Mario Sports Mix Review for Nintendo Wii (Wii)

Mario Mixes it Up

Mixing Mario with sports is definitely not a new thing. He’s had a flirtation with all sorts of non-Goomba-stomping activities in the past, including baseball, tennis, soccer, kart racing, and golf. But there is a sort of charm that Mario brings to everything he gets involved in. He’s like that friend who is always recommending new things you think you won’t like, and ends up being right an obnoxiously high percentage of the time.

The newest Mario title, Mario Sports Mix, attempts to spread Mario’s charm to four sports at once. While they all share the common Mario elements, like familiar characters and over-the-top powerups, each game is its own unique beast.

Basketball is a very satisfying and well-paced game that is simple to get into yet has some complex nuances. You’ll have a blast right out of the gate, but the game continues to get more interesting as you get more into the strategic aspect. For instance, on slam dunks, timing is extremely important. You’ll also have to choose carefully when to go for a layup, when to attempt a combo move, when to fake out your opponent, or when to go for the shot. There is an almost rock-paper-scissors element to close-range shooting, as every type of shot has a countermove to block it.

Hockey is fast-paced and slightly heavier on the button-mashing than basketball. And it’s insanely fun. You’ll have Shy Guys for goalies, but I don’t think they can see out of those adorable masks of theirs. Don’t put too much faith in the abilities of these Shy Guys; they won’t keep the puck out of the net very often. Of course, this means you’ll have to think both offensively and defensively as you set up your second-by-second strategies.

Dodgeball is less entertaining. While it’s an interesting concept, it feels like it draws too heavily on luck. Every time a ball is tossed at you, you have the ability to catch it, often turning the match into an endurance test between two players who can both catch the ball just as easily. Tosses can be charged and every character gets a special move, but you won’t have much difficulty dodging anything that is thrown at you.

Volleyball feels like it was added last minute. My biggest complaint is that the control scheme doesn’t work very well, and all too often, I found myself surprised at what my on-screen character did in response to the action I performed with the Wiimote. Trying to make these guys do what you intend will make you feel like someone just broke all ten of your fingers. Besides running and setting up your spikes, both of which are controlled by the joystick on the nunchuk, every action you perform involves shaking the Wiimote. Sometimes, the slightest movement of the controller will cause your character to go diving after an impossibly far away ball, while other times you’ll shake the thing with all your might and watch your character stand there while the ball lands on the floor at his or her feet. And to top it off, the matches seem to drag on far longer than they need to. There is no timer, and a match doesn’t end until one player reaches fifteen points. This would be the perfect amount of time for a match – once you hit fifteen points you are very ready to move on to the next one – but you don’t actually win until you best your opponent in a two-out-of-three tournament. Sigh.

My advice: stick mainly to basketball and hockey. The other two sports are just there to fill up disc space.

The AI players in the game are about as smart as lamp posts. Playing through a single-player campaign for the first time is pretty much mindless. In fact, I actually forgot to pause the game when I left the room once, and I came back to find that a minute and a half had counted off in my absence yet my opponent had failed to score a single point.

However, single-player gets much more interesting your second time through. Even though the AI remains hopelessly clueless, you are allowed to explore alternate paths on the tournament map. Each alternate path is filled with random challenges that allow you to unlock cool extras like bonus characters, costumes, and even extra courts. There are even a few characters from the Final Fantasy games for you to unlock. My personal favorite is the black mage, who can toss fireballs and send down lightning to strike opponents. This guy definitely won’t play fair.

SPOILER ALERT: Even better, once you beat all three cups (Mushroom Cup, Flower Cup, and Star Cup) for every sport, an unexpected twist is thrown at you: you suddenly get tossed into a boss fight against Behemoth from Final Fantasy. And it’s pretty epic. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to hurl turtle shells at a Final Fantasy boss, you finally get your chance.

The real meat of this game is multiplayer. Each sport is exponentially better when played against a real opponent who can strategize against you. Mario Sports Mix allows you to play online, giving it the chance to completely redeem itself (we can forgive sketchy single-player tournaments if we’re given a phenomenal online experience). Sadly, Mario Sports Mix makes it incredibly difficult to find matches against random opponents. I logged in on release day – the day I would have most expected to find large amounts of players anxiously awaiting some real competition – yet I was still stuck waiting ten to fifteen minutes to find a match. And if you play online all alone, there is no option to choose 2v2 matches. You are forced to play 3v3 unless you happen to get matched with someone who actually has two human players sharing the same Wii. As a player who prefers 2v2, this felt like a lose-lose situation for me. I would either get stuck in a 3v3 match, or be teamed up with a hopelessly stupid AI character against two humans who could concoct complex strategies against me.

I got a small group of friends to try out local multiplayer, and that is where the game took on a real life of its own. Having opponents and teammates in the same room made for an exceptional gaming experience. The hours flew by as we developed more and more aggressive strategies to further humiliate whichever friends we were facing off against.

Mario Sports Mix tries to do too much at once. It’s a mixed bag of bite-sized pieces, and many of those pieces feel like they could have used a bit more polish. But I must admit, some of the pieces work exceptionally well. The bottom line: this has potential to be great party game if you can ignore the weaker sports on the disc and the shallow single-player experience.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.3 Graphics
Mario Sports Mix throws a lot of detail into its environments, but remains perfectly happy not pushing the graphical capabilities of the Wii. And this console is definitely showing its age. 3.2 Control
Hockey and basketball have near-perfect control schemes. Unfortunately, volleyball is a mess you’ll probably want to avoid. 3.2 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Some of the classic Mario sound FX that pop up in this game are pure gold. The music, however, features a few great tracks scattered among a whole pile of forgettable ones. 3.5 Play Value
Hockey is so much fun that it will win over even the most jaded skeptics. But dodgeball will get old very quickly, and volleyball is just plain awful. While multiplayer is where this game shines, the single-player tournaments are fairly dull until the second playthrough, when alternate paths and bonus challenges become available. 3.3 Overall Rating – Fair
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.