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This thread has been linked to the game 'Mario Party 8'.
Another Nintendo console is on the market and another Mario Party game is released making this the eighth available on a home console. While criticism has increased with every party the plumber has thrown many have bought the game regardless mainly due to its fun multiplayer. But with the Wii’s new controls, this year’s version seemed to hold a lot of promise and breathe much needed life into the dying franchise. Does it do the trick though?
The premise of Mario Party is to select one of your favourite characters and move around a board collecting coins which in turn you can buy stars with. The winner is the one who has the most stars at the end of the game. Simple idea and one that hasn’t really changed for eight games! While Hudson have tried to mix things up a little with new board styles it doesn’t feel like enough. You still have the usual looping board where stars will cost twenty coins and appear randomly on the map, but slightly different is a beach themed stage which is essentially a race from point A to point B or a haunted mansion where you must search room after room for a star. They are nice alterations but essentially feel like tiny tweaks. Every player takes one roll of the dice moving around the board collecting items and grabbing coins with a mini game following after. That is the basic formula for the Mario Party series and while it works, is looking quite stale in desperate need of something fresh.
Items or “candies” can be used to mess with your opponents or give you an advantage. These range from getting an extra dice to roll or turning your character into a giant ball and running people down to steal their coins. My favourite is the “retro candy” that turns you into a 2D sprite giving you coins every space you move. It’s a neat system that’s been used before and still works quite well. Something that never changes in any Mario Party game though are the animations and constant reading needed to go through during turns. The game can get ridiculously slow paced and at times you’ll wish you could skip it all. Why haven’t you sped things up Hudson?
Perhaps the biggest part of Mario Party are the mini games and without a good selection to choose from you’d be left with a very poor game. While this game has a large collection of around seventy to pick from, there are a few problems with some of them. Firstly some games are either just too short or downright boring. One game has you shaking the remote up and down for five seconds as fast as you can and that’s it. Another may have you cutting a rope with scissors and praying you don’t get shot off a cliff. These games you hope to avoid. Secondly there a more games that simply use the remote as a gamepad than you would expect. Hudson are given a brand new way to change how Mario Party handles yet they still insist on using basic controls a fair amount of the time.
But enough of the bad and onto the good. While there are some bad mini games in there, you’ll also find some great ones too. For example my friends and I had a blast swinging the remote to see who could hit the most baseballs and also using the control as a pointer to shoot targets. These are great fun and its here where Mario Party 8 really excels. Rather than constantly playing battle royale style games you will also get the chance to team up with someone in 2 vs. 2 or play on your own against the other three. It makes a nice change and results in some funny banter between team mates who were battling it out only a minute ago. The controls, when used properly also make for some of the best mini games in Mario Party to date. It’s just a shame this game is also plagued with unimaginative and boring ones too.
Single player is very boring. End of. Tackling a random computer character in each of the six boards, you need to gain that all important star or stars before they do. Unlike the multiplayer system though, this is no more than a normal board game with the odd mini game here and there. Without the reaction and funny utterances from your friends playing on your own is really uneventful. Multiplayer though is still really good fun and perfect for a night in with a few beers and a takeaway.
Along with the normal party mode there is also an extra mode that offers a few more in depth games such as bowling and moped racing. These are hit and miss. Moped and table tennis are surprisingly fun yet games like bowling (which should have just used the Wii Bowling system) feel like they were added at the last minute. You’ll also be able to unlock trophies the more you play the game but to be honest what’s the point?
Mario Party 8 looks bright, bold and colourful with detail kept to a minimum. It’s hard to see much difference between this and the Gamecube versions which may seem bad enough but to make matters worse you’ll find a total lack of widescreen support here too. It’s annoying to have borders at either side of your television and makes you wonder why Hudson left it like this.
The music won’t amaze you, but its decent enough with the odd Mario remix here and there and the rest consisting of upbeat, cheerful tunes. Sounds are okay but Mario and his chums repeat their phrases too often. A nice touch though is your character will make a noise from your remote when it’s your turn.
