Platform	DS
	Genre	Sports
	Publisher	Nintendo
	Developer	Square Enix
	Rating	6 / 10

Review

Dribble, shoot and slam dunk with Mario in his latest sporting spin off for the DS. If you’ve ever played one of Mario’s sporty titles before you’ll know the setup. Usually it consists of the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom joining together to participate in a tournament of hilarious consequences. Both Bowser and Wario put aside their differences and join Mario and his friends for an (almost) friendly game of sport. This time however, the populace of the Mushroom kingdom are joined by several of the gang from the Donkey Kong world (who somehow have become staple Mario characters these days anyway) as well as some of the long running symbols of the Final Fantasy games (after all, this is developer by Square Enix).

Being the second Mario game worked on by Square, it seems a little odd for the legendary role playing game developers to make a sports title, but they actually managed to do a half decent job. Square Enix have been expanding their repertoire recently (read, Destiny’s Child mobile phone game) and this new entry in the Mario sports series is a sure sign of their new found interest in other genres outside of the J-RPG they pioneered so well.

The game itself runs pretty well. As with many other sports titles with Mario and friends included, they go so far as being simulations of the original sport at the very base level. Beyond that though you have a completely brilliant layer of wackiness such as thrown shells & bombs, super powers and coin collecting which have all become staples of the series.

Basketball in the Mario world consists of a 3 man (or woman) team with each member taking up a position relative to the field (left, right and center). You typically take on the role of the center player but switch via passing to other members of your team. As you would expect from a basketball game, the aim is to score by throwing your ball into your opponents net, this is emulated fairly well in the Mario world but adds the extra bonus of coins - it’s not very unusual to see a game end with over 400 points to your name! When you have the ball you can dribble (tap the touch screen) over question blocks set into the floor to gain more coins, every time you dunk the ball gives you 20 points plus 1 for every coin you have. Those very same question blocks are also a double edged sword by allowing the team without the ball to obtain items to thwart your onslaught. With magical items such as the koopa shell, mushrooms and thunder bolts, it’s usually quite easy to get the ball back off your rival team with power ups - it’s just a shame it works in reverse!

All control of the game is down to the D pad and the touch screen (you can use the face buttons instead if you so desire). You move your character with the directional pad and pass, dribble, attack, defend and shoot, all from performing various gestures with your stylus. The touch screen system is nice but definitely takes a lot of work to remember all of the things you can do with it. There is an in game tutorial which helps quite a bit but really, it would be nicer if it was just that little bit more intuitive!

As you play through the game you are faced with several yet predictable game modes. You have your tournament mode, unique challenges, practice sessions, multi player and a ‘one-off’ (exhibition) match against an opponents team of your choice. There aren’t many options to play around with which is usually a good thing but it would be nice to have a way to enable coin collecting in exhibition games for those massive scores!

The graphics alone could make this worth purchasing if that’s all you look for in games. Mario Slam Basketball definitely makes use of the 3d capabilities of the DS with a graphical style very similar to Mario Kart DS. There are a wide variety of levels you can play, which are sadly becoming a little cliché (beach levels, boat levels, firey levels etc) - they do however look very bright and really do a great job of reminding you that Mario games are fun because of their simplistic yet colourful approach to its art style.

Many people would agree here that one of the major down points of the game is its lack of online functions. I must agree that online game playing is important in todays gaming climate and this is the exact sort of game Nintendo want to be pushing to make their WiFi connection system live up to its rivals. It is also a crying shame that local multi player is restricted to those friends who also have a copy of the game, which also makes it that little bit more annoying that you can’t compete and show off your skills online.

Aurally the game does fairly badly. The menu tunes were quite memorable but become a tad annoying after a while, this coupled with the instantly forgettable in-game tunes doesn’t really thrill as much as your normal Square Enix soundtrack might. The game also suffers from a lack of sound effects, the characters usually only having 2 or 3 things to say really does make you notice how little can be stored on those little DS cartridges. Other than that the game does do a pretty good job of emulating the sound of the sport with some nice bounces and score sounds from the real sport.

Perhaps I’m being harsh giving this game a 6 out of 10. Sure, I’m happy Square Enix tried to do something different but I do think their efforts would have been more appreciated with other types of games on the system. I also believe that the Mario sports cache is running a little dry and fail to see what’s going to be next - Mario Skating perhaps? The game is fun while it lasts but does get a bit drawn out in the earlier modes when you’re winning 400 to nothing. It’s just a real shame they didn’t see fit to include a suitable online component to this game either, it could have been a real buying point like with Mario Kart DS and a reason to keep on playing, increasing longevity. The game actually suffers the same fate as other Mario sporting titles, great fun for the first few hours but getting repetitive very quickly.