Finally, after months of waiting for our European relatives to release their death-grip on the game, Mario Strikers Charged hit North American Wiis yesterday. I’ve been looking forward to it since, heck, they announced the first one for the GameCube, but hearing about its high novelty factor, I backed off and decided that it might not be worth the spendage. However, once I heard that online play was a recently-added factor, I caved in and forked over my green.

After a day and a half of putzing around with the game, the most I can say so far is this: I haven’t played a game so fluid since Smash Brothers: Melee.

A true testament to its devices, the game is built like a well-oiled bicycle. The game is seriously overflowing with crazy animations, thumping Latin beats and pounding sound effects. Every action that you take while on the field (the menus are a different story) results in some seriously tactile feedback. Kicks vibrate and scream like they should, decking a Toad in the face sends him flying a healthy distance, and most importantly, the players scream and yell at each other. Overall, the game has a seriously satisfying bark to it –– spending just five minutes with the game’s main course ends up being a hearty and satiable span of time. No doubt.

The art direction too flows right back into how pleasing the game feels to play – both the characters and the world that surrounds them feels gritty, muddy and helps to really emphasize the cut-throat nature of international (Inter-Dimensional, in this case?) football/soccer. I don’t think you’ve truly experienced the game until you’ve seen Donkey Kong flying fist-first from the skies, only to land with the most insane glower imaginable. Even Mario, who normally looks more like your grandfather shopping for cardigans, looks like one hell of a badass. You can even see it on the cover for the game itself – in-game, he doesn’t look a whole lot different from that.

Plus, wait until you see his special attack.

The textures and the stadiums are also very well-designed, imbued with the same intentional muddiness that makes the characters seem so raw.

Enough about that art school nonsense, though – the real question is, how does it play? The short answer is, “dude!”; the long answer is, “duuuuuuuuuuuuuude!” The game’s mechanics are so fast-paced and chaotic that it’ll keep some of the most hardened and cynical soccer game fans quick on their toes. Trust me – when you have just some guys running around and tackling each other, it seems easy enough. However, once you throw in the Mario element, things get a little weirder. You’ve got items that run the gamut from freezing blue shells and tracking red shells all the way down to a player-controllable Chain Chomp. Imagine it – you’ll almost always be minding your own business, trying to execute a play, and all of a sudden half of your team is flattened by an errant jalopy. Seriously; this game is intense.

The difficulty seems to be oddly arched for a Nintendo sports game. Instead of being fun but way too easy like most of Nintendo’s sports games (excepting Toadstool Tour, damnit), the game starts playing rough really damn quickly. On the game’s own list of difficulties, “Professional” ranks a 2 out of 5. It doesn’t look like there’s much room for single-player achievement, but for sure, this is a game that’s gonna go down swinging. I wouldn’t go in expecting an easy time.

As for multiplayer, it’s way more fun than it might sound. Like any 4-player game, half of the fun is the fact that you’re playing with other people. Even in the case of some horrible party game , you know that you’ll at least have fun making fun of the game. Charged, though, this is a game that’ll pit your friends against each other. I got some close friends together last night to give it a shot, and believe me, by the end of the night we were resorting to trying to push the controllers out of each other’s hands.

In terms of multiplayer, I’d deem it a resounding success. I love it.

It’s not all peaches and daisies, though – the game does have some annoyances that you might have to overcome before getting the main squeeze out of your game. For one, the menus are uninspired and seem lackadaisical in comparison to the game’s main attraction. The game has such insane art direction – I’d just expect the menus to wedge neatly into the game’s ongoing motif. They’re not a bother, but, aesthetically, they seem to me to interrupt the canvas.

Also, the controls can be confusing in the heat of a Final Countdown (my group’s term for an epic showdown between two teams). Honestly, I can count a number of times just this morning where I screwed up the perfect shot by tapping down when I should have been tapping A – that can be a huge pain in the butt. While Charged does appear to have adapted well to a foreign control scheme, it’s mos def not without its kinks.

Overall though, after two days of having the game in my mitts, I can say that it’s going to be my house’s honorary Smash Brothers until Brawl hits American shores this December.

If you haven’t picked the game up, what the hell are you waiting for? If you have, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell like that. Tell us what you think so far.