Mario Party 8 manages to just about pass as a good game. While it is still good fun with three friends the formula is showing its age a fair amount this time. A boring single player and lack of anything new makes this feel like a missed opportunity. Get four people together though and its classic magic still shines through. Shame its getting dimmer and dimmer with each edition.
69%
The premise of Mario Party is to select one of your favourite characters and move around a board collecting coins which in turn you can buy stars with. The winner is the one who has the most stars at the end of the game. Simple idea and one that hasn’t really changed for eight games! While Hudson have tried to mix things up a little with new board styles it doesn’t feel like enough. You still have the usual looping board where stars will cost twenty coins and appear randomly on the map, but slightly different is a beach themed stage which is essentially a race from point A to point B or a haunted mansion where you must search room after room for a star. They are nice alterations but essentially feel like tiny tweaks. Every player takes one roll of the dice moving around the board collecting items and grabbing coins with a mini game following after. That is the basic formula for the Mario Party series and while it works, is looking quite stale in desperate need of something fresh.
Items or “candies” can be used to mess with your opponents or give you an advantage. These range from getting an extra dice to roll or turning your character into a giant ball and running people down to steal their coins. My favourite is the “retro candy” that turns you into a 2D sprite giving you coins every space you move. It’s a neat system that’s been used before and still works quite well. Something that never changes in any Mario Party game though are the animations and constant reading needed to go through during turns. The game can get ridiculously slow paced and at times you’ll wish you could skip it all. Why haven’t you sped things up Hudson?
Perhaps the biggest part of Mario Party are the mini games and without a good selection to choose from you’d be left with a very poor game. While this game has a large collection of around seventy to pick from, there are a few problems with some of them. Firstly some games are either just too short or downright boring. One game has you shaking the remote up and down for five seconds as fast as you can and that’s it. Another may have you cutting a rope with scissors and praying you don’t get shot off a cliff. These games you hope to avoid. Secondly there a more games that simply use the remote as a gamepad than you would expect. Hudson are given a brand new way to change how Mario Party handles yet they still insist on using basic controls a fair amount of the time.
But enough of the bad and onto the good. While there are some bad mini games in there, you’ll also find some great ones too. For example my friends and I had a blast swinging the remote to see who could hit the most baseballs and also using the control as a pointer to shoot targets. These are great fun and its here where Mario Party 8 really excels. Rather than constantly playing battle royale style games you will also get the chance to team up with someone in 2 vs. 2 or play on your own against the other three. It makes a nice change and results in some funny banter between team mates who were battling it out only a minute ago. The controls, when used properly also make for some of the best mini games in Mario Party to date. It’s just a shame this game is also plagued with unimaginative and boring ones too.
Single player is very boring. End of. Tackling a random computer character in each of the six boards, you need to gain that all important star or stars before they do. Unlike the multiplayer system though, this is no more than a normal board game with the odd mini game here and there. Without the reaction and funny utterances from your friends playing on your own is really uneventful. Multiplayer though is still really good fun and perfect for a night in with a few beers and a takeaway.
Along with the normal party mode there is also an extra mode that offers a few more in depth games such as bowling and moped racing. These are hit and miss. Moped and table tennis are surprisingly fun yet games like bowling (which should have just used the Wii Bowling system) feel like they were added at the last minute. You’ll also be able to unlock trophies the more you play the game but to be honest what’s the point?
Mario Party 8 looks bright, bold and colourful with detail kept to a minimum. It’s hard to see much difference between this and the Gamecube versions which may seem bad enough but to make matters worse you’ll find a total lack of widescreen support here too. It’s annoying to have borders at either side of your television and makes you wonder why Hudson left it like this.
The music won’t amaze you, but its decent enough with the odd Mario remix here and there and the rest consisting of upbeat, cheerful tunes. Sounds are okay but Mario and his chums repeat their phrases too often. A nice touch though is your character will make a noise from your remote when it’s your turn.
Mario Party 8 manages to just about pass as a good game. While it is still good fun with three friends the formula is showing its age a fair amount this time. A boring single player and lack of anything new makes this feel like a missed opportunity. Get four people together though and its classic magic still shines through. Shame its getting dimmer and dimmer with each edition.
