
Not played it enough to decide if it is as shallow as its brethrin and cousins, Sega Soccer Slam and FIFA Street (wierd shared history that is quite interesting yet tedious).
Online is totally fine too, as indepth as you'd expect from a Nintendo WFC implimentation, plus some L3@DARB0RDZ (OMG LOL Leaderboards FTW)... some kinda global ranking, a season ranking that appears to be a week at the moment maybe, and other bits and bobs.
Yoshi fails the badass test, everyone else is balancing on the line of angst ridden demi-god and wuvvable fruffyness.
There is a steaming load of tactics to consider and they have upped the games inherent complexity from the Cube version that I only really played round Paper's gaffe... the game is either clever nuanced or its not, I haven't decided yet.
Yoshi fails the badass test, everyone else is balancing on the line of angst ridden demi-god and wuvvable fruffyness.
Nononono.
Yoshi is bad enough not to have to try to be bad. Everyone else is just playing catch up.
... and yeah, this seems cool, but I'm finding it frustrating so far without knowing the game well enough to be smooth with the controls.
Yoshi pwns, to suggest otherwise is blasphemous!
Unrelated but have you seen this?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BWnJ-5hES2Q
I love it! XD
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Yoshi isn't a badass.
Donkey Kong is badass, Bowser has badassery, Yoshi is too wuvvable, yoshi doesn't have teeth, and when he eats enemies it just cuddles them into egg form.
Yoshi is made out of cuddles! For that reason alone Yoshi is AWSUM!!1
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Yes yes, but what's the framerate like? ¬_¬
7 shelves per cupboard.
The cupboard is full of love & cuddles though - XD
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I've played this game a bit at my mate's house and it seems to have some serious Capcom Principle ( http://www.sirlin.net/archive/game-balance-part-1/ ) going on. Toad can jump over the keeper and run into the goal, dry bones can teleport halfway across the pitch (and through the keeper) if the ball is charged, 90% of the characters have a skillshot that results in an instant goal if you're in their (large) sweetspot, or you can just pass the ball about in your own half for 5 seconds, volley it to someone in the opponent's half and automatically score.
On the other hand you can tackle whoever you want, and as most tactics involve passing the ball around to build charge you can instantly defuse/reverse almost any situation by knocking down the player who's about to receive the ball. But if you're the only one there, then he could knock you down first. But that could give another one of your players time to slide in and and take possession. And so on.
So basically, every single offensive and defensive strategy is so broken that I can't figure out which ones actually are broken (if any), which means it's balanced for now.
I should mention that the presentation of the game is horrible - everyone's really angry, the voices are completely wrong, all the character models just look strange and the music is odd, but it doesn't really matter.
So basically, every single offensive and defensive strategy is so broken that I can't figure out which ones actually are broken (if any), which means it's balanced for now.
Exactly... there is either so much going on, you'll never find out, or its the single most beautifully tuned piece of gaming gold ever made... my suspicions are obvious.
Me and Paper played online, and it was totally close, the knack of getting enough space vs trying to score, vs understanding where the AI was going to go in a predictable way, or even if it was predictable or even if its worth working out if it is predictable and useable therin... normally I wouldn't bother investing the time, but I always give Nintendo a bit of investment.
Basically a few hours in Single player should uncover the cruftyness in no time... the fact the tutorial glosses over quite a few of the games mechanics is odd, people might be confusing "depth" for "poor teaching", not sure Lob was discussed in "Strikers 101" and I know that, shaking the nunchuk to wobble the opponents megastrike wasn't mentioned, but it was in the manual.
The "deke" and the superstrikes and the sidekick strike things add something, but I'm not sure what. Is it mush, mash or mesh?
Shaking the nunchuk to wobble the opponents megastrike? What? I've only played this at a mate's house and I learnt the game by running through the tutorials (and skipping most of it), so I didn't know you could do that
I can't comment on the AI because I don't think I've played any singleplayer matches, but 1v1 local multiplayer isn't getting boring yet. In 90% of our online games the other team destroys us, and they all seem to use different strategies, which is nice. I wish I could see what high-level play looks like, in fact I might have a look around youtube in a bit..
You guys totally understated the level of CUTE in this game!
I just saw this;
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pkCagL8xsOU
How the hell did they manage to make Yoshi even CUTER than before!?!? XD
- I swear animators must have been having seizures at their workstations.
That there is cute armageddon!
