egions scream as Mario storms a scorched, almost war-torn, field. Shells fly in all directions knocking over his opponents before he grows massive and flattens a few more underfoot. Then something truly amazing happens, Mario is absorbed by an aura of white light, which sends him 30 feet into the air where he rains down a volley of fireballs. If I didn’t have the pictures to prove it, you might not believe I was talking about a soccer game. Then again, I have trouble thinking of this explosion of Nintendo madness – thinly veil by pseudo-sports rules – as a soccer game. Sadly, unlike some of Mario’s similar sports ventures (i.e. Mario Kart, Mario Tennis), I had trouble falling in love with the Mario Strikers series, and Charged does nothing to change that.

It seems the goal for Strikers has always been to keep things short and intense, and to this end Charged succeeds. Most games last only three minutes, and the small fields keep the action pretty close. All 10 captains have their own super-abilities such as DK’s area-clearing ground smash, or Peach’s time-stopping freeze frame, but classic Mario powerups like shells and bananas can be used by anyone. If all that wasn’t enough, each field has its own set of obstacles to face. One might have you dodging falling Thwomps while another sees a tornado crossing the field with a tractor or cow in tow. Sometimes you feel like you’re not just trying to win a game, you’re trying to survive the chaos.

The problem is – despite everything mentioned above – the game isn’t that fun. While Charged is an improvement over the original, it still piles on so much craziness that it buries itself with simplistic gameplay. Your AI teammates are useless, and getting hit by a random object when you are about to score is frustrating. There isn’t much to keep you playing unless you like the multiplayer, which you can play online this time around. The online matches I played managed to keep the action pretty smooth, but you will have to exchange friend codes ahead of time if that’s really your thing. Like that kid in preschool who kept changing the rules while you played, Mario Strikers Charged is amusing for awhile, but eventually you’ll want to play a game you understand.