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Author Topic: Fav Mario Party Game  (Read 6313 times)

« Reply #15 on: March 01, 2008, 12:06:49 PM »
What mario party game is your favorite? I like Mario Party 6 for the gamecube, and Mario Party 8 for the Wii.
I have only played 6 and 8. Mario Party six was fun for me because it was the first time I had ever played a mario party game (no haters!) and I loved it. I only own Mario Party eight, it was a gift for Christmas. And i enjoy the boards on MP8 because theyre really different from each other.
In one ear, out the other. All I hear is BLAH BLAH BLAH.

ShadowBrain

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« Reply #16 on: March 01, 2008, 01:43:27 PM »
Whoah... you quoted yourself!
"Mario is your oyster." ~The Chef

The Chef

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« Reply #17 on: March 01, 2008, 04:56:01 PM »
OK....so now it's time for me to voice my opinion on the GCN Parties, which nobody cares about, apparently.

Mario Party 4
This one could easily be the worst. It is the most bland presentation-wise, with a retarded plot (it's your birthday and Bowser wants to ruin it, olol), and a bunch of enemy drones running the boards (they don't hold a candle to the Millenium Star. Just Toad would've been good enough). Those "presents" you get for beating the Story Mode are kind pointless, and nobody wants to play the same [darn] thing eight times over (different presents for every character). The boards are crud compared to the 64 MPs. Those old ones had a funky visual effect with the "polygons running around on prerendered backgrounds" thing, but these board are just metal walkways suspended over badly modeled generic backgrounds, and the way the boards are designed isn't much better: fewer ? spaces with crappy events that do nothing but give you items or coins? No more Koopa Bank? No more locked gates? One-way paths galore?

Another problem comes from the Mini/Mega system. It's a cool thing, but it was way too over-emphasized. The only items you ever get most of the time are mushrooms, and the fact that the Mega Mushroom forces you to skip Stars while all the Mini Mushroom is good for is passing pipe gates (which never have anything useful behind them) doesn't help. I also must mention that the Bank was replaced with a "Lottery Shop" which nobody ever wins at, so that's pointless, and the "Lucky Draw" event at the last five turns also never seems to work. I missed the "character predicts the winner" thing from the first three games! More importantly, why the hell did they decide to make the "Blue and Red spaces coins are doubled" thing be part of a bunch of randomized events? That's not the worst thing ever, but it does seem a bit dumb. The Warp Space was a waste, and the new "Panchinko machine" Fortune Space has nothing on the original Chance Time.

As for the mini-games, there's actually less of them than in MP3 and most of them seem like re-hashed concepts. The Duel Mini-games are now Story Mode boss battles against the hosts. The only good new mini-games are the Bowser Mini-Games, but those had to come at the expense of the standard Bowser Events that used to come up on Bowser Spaces. Now those are lame. Speaking of which, this game's Bowser board is the worst in the entire series. Like the other boards, it's got a bunch of useless events that never ever seem to be encountered. They really skimped out on the game this time. Perhaps the best part of this game is the Extra Room, where all the 1-Player games are, but most of those are crappy or randomized (Doors of Doom FTL) and Beach Volley Folley is hard to unlock and eventually beat. All in all, this might actually be my least favorite game in the series. It really feels like a watered-down version of Mario Party 3, which as you know is my personal favorite. Even the music sounds rehashed. Geez...

Mario Party 5
Well... this one is different, to say the least. My first gripe is the lack of Donkey Kong. That sucks. His new space isn't really worth much anyway. They're just coin-collecting mini-games with a jungle asthetic, and the DK Bonus is more or less just a cheap way to make coins. The fact that there's only one of his space on the board that changes every time only makes in worse. I still liked how you heard his voice every time you crossed the space itself, though. They should've done that for the Bowser spaces (which are also lame because there's now only one of them, but at least "Bowser Bonus" is better than having "Clone Troopas" steal your coins).

In terms of the boards, they're all fairly generic, and I can't say I like the 3Dness they have because there's far too much jumping around going on and the boards tend to be elevated rather than spread out. That seemed lazy to me. What I did like was the capsules, though the space creating, cost to use them, and category devision wasn't too refined this time. At least this feature was fairly clever, though the "All spaces have capsules" thing from the Last 5 Turns clearly indicates their over-emphasis (and now the Blue and Red spaces' coins can be tripled -_-) The ? spaces are even worse and far less emphasized than ever before, which is a shame because I liked those. Still, I think having the Star Spirits be the host was cool, since it ties to Paper Mario a little, even though there's absoultely no references to their job as guardians of the Star Rod or Star Haven or anything like that. In fact, their dialog is bland and the story behind this game isn't exactly up to par: Save this new Dream Depot place from Bowser (what happened to Sub-Con?) and those accursed "Clone Troopas". I'll have you know that the ending really ****ed me off (though none of it was as bad as MP4, thankfully).

