Mario Strikers: Battle League Football hands-on preview – the edgy sports spin-off

metro.co.uk:

It’s been 15 years since the last Mario football game and the newest iteration for Switch shows Next Level Games hasn’t lost its touch.

Despite football being one of the most popular sports in the world it’s surprising that Nintendo’s red hatted mascot Mario has rarely partaken in it. Nearly every Nintendo home console has had their own tennis and golf game (even some of the handhelds too), but there have only ever been two Mario football games: the GameCube’s Super Mario Strikers (renamed Mario Smash Football in Europe) in 2005 and the Wii’s Mario Strikers Charged Football in 2007.

It almost feels like Nintendo only recently remembered this short-lived series existed, with a third game finally coming to the Nintendo Switch in a couple of weeks. Fans are understandably excited and nervous. After such a hiatus, will Mario Strikers: Battle League Football live up to their nostalgic memories of the previous games?

After attending a hands-on preview, and getting to play a few matches with actual human beings, we can safely say that most fans’ concerns can be assuaged. If you played a lot of the Mario Strikers games back in the day, Battle League Football will feel comfortably familiar in all the right ways.

It helps that Next Level Games, the Canadian studio behind the previous two games, has been brought back for Battle League Football, making this its first release as a Nintendo subsidiary. You might recognise the studio from its most recent work on Luigi’s Mansion 3 and that becomes very apparent thanks to the excellent character animation on display.

The cast of Luigi’s Mansion 3, from its cowardly hero to the various ghosts, were wonderfully expressive and full of personality, even when they had zero dialogue. This has