The Gamer's Quarter

[The Great Unwashed]

Well, I played a dozen or so games of this last night, and I was absolutely motherfucking blown away. It was the best pick-up-and-play experience I have had in an incredibly long time. The mechanics are beautifully simple and yet deeply layered. I was holding my own against people who actually knew what the hell they were doing, simply because the basic passing, charging and shooting mechanics are so fundamentally intuitive that it's practically second nature from the instant you grab it.

And the visuals! Beautiful. Not to mention that every time there's a massive collision, tackle, or somebody's lining up for a charged shot that looks like it's going to cannon straight into the back of the net, the game-time slows to a crawl, the interface disappears and the screen jars with the impact. It's absolutely gorgeous and I can't get enough of it.

I can't wait to pick up a copy of my own and explore the rest of the game, and experiment with team selection and the mechanics of power-ups and special abilities. And with the free online play with my friends, it can only get better. I'm more genuinely excited than I've been about anything Wii-related in some months.
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[Ethoscapade]

it frustrates me like hell that this doesn't have voice chat

online games need to have voice chat okay

otherwise why am i not playing against robots

[The Great Unwashed]

True that.

Perhaps you need to build a robot what sasses you when you miss your shots?
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[Scratchmonkey]

I'm wondering if any of the work done by my department on Sega Soccer Slam (as I think it's still the same engine) has carried over even this far. It's a pretty nice little engine for doing an arcade 4-on-4.

[vf10a]

Is this the one with Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ian Wright in the advert. If so then this is how I anticipate most of Europe will react: "what the hell, this isn't real football just silly nintendo".

[helicopterp]

I hope that most of Europe can appreciate that Nintendo probably never had any intention to nail the subtleties of real football, because that's a terribly unfair judgment to pass.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Toto]

haha, Shaun Wright Phillips. I was going to buy this game based on SB/GQ feedback, so keep it coming!

[The Great Unwashed]

Feedback eh!

I've owned my own copy of this game for hmm, four days now, and it's absolutely delightful. After few days of experimenting, I've finally found a combo that works for me: DK as the captain, with two Boos in the foward positions and a Dry Bones on defence. This is a combo that's very heavy on passing as the captain - who is the best shooter - lacks manoeuverability, and so needs to let the lightning fast Boos work on steals and passes and charging, letting DK fire the final shot.

Against other slow characters however, DK can afford to be a bit more offensive, and stack his team with Gopher-men and Hammer Bros. for shooting. It's got a delightful rock paper scissors system that is a lot deeper than it would appear.

Online mode is excellent. I'm on a 24 mbps dsl connection and it's totally lag free, but I was also able to pull lag-free games when we got shaped down to 64 kbps, so it's very efficient. Only problem I've found is getting opponents when you want to play with multiple friends. Nobody else online (in Australia anyway) seems to want to play with multiple people. Finding 1v1 matches however is not a problem - in fact you can't get enough of them.

Only one problem that irks me and that is poor menu design, specifically on the Striker Challenges section. These are basically one off scenario games you play to unlock content, but they are structured so that it is impossible to simply restart the challenge - you must wait for it to finish, then restart it. Since most of the challenges are something ludicrous like "win by eight goals, you have one minute", getting to the 30 second mark with no score and knowing you can't skip the ending and simply start again is most frustrating.

The AI is flawless and spot on. The adjustable skill levels are excellent, ranging from nub-tastic to Level 5 Death Machine, so even the advanced player can have a scratch match against the AI with no problems. The animations and visuals are superb, they've somehow managed to take standard Mario characters and make them pseudo-futuristic and hardcore, and the little touches on the facial animations and victory dances are superb. The level of polish is excellent.

Oh, one other thing irks me - they've sexed up Peach and Daisy like nobody's business, and turned Peach into a vapid Paris Hilton clone. Every time I get to watch the Kremling goalkeeper uppercut her into the sky in glorious slow motion, a little part of my soul jumps for joy.
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[kirkjerk]

So just got this, I guess close on the heels of the US release.

