I hopped on the Mario Party bandwagon in the Gamecube years enjoying 4, 5, and 6. For me it reached its peak on the Wii, using motion controls. One of my favorite party game moments was pitting gay men against married men in the shake the soda mini game. (married man with 3 kids kicked everyone’s butt).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SChNWl55Vro[width=650,height=366]
WiiU Mario Party
I had been eagerly anticipating Mario Party for the WiiU and decided this would be the killer app that would finally make me break down and pick up some Amibios. For the uninitiated, Amibos are like Nintendo’s proprietary version of Skylanders or Disney Infinity figures that work with the WiiU pad for certain games. I picked up the game bundle that came with a Mario Amiibo and couldn’t resist getting his nemesis Bowser while at Target. Speaking of Target, I bought this game and the Final Fantasy Type 0 HD at the same time and got carded. I’m pushing 40 dude, you’re really gonna card me for something that’s 18+!?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I69x8Bvm9zM[width=650,height=366]
Innovation on the next gen console
I was really looking forward to what the gamepad and amiibos could add to the franchise now that it was hitting double digits. There’s been a general gamer complaint that Mario Party games were “‘too random” in the past. I always thought they struck a good balance between random and skill that helped level the playing field and made the game fun for mixed skill levels. This time not so much though. You may as well just watch rather than play. The guys at Penny Arcade summed it up nicely.
Nintendo didn’t really add any new features since the Wii versions either, in fact it feels like they took some away. The WiiU was a good opportunity for them to venture into online multiplayer but, alas, no dice (pun intended). They took away features, like being able to set the game length by time, and there are fewer boards to choose from than in previous games. There are only 5 in game boards, technically there are 9 other boards, but you need their Amiibos to be able to access them. That’s right up there with terrible “free” to play tactics. And the boards just felt way too linear. In past games there were more branch points and random action spaces that moved people around where as this just seemed like rolling straight ahead.
There are 3 different board game modes you can play the game in: Traditional Mario Party, Bowser Party, and Amiibo Party. Like past games, all 4 players traverse across the board competing for stars. There is also a mode that let’s you skip the board game aspect all together and just get right to the mini games.
Traditional Mario Party Mode
This mode of the gameplay pits four human or computers player against each other. You are all riding around the board together in a vehicle collecting stars and other bonuses. Riding around in the same vehicle started in Mario Party 9 and apparently Nintendo didn’t get the internet’s memo that that was a terrible idea. It sets this weird dynamic that’s neither teamwork nor competition. I found it really hard to follow whose turn it was and what goals I was close to on the board. The game felt like completely random chance to me for both the rolls and mini game competitions. I played a few times with my husband and neither of us beat the computer (and unlike me he’s actually good at video games).
The selection of characters has the usual suspects with a few newcomers. Rosalina from Mario Galaxy is available as well as Toadette and Spike. I had to go look up who Spike was because he just doesn’t look right if he’s not throwing something with spikes on it like he does in every other game he’s appeared in.
Amiibo Mode
I really don’t need another thing to collect but since there was a bundle with Mario, and I’m a sucker for Bowser, I broke down and picked up amiibo for this one. There aren’t really any earth shattering differences between the regular game and the Amiibo version. The biggest difference is with Amiibos you roll by tapping the figure to the gamepad, which is cool initially, but gets old pretty quickly since it's really just extra steps and switching around what you are holding. Playing daily will also get you new gifts for your Amiibos to use in the game (you’re still somehow failing to incite my normally overwhelming desire to collect all the things Nintendo). I guess if you were already conned into getting some Amiibos this is a good game to dust them off for. Especially where some of the boards require you to have them to access.
Bowser Party Mode
Bowser Party pits the other 4 players together against Bowser who is trying to catch up to them and stomp them Thwomp style. It’s 4 players (human or computer) competing against Bowser (for up to 5 people playing at once). If Bowser is human controlled, that player gets the WiiU gamepad and the advantage of roll again if his first roll isn’t sufficient to catch up with the other players. Bowser also gets to choose the mini games for each round. In this mode it was pretty clear what you needed to do on the board to achieve victory as a team. Bowser seemed extra powerful though, especially with being able to re-roll. He had an overwhelming advantage and ended up winning in all the configurations we played. Bowser is my favorite Nintendo character and it's kinda fun seeing him stomp on people, but it gets old really fast when there’s no actual challenge. You may as well just watch youtube videos of him stomping on things...
Minigames
I haven’t played in a while and trying to finish up this article I couldn’t even recall a single mini game that came up. Kudos that they had cute alliterative or punny names, but that’s really about the only nice thing I have to say about them. Fruit of the Doom was my favorite though the actual game play wasn’t fun...
The Verdict
Not surprisingly I vote SKIP! Maybe it's fun if you have little kids who aren’t very good at video games, but even then meh...
Also honest trailers did an even better job than I did at explaining just how terrible this game is! My favorite summary was “Unique mixture of boredom and rage” they should put that on the box!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPd8dV7rE-g[width=650,height=366]