69%
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Another Nintendo console is on the market and another Mario Party game is released making this the eighth available on a home console. While criticism has increased with every party the plumber has thrown many have bought the game regardless mainly due to its fun multiplayer. But with the Wii’s new controls, this year’s version seemed to hold a lot of promise and breathe much needed life into the dying franchise. Does it do the trick though?
The premise of Mario Party is to select one of your favourite characters and move around a board collecting coins which in turn you can buy stars with. The winner is the one who has the most stars at the end of the game. Simple idea and one that hasn’t really changed for eight games! While Hudson have tried to mix things up a little with new board styles it doesn’t feel like enough. You still have the usual looping board where stars will cost twenty coins and appear randomly on the map, but slightly different is a beach themed stage which is essentially a race from point A to point B or a haunted mansion where you must search room after room for a star. They are nice alterations but essentially feel like tiny tweaks. Every player takes one roll of the dice moving around the board collecting items and grabbing coins with a mini game following after. That is the basic formula for the Mario Party series and while it works, is looking quite stale in desperate need of something fresh.
Items or “candies” can be used to mess with your opponents or give you an advantage. These range from getting an extra dice to roll or turning your character into a giant ball and running people down to steal their coins. My favourite is the “retro candy” that turns you into a 2D sprite giving you coins every space you move. It’s a neat system that’s been used before and still works quite well. Something that never changes in any Mario Party game though are the animations and constant reading needed to go through during turns. The game can get ridiculously slow paced and at times you’ll wish you could skip it all. Why haven’t you sped things up Hudson?
Perhaps the biggest part of Mario Party are the mini games and without a good selection to choose from you’d be left with a very poor game. While this game has a large collection of around seventy to pick from, there are a few problems with some of them. Firstly some games are either just too short or downright boring. One game has you shaking the remote up and down for five seconds as fast as you can and that’s it. Another may have you cutting a rope with scissors and praying you don’t get shot off a cliff. These games you hope to avoid. Secondly there a more games that simply use the remote as a gamepad than you would expect. Hudson are given a brand new way to change how Mario Party handles yet they still insist on using basic controls a fair amount of the time.
But enough of the bad and onto the good. While there are some bad mini games in there, you’ll also find some great ones too. For example my friends and I had a blast swinging the remote to see who could hit the most baseballs and also using the control as a pointer to shoot targets. These are great fun and its here where Mario Party 8 really excels. Rather than constantly playing battle royale style games you will also get the chance to team up with someone in 2 vs. 2 or play on your own against the other three. It makes a nice change and results in some funny banter between team mates who were battling it out only a minute ago. The controls, when used properly also make for some of the best mini games in Mario Party to date. It’s just a shame this game is also plagued with unimaginative and boring ones too.
Single player is very boring. End of. Tackling a random computer character in each of the six boards, you need to gain that all important star or stars before they do. Unlike the multiplayer system though, this is no more than a normal board game with the odd mini game here and there. Without the reaction and funny utterances from your friends playing on your own is really uneventful. Multiplayer though is still really good fun and perfect for a night in with a few beers and a takeaway.
Along with the normal party mode there is also an extra mode that offers a few more in depth games such as bowling and moped racing. These are hit and miss. Moped and table tennis are surprisingly fun yet games like bowling (which should have just used the Wii Bowling system) feel like they were added at the last minute. You’ll also be able to unlock trophies the more you play the game but to be honest what’s the point?
Mario Party 8 looks bright, bold and colourful with detail kept to a minimum. It’s hard to see much difference between this and the Gamecube versions which may seem bad enough but to make matters worse you’ll find a total lack of widescreen support here too. It’s annoying to have borders at either side of your television and makes you wonder why Hudson left it like this.
The music won’t amaze you, but its decent enough with the odd Mario remix here and there and the rest consisting of upbeat, cheerful tunes. Sounds are okay but Mario and his chums repeat their phrases too often. A nice touch though is your character will make a noise from your remote when it’s your turn.
