Mario Strikers: Battle League perfects the arcade football formula

Mario Strikers: Battle League perfects the arcade football formula

With the Switch now in its fifth year, we’ve already seen some of the standard Mario sports titles make the leap onto Nintendo’s most recent console. We’ve had tennis, we’ve had golf, and while they weren’t a bad time, they didn’t reinvent the formula, or really even perfect it. Now, finally, we nearly have Mario Strikers: Battle League, the one we’ve all been waiting for, and I’m happy to say, it doesn’t disappoint. 

For a start, let’s be clear, Mario Strikers is developed by a different team to the tennis and golf offerings, so already we were expecting a different approach, and that’s what we gleefully received. If you were one of many disappointed by either of those titles, Strikers follows its own formula, as well as lending a couple of the better ideas from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. 

If you haven’t played a Mario Strikers game before, as you’ve probably gathered from reading this far, it is indeed a soccer-style game, but this is the sport in which the moustachioed plumber takes the most liberties. Fouls? Forget about them. Battle League is prison rules, or no rules for those unfamiliar with the term, so big tackles are key here, and so is avoiding the electric fence that borders the perimeter. That is, unless you think Toad’s tiny little legs might run a little faster when electrified, you’d be wrong by the way.

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