[GAME] Mario Party DS
I have been among the biggest Mario Party fans for years, i had them all on the 64 and I remember the one on the Gamecube where you had the microphone (Nintendo’s first hint of going interactive!!) and i was happy to find it on the DS, and the thing i like about Mario Party is just the fact it is a simple game with lots of fun mini games. Great to play with your mates and still good on your own.

Mario Party titles really do not wow anyone with the plots and that’s not what they are there for. In this version, Mario and gang are lured into a trap by Bowser and are shrunk into tiny versions of themselves. So off you go to get the stars and defeat Bowser’s minions and finally off to beat Bowser himself. The nice thing by being shrunk down allows for some fun new maps to play on and makes the mini games slightly different from other Mario Party titles, there are around 70 new mini games to keep you busy as you go around the board trying to get the most stars and beat the rest to the end.

The DS allows for plenty of interactive games and that is what you want, there are not as many stylus involved games as i would first thought, which was a let down but there are enough to keep you happy. From sawing logs, collecting goombas and dancing on stage you will be kept entertained by the antics of Mario and gang through their mini journey to take down Bowser.

To those of you who are unaware of how the game plays, you take it in turn against 3 other people to roll a dice and move around a map / board. Land on blue squares to gain coins, red squares loose coin and the ? squares will trigger events. At the end of a round you play a mini game based on where you landed, it might be all against all, 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 1. It all depends on how the previous round has gone. You do this for 20 rounds on average and as you win games and collect coins you aim to find the spot where the star is, so you can purchase it. Throw in some power ups like 2 dices in one go, or stealing 10 coins. The game gets hectic and everything is there to play for. It may sound a bit easy but there are some events where your hard earned stars may be given to last place, on the 2nd from last turn. This means everything you did was for nothing and you will more than likely loose!

So the games play well and it is all simple enough, most the mini games are fun, some get tedious or are far too easy against the CPU but i felt it was nothing new, it has all been seen and done before. Ok using the stylus was fun but with the Wii it was even more interactive and it seemed they tried harder. This version almost came out because it should and not as much work went in as it could have. It is still fun to play and in my eyes the best party game out on the DS, it is even slightly better than Wario Ware touched in my opinion. Only just but i know some people disagree. If you have a DS and are new to the series then you will be in mini game heaven, old fans of the series will enjoy the game but have nothing new.

7/10