Mario Party 8 manages to just about pass as a good game. While it is still good fun with three friends the formula is showing its age a fair amount this time. A boring single player and lack of anything new makes this feel like a missed opportunity. Get four people together though and its classic magic still shines through. Shame its getting dimmer and dimmer with each edition.
69%
The premise of Mario Party is to select one of your favourite characters and move around a board collecting coins which in turn you can buy stars with. The winner is the one who has the most stars at the end of the game. Simple idea and one that hasn’t really changed for eight games! While Hudson have tried to mix things up a little with new board styles it doesn’t feel like enough. You still have the usual looping board where stars will cost twenty coins and appear randomly on the map, but slightly different is a beach themed stage which is essentially a race from point A to point B or a haunted mansion where you must search room after room for a star. They are nice alterations but essentially feel like tiny tweaks. Every player takes one roll of the dice moving around the board collecting items and grabbing coins with a mini game following after. That is the basic formula for the Mario Party series and while it works, is looking quite stale in desperate need of something fresh.
Items or “candies” can be used to mess with your opponents or give you an advantage. These range from getting an extra dice to roll or turning your character into a giant ball and running people down to steal their coins. My favourite is the “retro candy” that turns you into a 2D sprite giving you coins every space you move. It’s a neat system that’s been used before and still works quite well. Something that never changes in any Mario Party game though are the animations and constant reading needed to go through during turns. The game can get ridiculously slow paced and at times you’ll wish you could skip it all. Why haven’t you sped things up Hudson?
Perhaps the biggest part of Mario Party are the mini games and without a good selection to choose from you’d be left with a very poor game. While this game has a large collection of around seventy to pick from, there are a few problems with some of them. Firstly some games are either just too short or downright boring. One game has you shaking the remote up and down for five seconds as fast as you can and that’s it. Another may have you cutting a rope with scissors and praying you don’t get shot off a cliff. These games you hope to avoid. Secondly there a more games that simply use the remote as a gamepad than you would expect. Hudson are given a brand new way to change how Mario Party handles yet they still insist on using basic controls a fair amount of the time.
But enough of the bad and onto the good. While there are some bad mini games in there, you’ll also find some great ones too. For example my friends and I had a blast swinging the remote to see who could hit the most baseballs and also using the control as a pointer to shoot targets. These are great fun and its here where Mario Party 8 really excels. Rather than constantly playing battle royale style games you will also get the chance to team up with someone in 2 vs. 2 or play on your own against the other three. It makes a nice change and results in some funny banter between team mates who were battling it out only a minute ago. The controls, when used properly also make for some of the best mini games in Mario Party to date. It’s just a shame this game is also plagued with unimaginative and boring ones too.
Single player is very boring. End of. Tackling a random computer character in each of the six boards, you need to gain that all important star or stars before they do. Unlike the multiplayer system though, this is no more than a normal board game with the odd mini game here and there. Without the reaction and funny utterances from your friends playing on your own is really uneventful. Multiplayer though is still really good fun and perfect for a night in with a few beers and a takeaway.
Along with the normal party mode there is also an extra mode that offers a few more in depth games such as bowling and moped racing. These are hit and miss. Moped and table tennis are surprisingly fun yet games like bowling (which should have just used the Wii Bowling system) feel like they were added at the last minute. You’ll also be able to unlock trophies the more you play the game but to be honest what’s the point?
Mario Party 8 looks bright, bold and colourful with detail kept to a minimum. It’s hard to see much difference between this and the Gamecube versions which may seem bad enough but to make matters worse you’ll find a total lack of widescreen support here too. It’s annoying to have borders at either side of your television and makes you wonder why Hudson left it like this.
The music won’t amaze you, but its decent enough with the odd Mario remix here and there and the rest consisting of upbeat, cheerful tunes. Sounds are okay but Mario and his chums repeat their phrases too often. A nice touch though is your character will make a noise from your remote when it’s your turn.
Mario Party 8 manages to just about pass as a good game. While it is still good fun with three friends the formula is showing its age a fair amount this time. A boring single player and lack of anything new makes this feel like a missed opportunity. Get four people together though and its classic magic still shines through. Shame its getting dimmer and dimmer with each edition.
69%