Jul 11th, 2008, 04:46 PM
I have no idea, as I've never played Megaman Soccer, but whenever I play Strikers I completely forget that I'm playing soccer with Mario characters. This is a god damn GLADIATOR'S ARENA and the other man is the living embodiment of douchebaggery that I have to mercilessly beat down using any means necessary. It's also one of the more brutally difficult games I've ever played. Certainly the most enraging, since the slightest slip up will often times fuck you up the bum immediately.
The basic gameplay boils down to an advanced round of hot-potato that is really satisfying in execution; you pass the ball between the members of your team to build up a "charge" that gives it a higher chance of scoring when shot at the AI controlled goalie. There are also a number of trickshots you can do, due to either shoddy or brilliant programming. I'm not sure which.
You get a team of four players, one captain as a major character from the various mario games, and three sidekicks as lesser denizens of the mushroom kingdom (Toad, Hammer Bros., Shyguy, etc.). When in posession of the ball, each character is able to do a special move by using the tackle button, and these range from incredibly useful (teleportation, flipping over enemy players) to complete wastes of effort. Captains have several different feats at their disposal; the normal deke, a character-specific item, and the megastrike. A megastrike happens when a captain charges up a ball long enough for a Tiger Woods PGA Tour esque shot meter to appear, which can yeild up to 6 shots on a goal at incredibly high speeds. This feature is virtually useless after a while, since if they don't take you down when you're charging or fiddling with the meter, most people are good enough to block anything you can throw at them. Sometimes MAGIC happens, though, and you'll score just enough to get out of an embarrasing defeat. So yes, it's a good thing to use when you can.
There's a lot of strategy in team choice and placement, and all of the captains are incredibly well balanced. Picking who to play really only boils down to which character you like, rather than which character is the best.
The online play is great, aside from a bullshit matchmaking system that guarentees new players are completely alienated until they get good enough in the single player mode, and gives you the choice of solo play against someone else or bringing a buddy in for a 2 on 2 match.
Wii functionality is kept to a minimum; you really only have to use the wiimote when you want to tackle someone else, done by being in the general area of the person you want to ruin and shaking the remote, or when you want to block a megastrike, which plays out like a lightgun style minigame; markers representing the shots made appear on the screen at three different speeds, depending on how well your opponent did in the strike meter, and all you have to do is point the remote appropriately and press A to block. Simple, but not always easy. When in co-op play, the choice for who blocks is random, and since there are multiple goals to be scored this is a big fucking deal.
Also, if the above summary seems like a lot of shit to remember, imagine having to do all of it at the speed of goddamn sound and you'll have a good idea of how overwhelming the game can be for new players.
tl;dr The game is incredibly fun, deep, and difficult.
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God Died in a pool of logic
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