The Story Mode itself is ass. Gone is the "campaign through every board, beating rivals" set-up, and in it's place is "beat the red, blue and green 'Clone Troopas' at Mini-Games to make them run out of coins". While this did seem like a good idea, mini-games happen far too often (you play a duel when you meet a "Clone") and the rules for who loses coins are too complicated and sometimes unfair. At least you get to see DK knock the snot out of those annoying "Those who should rightfully be Koopalings" and even Bowser himself once in a while. The last thing I hate about this is the way they tried to speed the game up by having all three "Koopa Wannabes" move at the same time. This resulted in the camera being zoomed out, the boards shrinking in size, and the "Stoopa Kids" moving at a slower pace than if they each went separately. It's hard to keep track of them when they move this way, especially taking into account all the capsule and board events that go on.

The mini-games themselves are in a word: bland. They aren't rehashes, but it seems that by this point they failed to come with anything inventive or exciting. I do rather like some of the settings these mini-games take place in, though. Guess it helps that the game is "dream" themed. One thing that bothered me was the fact that every mini-game seemed to have a time-wasting "opening and closing cutscene" which probably can wind on one's nerves after a while. I also hate how Battle Spaces have been axed in favor of Battle Mini-Games randomly taking the place of an ordinary 4-Player Mini-Game. Those can screw everything up. Bonus Mode was meh. It's got the old volleyball game, along with a new hockey game, but that "Card Party" thing would be decent if it weren't for the fact that the whole [darn] game is based on pure luck. Grr.

Everyone praises Super Duel Mode as the best part of the game, and I'd agree with it if it weren't for the fact that the game controls poorly and isn't engaging in the least. They could've done a lot more with this mode, and I find the end result disappointing except for the creatively designed vehicle parts. I honestly thought something like this would've been better done as a standalone Mario game. At least DK is playable here *sigh*.

My biggest gripe about the game actually has to do with the asthetics. Everything looks sugar-coated and the music is just obnoxiously childish. I know they wanted to go for a dream-like atmosphere, but some parts of this seem like an insult to the entire Mario franchise and it's fans. Though I suppose I have to give the game credit for re-introducing a lot of familiar old Mario enemies as capsules and in mini-games that was a nice touch. In fact, all of these Parties tend to do that and nobody ever give it credit. Come on folks, this was all we had before SMG showed up. Be a little more thankful.
On the whole, I'd say this game is a step-up from MP4 but not by much. There's just too much untapped potential and screaming of "we're falling into shovelware licensed game territory!".

I'll be back later with the better half of the GCN era, which in turn means MP6 and MP7.

« Reply #18 on: March 02, 2008, 02:55:54 AM »
Whoah... you quoted yourself!
Yes, yes I did. : )
In one ear, out the other. All I hear is BLAH BLAH BLAH.

« Reply #19 on: March 02, 2008, 04:22:43 PM »
Really good reviews, The Chef! Keep it up!

My favorite part of Mario Party 5 is the "hu uh hu uh" sound that the capsule machine makes. Everyone playing always repeated it whenever he did it, every single time.

« Reply #20 on: March 03, 2008, 05:02:27 PM »
I've only played 4, 5 and 6. 4 was the first Mario Party I played and had some great board designs. Collecting all those presents was fun, but I only got to Wario before getting board (Ugh! Puns!) It also introduced some new innovations and some gewd minigames. And I liked the whole plot idea of celebrating your character's birthday. I rented 5 and 6, and was incredibly disappointed with the lackluster boards, being unable to play as Donkey Kong, and the sucky new power-up systems (rarely was I ever able to claim a space for myself in MP6). All and all, MP4 forever, Bai-buh.
In Soviet Russia, Pokemon chooses you!

The Chef

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« Reply #21 on: March 07, 2008, 08:15:38 PM »
Really good reviews, The Chef! Keep it up!

My favorite part of Mario Party 5 is the "hu uh hu uh" sound that the capsule machine makes. Everyone playing always repeated it whenever he did it, every single time.

I found myself doing that a lot, but it didn't make up for that grating background music. Seriously, the endless loop of the theme song from the shoddy Ghostbusters game on the NES is more tolerable than that.

The rest of the reviews will come tomorrow. For now, I'll just point out some general things I noticed about the MP series.

For one, the playable characters carry only half the personalities they're known for. Seriously, they move like robots and repeat the same old phrases for every little thing that goes on. I also find it shameful that these are some of the only games in the series where Mario can't stand up to Bowser. That's just ridiculous. This also factors into why I like MP3 the best.  The characters' dialog in the Story Mode evokes the personalities they're known for, even if it is for a brief moment.

Another thing I've noticed is that after MP4, the games got infinitely easier. I mean, I remember back in Mario Party 1 when the computer practically cheated on Hard and getting more than two Stars and 40 coins per game was an admirable feat. Now I find myself picking up multiple Stars in the same turn and ending the game with coin totals numbering in the hundreds. A lot. I know it's not just me getting better because I played all the games in succession once and I can tell you the challenge level on the N64 parties compared with the GCN ones is astronomical. It's like they're taking lessons from the geniuses behind those Barbie games or something.

Lastly, I happen to have my own "dream Party" that aims to fix all the flaws the current Parties seem to have. Trust me, there's a lot of ways this series can be saved, and I don't mean by completely erasing it from existence.

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