Not bad!

Agree that the menus are blah... event the fonts etc are boring, and then the lack of "quick replay" and "go to next" in the tutorials is frustrating, so that's probably the same things seen in the challenges.

Letting you see the various stats was a big help over just a one word thing like "playmaker". Assembling a team reminds me of picking fat and thing guys in Nintendo Ice Hockey, not that I played that that much.

The super strike or whatever it is mechanic REALLY works, IMO. I guess a purist might find it appalling, un-soccer-y and/or breaking up the flow, but I find it a welcome minigameish break, and fair to both sides while not being nerfed into meaninglessness.

Not sure if I'm crazy about the sci fi theme... I like sci fi in general but it seems a little forced. Keep wondering if the ball is going to turn out to be Samus.

The control feels GREAT. The nunchuck really brings the Wii up to par in terms of old school (analog stick, button centric) control. And there's something about using the crosspad for deke-ing that feels so right... not sure if that's the good button differentiation (someting Nintendo has been leading in since the N64) or just the mental mapping that crosspad = move.

Scratchmonkey, what about "your team" and Sega Soccer Slam? Don't know your personal history... but that was a great game as well. I remember when the teasers came out for that on IGN. Back when I read IGN.

You know, a survey of stadium crowd animations through out the ages would be interesting. In Strikers, it looks like they might actually be sprites for a change...
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==/\/ >_ kirkjerk.com

[aerisdead]

I think Mario Strikers Charged is unbelievably horrible.

People are unlikely to agree with me but before people start complaining that I don't see the extra special ways it is balanced cleverly that only become apparent after hours of play I've played it fucking loads and just because every single part of the game is broken doesn't mean that it's balanced.
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aerisdead

[kirkjerk]

Well, as a very casual fan who just played a few games, doesn't love the game of soccer for what it is in the real world, and maybe hasn't gotten deeply enough into it, I'd say "unbelievably horrible" charge needs to be backed up more.

Against my buddy, Megastrikes aren't easy to pull off, because they rely on your opponent really dropping the ball on defense... it's deliberately setup to be a much easier way of losing possession of the ball than of raining down 5 or 6 shots, since all some defender has to do is run into you. I don't know if there's some additional layer of offensive protection that you can get with enough skills.

As a n00b player, it seemed like this game was largely a defensive struggle, with the goalkeepers being very tough. To that extent, it's a bit like real soccer. Regular goals are tricky, or maybe there's just a trick. In any case, most of the character-specific powerups didn't seem that overwhelming to me.

But I found I was empowered to play tough defense, something that doesn't happen in every sports game.

"If someone could make it clear that Nintendo sports games don’t need to be completely and utterly random that would just be lovely." I don't think that's a fair charge at all. It's like criticizing Mario Kart for not being Gran Turismo, and so far it doesn't seem THAT random... just a different set of skills than a realistic game would take on.

So are the powerups that much more powerful when accompanied by lots of practice?

(Also, someone needs to learn how easy it is to download save games from GameFAQs. I like doing that to unlock everything in a multiplayer game w/o having to gain too much mojo over the person who ain't unlocking everything.)

Also, is the US release very different than the European etc one? The globe and mail made it sound like there was, but it was difficult to tell if it was referencing internatiionaliztion differences vs it just being "not very football-like"
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[aerisdead]

Megastrikes: You can use character specific power-ups of certain characters to make it really easy to do them. Certain characters dekes also make them very easy. They're also really fucking boring to battle against or watch.

An obviously broken character is the Hammer Bros. You can spam his deke and score 100% of the time with his deke then a special shot. literally 100% of the time.

Saying that Mario games don't need to be random is so totally not like saying Mario Kart needs to be Gran Turismo. If anything, it's saying that Mario Kart needs to be more about skill than it is about the power-ups and special features - something that's true of basically all of the mario sports games. That doesn't mean they need to be Gran Turismo (not at all) it doesn't even mean they need to be as serious as, what, Outrun 2?

