Mario Super Sluggers

Mario Super Sluggers is the Mario baseball game for the Wii. You and the cast of Mario sports games have reassembled to take on Bowser and his son in games of baseball. There are mini-games, exhibition games, and the 1 player challenger mode to play. Bowser Jr. has invaded the private little island where everyone has a baseball park, it is your duty as Mario to assemble a baseball team and defeat Bowser Jr, and Bowser himself to reclaim the island.

The graphics are what you'd expect from a game with Mario in it. The character models are crisp, and there are even different shades of certain characters. You see players from the Donkey Kong games, Wario's henchmen, Yoshi's buddies, and of course mario, luigi, princess, and others. Each baseball field has a very unique look to it, and really screams whomever's field it is that you are playing on.

The music is the usual light fair that we're all use to. Its inspirational yet video gamey.

There are different flavors of control schemes that are utilized in the game. You have your patented Wii controls of Wii-mote and nunchuck, you also have just the Wii-mote, and then gamepad (or side ways Wii-mote). You're going to be going through a throwing motion to throw the ball, and you're going to be swinging to hit the ball. At first this feels like a great successor to the Wii-Sports baseball game, but then there are the holes. The swing doesn't always register. If you want complete control over your pitches you need the nunchuck, but the auto-selecting of the fields and having to deal with moving fielders around with the nunchuck will give you nightmares. Then there are the special abilities that the characters have that you use button presses to accomplish, only those controls don't always work out the way you want them, there are many where if you are slightly faced in the incorrect direction you're not going to have the desire effect.

The gameplay is what you'd expect from a baseball game, you're going to be hitting a ball, you're going to be pitching a ball, you're going to be possibly fielding a ball. The actual baseball game with the exception of fielding, and sometimes batting is a pretty good one. The way to avoid the fielding problem is to just play with the Wii-mote, your characters will auto aim themselves at the ball and you won't have to worry. The way to avoid the batting problems, well that one is a bit trickier, you're going to have to over exaggerate your movements so that they are pick up all the time, sometimes you can get away with the slight movements used in Wii-Sports Baseball, but more times than not you're going to be discouraged by the results. Where the game really breaks down is the use of items. For an actual player trying to aim the Wii-mote at the screen, while doing the dash movement ( which is rapidly wagging the Wii mote to the sides) and then pressing Z to launch an item isn't all that easy, or intuitive. Now of course the computer will be able to dash and launch those items at you with no real problem. The other big thing is that other than the Mario stadium each one has a gimmick, some kind of trap, or something along those lines. Once again its another feature that takes you out of the game.

This game with the name Mario on it is going to sell well, but what is going to happen is that there's going to be a lot of frustrated players out there that aren't going to want to spend hours on end trying to learn the game. What people expect out of this title is something fun and easy that anyone and everyone can pick up  rather quickly, but that unfortunately isn't going to be the case. If you want to give this game a chance, rent it, just in case you find this game as about enjoyable as I did. Mario Super Sluggers gets a big 6.5 out of 10.