Mario Basketball 3 on 3

[DeathAdder]

Picked this up yesterday and had a good play of it today. Highly recommended, even for those who think that basketball is the most tedious sport ever played (which includes me).

There seems to be no option to switch it to English, but the top option in the first menu leads you into the tutorial which holds your hand and walks you through absolutely everything you need to know to play the game. You can then do challenges - haven't tried them yet - or tournaments.

So far I've only played a few tournaments, but it doesn't look like a sport / RPG game like the Mario sport games on GBA were. If you are hoping for more levelling up of stats, as in Mario tennis, you won't find it here. Or at least, I haven't found it yet. What it does offer is instant arcade OTT silly sports action.

Normally I wouldn't have given a thought to a basketball game, but I was intrigued by the idea of playing a sports game with the stylus. I can tell you that the controls work excellently. By the time you finish the tutorial, it will have become second nature. Perhaps the novelty will wear off, but so far I am really enjoying it. That said, it tires your hand out - this is probably not a game for a marathon session

The only worry so far is the difficulty. I have demolished the competition completely in every game I've played. Playing as Mario, Wario and Donkey game I had a fairly even first game, and then hardly conceded a goal for the next few. Hopefully there is a way to ramp up the difficulty, but it looks like, as sports games usually do, it will be much more fun in multi-player, so make sure you get your mates to join you. Maybe it's harder if you get into using the shells and bombs, instead of just collecting coins and scoring (the more coins you collect prior to scoring, the more points your goal will add to your score) but, like the weapons in Micro Machines I found them much more trouble than they were worth.

Everyone should play this at least once.

[Earl]

Mine arrived yesterday from Yes Asia and I've spent the better part of 6 hours playing in total. You mentioned the difficulty is pretty easy, well for the most part the cups are pretty easy, but get ready for a huge spike later on. I replayed the same team 8 times in a row, sometimes they'd thrash me 300-0 and sometimes it would be agonisingly close. When I did beat them it was only with 0.68 second left, so incredibly satisfying. I was 34 points behind with only seconds left, it had to be a special shot or nothing. Did a quick double M from way inside my own half and hoped that Luigi would be there to slam that baby home. Tears of absolute joy flowed when it came off, my hand was in bits but I didn't care, so worth it.

I was a bit iffy about the stylus control when I heard about this but they really are incredible. The tutorials at the start are fantastic and they offer a huge amount of moves both for attack and defense. Even when the basic tutorials are over, you can go back and learn more advanced techniques. You'll be blocking, feinting and super slamming like a pro in no time. The amount of depth the touchscreen controls offer is staggering, simply bouncing the ball away from an opponent who's trying to steal it is immensly satisfying. I'd imagine playing a little game of keep away in multiplayer could end in fits of laughter or broken DS's.

Speaking of multiplayer, it's a bloody travesty that the main game isn't available for single-cart play. Instead there are 2 minigames that can be played by up to 4 players. The first is a rather boring and simple dribble challenge. Just bounce the ball on the coin rushes and see who gets to 100 the quickest. Not great.

The 2nd minigame is really good fun though and we spent an hour playing 3p last night. Think Mario Kart only you're running around instead of in the karts. The usual weapons are there and the control is excellent, it definitely reminds me of battle-mode on the Snes MK. The 2 levels available are designed in a similar fashion and play really well. It's no sustitue fro the real game but it is definitely something you can go back to for a quick blast now and again.

Quick mention has to go to the stunning visuals and sound. You simply will not believe how good this looks in motion, especially on a Lite. The framerate is ultra-smooth and doesn't budge an inch, even when there is a crazy amount of stuff happening on screen. The music is of equally high standard with some great new tunes and some excellent remixes of old favourites to keep everyone happy. Overall I have to say this surprised the hell out of me, if you were at all on the fence about this, do yourself a favour and just get it. Sleeper hit of the year for me, just a crying shame that the online part was taken out.