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Sorry, forgot and didn't want to mention... I think the game is actually bobbins... naff... guffbags. I spent most of Saturday playing it, and basically establishing the game is broken.
Shame.
It still works, I just think the exploits are too much and too comprehensive to make playing it, either online or locally, even worth starting. A single exploit is fine, but when it turns into a teleportation and general poor design issue, its just not worth embarking on a session in the first place.
Hmm interesting care to elaborate in a language I can understand?
I was going to order this as invariably people want a football game - even if it's nothing like the real deal.
Would someone like me who doesn't give a monkeys about football not like this then? I loved Sega Soccer Slam, which I thought was a pretty tight little game, this looks similar to my mind. Is it not as good as Soccer Slam?
It basically IS Sega Soccer Slam, but you have an extra player... er lets start that again.
In Sega Soccer Slam you have 3 outfield characters and a generic goal keeper... in Mario Strikers Charged you have the generic goalkeeper, 3 choosable ancillary characters, yer toads, hammer bros, boos, and you have the star character that has more uber skillage, the Mario, the bowser the Waluigi...
So in Soccer Slam essentially there wasn't an overriding tactic as all the outfield players could perform essentially the same function, in Mario Strikers, the ancillary characters can perform a base selection of skills, which are unique to each one, so Boo's "deke" is a become faster and translucent, Boo's charge shot is to eat the ball completely disappear and teleport, Hammer Bros "deke" is to produce a giant hammer for an area effect attack and his charge shot is to produce a line of these hammers to take people out and shoot the ball...
That's all fine, the Star Strikers, Mario etc have the ability to do a "MegaStrike" which theorhetically can score up to 6 goals in one MegaCharge (using a swing-ometer) also the star characters have a power up unique to them, so Mario can go Super Big and stomp around, Waluigi farts purple barbed wire stuff.
In principle that's all fine, however the Star chracters move list is a bit weak through the "roster", as is the ancillary character stuff... its usually boils down to a teleport move or an area effect hit or something... which is also all fine...
However, the "deke" move on most ancillary characters is so powerful it over shadows both the charge shot and the megastrike, which is pretty impossible to get past a human anyways... so effectively a game can consist of an ancillary character running along the "touch line" towards the keeper, performing a "deke" which is just a press of the +ControlPad and teleporting themselves and the ball into the goal.
Obviously you can adapt the play style and the tactics to suit this insta goal kinda stuff.. but its not quite right.. its one of those "exploits" that you try hard not to use. So you can play the game in the right "spirit" but when you are losing you can pop a few cheap goals in to win... making the game a little shallow.
Essentially the game is pretty well broken, unless you have a pact to not use the characters to their full potential... which doesn't really work... it's like that horrible thing in Fighters Megamix where the Virtua Cop characters had a gun! Mind you, you probably were fighting a Daytona Car at the time.
It's a game that has been built ontop of a slightly broken idea in the first place, with the classic game design mistake of layer too many options and characters where restraint is really needed.
I've seen people liken the game to Speedball 2, it quite obviously is nothing like speedball 2... that had a very basic mechanic and that was it... rinse and repeat... Mario Strikers Charged has an overly elaborate mechanic which is bustificated.
Hmm Ok. The mechanic in Soccer Slam was one of passing the ball to build up the guage which could then be traded for boost powers or Killer Kicks, both of which worked pretty well. The killer Kick if you could get into space was pretty brutal resutling in a goal probably 50% of the time.
The whole game then focused around stringing passes together and generating space to then do something with your earned boost. I believe there was a mechanic to repeatedly hammer the goalie too to weaken him and or leave the goal open.
MSStrikers sounds very similar to this idea. My final question before I shut up is this.
Is there a way to defend against the exploit you mentioned either by early tackles or use of powerup items? Are we missing some trick that defeats teh exploit?
You can obviously tackle and shoulder barge, and you have the shells and chain chomps and so forth... so you can counter the insta goal deke option, so you could play the whole game on a knife edge.
In theory this is sound, but because the deke isn't a charged mechanic, ie it is instant, there is an element of accurate positioning, so its not button mashing, I also beleive the deke has a very loose antispamming delay, the hammer bros can deke an area effect hammer instantly alot alot alot.
The passing mechanic is the same with Strikers as with Slam, however its more obvious as the ball changes colour... in Slam the goalkeeper had three armour levels too, in Strikers the keeper is, visually at least, not the same.