Mario Hoops 3-on-3

Voices of: Charles Martinet, Deanna Mustard, Dolores Rogers, Jen Taylor
Developer: Square Enix, Nintendo SPD
Publisher: Nintendo
Directed by: Shin Azuma
Rating: E
Genre: Sports
System: Nintendo DS
2006

Times Completed:
Tim: 1

Summary: Mario and friends combine with characters from Final Fantasy in high octane basketball competitions.

Review:
Tim: I'm not going to mince words- I pretty much hated Mario Hoops 3-on-3. I love Mario sports games and the idea of a basketball game is so wonderful. It's a shame that Square Enix designed such a limited, frustrating experience. I played this overly complicated game and very quickly, I realized I wanted to finish it up as quickly as possible. This is a game that's maximally frustrating while minimally fun.

First off, I absolutely hated the controls. The game works to incorporate the stylus from the Nintendo DS, but the moves are overly complicated. There's 23 different practice scenarios. Think about that- 23 skills you need to learn to master the controls. That's awful. Some are fine, some of them are extremely unintuitive. I learned the basics, but man, it wasn't fun at all. The timing, the repeatedly tapping the pad to dribble over coins- the whole thing felt unnecessarily complicated and annoying.

The main feature in the game are tournaments- you star with Mushroom, Fire Flower, and Star tournaments. Winning those unlocks the Rainbow Tournament. You win that, you unlock Hard mode and play the same four tournaments. I have to admit, I didn't love these. The tournaments start out so easy, and then become insanely difficult. I get it, I get it, that's how they are supposed to be. But, from going from "so easy it's boring" to "throw the DS across the room" hard isn't a fun progression. Even worse, you get different trophies depending on how much you win each game in the tournament by. Bronze trophy for winning, Silver trophy for winning every game by 100 points, and a Gold trophy for winning every game by 200 points. This basically means you're playing the tournaments over and over. In Normal, I got Gold in Mushroom, Fire Flower, and Star Tournaments. I finished Silver in Rainbow. On Hard, I got Silver in Mushroom and Fire, and then I just gave up. Winning the Star Tournament felt patently unfair. I know I wasn't especially skilled, but some of what happened in those games is just beyond ridiculous.

This brings me to what I hated most about the game. The title itself is an absolute lie- it's not 3-on-3 basketball. It's 1-on-3. The two teammates you have are absolutely worthless. They play no defense, never steal- I've seen balls bounce off the rim right in front of them- they will never grab a rebound. They contribute nothing to the game, they are just there for you to switch over to. Your opponents, however, will absolutely play all three characters. The computer will pass, each one will play defense- it feels totally unfair. This is fine in the easier tournaments, but you feel such a massive disadvantage on the higher levels. I'm not suggesting you needed to have all-star teammates, but the fact that they do nothing, nothing is crazy. There's games where the opponent missed, I had a teammate right under the basket, the other team runs up and grabs the rebound and slams it down. How is that fun? I couldn't switch over to the new teammate and control them faster than the computer opponent could move and score. It was truly infuriating. I tried a few times for the Star on Hard and I just realized my life is far too short. It felt like I played enough.

Many of the unlockables come with winning tournaments on higher levels, so I didn't get close to unlocking everything. Several things also required online access to play, but of course, I played this game after the servers shut down, so I was locked out of some of those. I unlocked 11/18 balls, got 8/11 characters, and 2/3 of the new stages. These aren't great numbers, but they were all hard-fought. Some of the unlockables were behind annoying things. The one that killed me is that you need to win by 800 points in a Star Tournament match. This means you play on Jr. Street, a casino-like course where a slot machine can triple your points. This felt doable to me, but I had continuously awful experiences. There was one game where I was so close, and the slot machine hit three Bowser Jrs. and I got zero points, instead of 300+ like I should have. It wasn't fun at all and it felt like the deck was stacked against me. I decided not to continue trying.

I was admittedly limited by not being able to play online, but I imagine that would have been an insanely frustrating experience anyway. I finished the game with Rank 13, 3,510 points. The gold ball was unlocked at 5,000 points- which I could have gotten by repeatedly playing tournaments, but I just didn't care enough to repeatedly win tournaments I'd already won. I honestly don't even understand how the Ranks work, the game doesn't explain and I couldn't find much online.

There's a few other things in the game, too. There's a Dribble Race where you have to get 100 coins and move through obstacles to beat specific times. I beat the time for the first course and the second course just frustrated me- I could never quite move fast enough. I didn't have a lot of fun with that, but it was at least okay.

The graphics are fine, they're solid for the Nintendo DS. It was really cool to see the mashup of Mario characters with lesser Final Fantasy characters. You don't get too many opportunities too see collaborations like that, so it was enjoyable to get that mix. The music was solid, the sound was good. None of those technical aspects presented any kind of problem- it all comes down to the controls and the bad CPUs.

I read enough online to know that a lot of people hated the game like I did- it's aggravating to have no teammate help and the opposing team being so much more effective than you are. I also know that a lot of people loved this game and were able to progress far further than I did. I admit defeat in that sense. I'm sure I could have gotten better than I played the Practices on repeat and really buckled down for hours and hours. I'm 42 at this point, though, and I've spent too much of my life on games that I didn't enjoy. This is one that I'm thankful I experienced, but it failed to meet expectations in nearly every sense. The thing that killed me was I just did not enjoy playing. I had no desire to get much better, because it felt patently unfair. No matter how good I got, my teammates would always be worthless. Mario Hoops 3-on-3 might be a great game for some, but for me, it was one of the worst experiences I've had in quite a while. I love Nintendo and I love Square Enix, but this collaboration didn't work.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: N/A



If You Enjoyed This Game, We Recommend: Mario Sports Mix, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games