Mario Strikers: Charged Football Online Hands-on
Let's get this out of the way right now: Yes. It's got its own Friend Code - and it's completely different to your Wii code. Oh, and if you want to add anyone to your Friend Roster, you'll need to manually input their Friend Code. That's 12 digits, for every friend. Do you hear that? It's the sound of the internet collectively weeping.
That aside, we're pleased to say that Nintendo's inaugural online home console offering (if you live in Europe, at least) works a treat. We'll get onto why in just a minute. First, we're going to run you through those all-important online details - we know that's all you really care about.
There's a massive array of arenas this time around. Plus seven from the 'Cube game.
In fact, our relatively brief playtime with Mario Strikers: Charged Football was predominantly designed to show off Nintendo's online service. As you're no doubt aware, it all operates in much the same way as Nintendo's DS-based online offerings. So, on firing up the game it's an easy hop into the online play menu. From here you're presented with four main options - Play, Friend Roster, Leaderboard and Ranked.
It's worth pointing out that we were only privy to the 'Friend'-based system during our hands-on, with 'Rivals' play - that is, going head-to-head with complete strangers from around the globe - remaining something of an enigma. So with that in mind, if you've yet to take your copy of Mario Strikers online, your first stop should be the Friend Roster. Here you can add friends, assuming you've got that all important 12-digit code, who - once they've done the same at their end - sit permanently in your list. Neatly, the Friend Roster keeps a running tally of your mates' current Rank, number of wins, loses and overall points. It'll also show their Mii, just in case you'd forgotten what they were there for in the first place.
Full Article
