Everyone knows by now the Nintendo sports formula: take a sport (golf, baseball, tennis racing, soccer), add Mario and some nifty touches and voila! Instant game! Of course, if you’re looking for a traditional game of soccer and want to bend it like Beckham, stop right here because this isn’t the title for you. Mario Strikers Charged is all about arcade gameplay and powerups. What’s soccer without a few tortoise shells being thrown about or axes being chucked at the goal keeper, anyway?

Mario Strikers Charged is a one period game of soccer with 3-minute time limit. There are no out of bounds or goal kicks; the play is similar to indoor soccer with the ball bouncing everywhere. Certain arenas, like the fire pit, have additional obstacles right on the playing field such as molten lava.

The goal is to score more points than your opponent by using the B button on the Wii-mote to shoot. Although each goal is worth more than one point, your team captain can attempt a “Megastrike” which will allow him/her to shoot up to six balls at one time (and can result in up to six goals). The drawback of the MegaStrike is that when you are “building up” your energy, you are vulnerable to any sort of tackle or power up and can then lose the ball. When you tackle an opponent or make a charged shot on goal, you may get a power up such as banana peels or flying tortoise shells or a speed burst to help you in your quest.

The game is intuitively controlled by using the nunchuck and the Wii-mote; running the tutorial makes playing the game very easy. The only drawback is that there is so much action going on at one time, quite often you are thinking to yourself “Where the heck am I?” The action is incredibly fast.

You can perform slide tackles by waving the Wiimote up and down or by using the “+” pad. The A button passes. The C and Z buttons on the Nunchuck are used to activate power ups and you can wave the nunchuck while your opponent is trying to do a Megastrike in order to knock him off his game.

The graphics are typical Mario – rather cartoony but clean. The music is pretty good and makes you feel as if you are at a real sporting event. There’s even a “Striker Times” newspaper which doesn’t really go into detail about the game, but makes a point of telling you what happened (i.e. Mario wins, or something like that).

If there’s anything to knock Mario Strikers Charged on, it’s that there’s not a whole lot of depth to the gameplay: there’s a ‘challenges’ mode which is similar to a traditional scenario mode and completing these challenges unlocks a player card (wee!). The main single player mode is the “Road to The Striker Cup,” which starts you in a six team round robin tournament for the “Fire” cup and then as you progress you challenge for the Crystal Cup, all the way up to the Striker Cup.

As you might expect, the challenges get more difficult as you progress. You’ll play each team twice during the round robin mode, and it’s difficult to get a read on the teams. For example, one game Luigi was very easy to beat and than the next game, he’s marking you and tackling you out every time you attempt a MegaStrike, so you’ll have to be creative and pass to your teammates to score. The Road to the Cup mode allows you to unlock more characters and stadiums as well.