Anyway, sorry that my review didn't make it clear that all they've removed is any reference to football. They haven't changed the game, just removed the word "football" or even "soccer" from anywhere in the game or in the literature.
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aerisdead

[kirkjerk]

Hmm, gotta see if I can get that Hammer Bros things to work for me.

Megastrikes might be boringish, but they also aren't all that effective for people who can work the pointer defense.

[The Great Unwashed]

I feel compelled to make a rigorous point-by-point defence here.

[aerisdead]

I'm not exactly going to do the point by point thing here but:

I've played it plenty. Way more than enough, online and off.

And megastrikes are fucking shit. And boring. And a horrible design decision. I hate to then say "In my opinon" but if that's what I need to say, so be it.

Also, Hammer Bros. - I've heard all that timing your attacks, and it's true. but it's still crazy unbalanced - I can use the Hammer Bros. well enough that I always, always score with him. Always.

Actually blah blah blah blah. Basically, "in my opinion" the game is broken and I've played and discussed it far too long as it is. As I've said - just because every part is broken and unbalanced doesn't make it a balanced game. It lacks a core beauty or simplicity of design that basically any other football or hockey game out there has.

Congratulations on enjoying it though.
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aerisdead

[Toto]

Well OK I don't think I could handle this game then. I mean when my friend plays Man U in Pro Evo it's like fucking easy mode, imagine if the game was actually imbalanced!
I will stick to PES.

[The Great Unwashed]

Lolwut? I think it'd be more apt to congratulate you for finding so much to hate about it!

Megastrikes are fucking shit? Why, because you say so? Megastrikes are just a part of the plethora of things that make Mario Strikers a Mario game and not a regular soccer game. Why are they boring? They add an element of skill and chance to the game and the tension of knowing that every player has the chance to smack you down with 6 balls of fury if you're not on your toes.

They're a bad game design decision? Why? Because you say so? You do need to say "in your opinion" because you're basically lambasting the game without providing anything more in depth than "fucking shit".

I really can't understand your problem with Hammer Bros. deke. You must be playing against complete idiots. I played a guy just today who had two Hammer Bros. on his team, and spammed them like shit. I just grabbed a Dry Bones, ran near him, swang away when he did the deke and slid back in to take the ball off him. I did this about every 30 seconds when he got the ball because all he knew how to do was spam.

If I was functionally retarded I would have got caught in it and he could have done a skillshot. But the fact of the matter is it doesn't matter how easily-abusable Spammer-Bros. are, they're equally as easy to beat.

I don't actually see anything remotely unbalanced about this game. It's fun, it's nothing like soccer but goddamn is it fun. But congratulations again on finding so much to hate. I'm sure those other crack-smoking reviewers must have been really stoned to the nines in order to be able to review it without looking wistfully at their copy of Pro Evolution Soccer and crying quietly to themselves.
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[aerisdead]

I don't own any copies of Pro Evo.

I rarely sob when looking at my copy of Sensible Soccer, however. Unless they are tears of joy.
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aerisdead

[dessgeega]

is sensible soccer on live arcade yet?
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[aerisdead]

no ;_;

August 29th I think
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aerisdead

[Scratchmonkey]

[kirkjerk]

[Scratchmonkey]

[Toto]

Scratchmonkey I found an impenetrable defence with a team, and a tactic in PES.
Ask me how!

[Scratchmonkey]

Fuck! How?

[Toto]

Using Inter Milan:
Bring your WBs very close in, almost to the edge of the box, and bring them slightly behind the CBs (assuming the start formation to be a 4-4-2). Change them to CBs.
Then as soon as your opponents get the ball, order everyone back.
The way I played I had about 8 people in my half at all times, with only Adriano, Ibrahimovic and maybe an errant Luis Figo or Cambiasso in my own half. It's worked so far; test it and see if it holds.