By: Robert Murphy
When people usually hear about a party they think, a good
time, few beers and good friends, not screaming in rage or frantic attempts to
murder one another on a charming Mario
style game board. Well, this is what you often get with Mario Party games (and most Ninetendo
games in my experience) as you and your friends fight one another over
stars, minigames and the attempt to be the first across the finish line and
named the victor. It’s a charming little setup that has been going on for years
now as groups of four players start on a variety of different game boards and
move across the spaces to gain the most stars and victory over your friends. Mario Party 9 saw a change up in the
long standing dynamic that continues on here in Mario Party 10. Four players cram into a vehicle together and
individually roll a 3D dice to progress across a linear map, dodging obstacles
and taking on different challenges depending on the game board you choose. New
features though have come with the addition of the Wii U gamepad and other new Nintendo
products so let’s see what lies in store for another “fun” party.
Despite my insane competitiveness, I’ve always found that Mario Party games were the best to lose
at because of the amount of luck that can come into play with a game such as
this. A randomly generating dice decides your fate and the fate of your friends
each turn and there are any number of obstacles that can make or break you
along the game board. Players can end up being bitten by a Piranha Plant or
shot by a Bullet Bill and lose a fair amount of their stars or even worse you
can now end up unleashing Bowser from behind his prison bars and he could steal
half of your stars. You just never know what is going to happen when you roll
those dice, all you can really do is pray that you will still come out on top.
I haven’t kept up too much with the recent additions of the game but with the
purchase of my Wii U, I thought it
would be a fun game to have for my family and friends. A part of me does miss
the old school styling of the game where players were all separate on the game
board and raced each other across the looping map to get to the one solitary
star placed at a random point. The new mechanic of everyone moving as one does
lead to quicker games to be played but this new style of playing does debunks
the long standing strong point for Mario
Party and that is the minigames.
Minigames are the key part of every Mario Party game and where all the fun practically comes from
considering most of the game involves you staring at a screen waiting for each
player to take their turn. Minigames now though are far less frequent and do
not occur after each player has taken their turn, rather they now appear to
randomly generate on any one of the square spaces. There’s no labeling to
indicate whether or not the square you land on will lead to a minigame so you
never know when one will come along to break up the monotony. It isn’t like
they never occur but it is sad that one of the strongest parts of the game doesn’t
occur as much as it should.
When you do get a minigame, it is still an insane amount of
fun and takes on the new look and feel of the recent Mario games that players have come to know. The bright and
brilliant colors all look wonderful and you and other players will happily be
jumping around trying to complete the various objectives such as being the last
player bouncing on a trampoline while knocking everyone else off or kicking the
most Cheep Cheep’s as they head towards a peer. There are also game modes for
the motion controls on your old Wii controllers
that will prove to be a challenge. Being the first player to move your player
on top of a giant ball across various buttons was the hardest for me but others
like choosing the Shy Guy with the most donuts on his plate even things out in
terms of difficulty.
This all just happens to be part of one mode for Mario Party 10 and I came to find out that
there are three different modes for this new game. The next mode I played was
Bowser Party which brings the Wii U gamepad to some actual use and introduces a
fifth player into the action. Bowser was always soar about being left out of
things and so now another player can take on his role of crashing the party and
stealing other players hard earned stars. In this mode Bowser follows the other
four players that travel along like usual in their car and trying to get across
the game board. Bowser in turn rolls a few dice to try and catch up to the
other players and if he manages that then a 1v4 minigame takes place (hooray!
minigames!). The games are fairly balanced to start off with as players will
try to do things like dodge fireballs or avoid being thrown into a fiery pit as
they run along a giant wheel. If the players manage to continue staying far
ahead of Bowser or continue to beat him then the difficulty for the players
gets turned up a notch and Bowser ends up more in favor of victory.
The mode is delightfully fun for the Bowser player as you
lord over your friends trying to take them out (gosh, no wonder my friends
think I’m mean). Regardless, players will no doubt have some evil fun at the
expense of the entire party. Perhaps the best map to take advantage of being
Bowser would be the underwater level due to the fact that certain points of the
game board diverge to two separate paths, one usually worse than the other.
Bowser can manipulate the signs at the diverging points with the gamepad due to
the fact that they’re written in squid ink. It’s not a huge mind game to play
but it is still a devilishly fun feature.
Our final game mode is the amiibo party and was initially
something of a delight for me as it returns to the original Mario Party style of each player taking
their own turn and moving separately. There is, of course, a gigantic catch and
that is the frustrating mechanics behind this particular game mode. Players
must constantly be close to the Wii U
gamepad in order to plug each of their amiibo’s in when it is their respective
turn to do something. Organizing this little function is like a game of hot potatoe or worse an exercise in everyone crowding around on the floor of your home to
try and work this mode out. You also have to add on to this the fact that the
maps to this game mode are fairly flat and linear, yes, there are different
maps for the different amiibo’s but they do not vary much from each other in
anyway. Overall, it feels like an exercise in futility to have even included
this game mode in the first place (same goes for the amiibo’s in general) and I
was supremely upset that this mode wasn’t as enjoyable as it should have been.
In the end, Mario
Party 10 does prove to bring some new features to the table and make use of
the new gamepad functionality. It certainly helps you become an evil mastermind
while you take control of residential party pooper, Bowser. However, I do wish
that if you’re going to bring back the classic Mario Party format, you definitely shouldn’t ruin it by adding the
amiibos and making players crowd around the gamepad. It really detracts from the
enjoyment. While there definitely are some shining moments for this game, there
just isn’t enough to make you race to the store to pick it up.
Good:
- Five player Bowser game mode
- Wonderful maps and a few new minigame types to play along
with the classics
Bad:
- Amiibo mode is a disappointment
- Where are all the minigames? And why am I not playing them
more?
Scully Rating: 6.0
out of 10
