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Mario Party is a really weird franchise. My history with it pretty much is exclusive to the Nintendo 64 iterations. I never really got into the Gamecube ones, instead looking at them, foolishly assuming they’d turned into Karaoke games, and leaving them on the shelf. It wasn’t until I hit my late teens and early twenties that I realised I had missed Mario Party for so long and looked to get back into it. Wii Party was great fun. But Mario Party 8 was disappointing. Mario Party 9 had a few nice changes but the stink of unoriginality and repetition was still there. So now we’ve got a proper, full high definition Mario Party 10 with added Amiibo support. The question remains – has Mario Party lost its touch?

There’s three modes you’re introduced to when you first boot up Mario Party 10. Amiibo Party, Bowser Party and Mario Party. We’ll start with the new stuff and jump straight into Amiibo Party. Amiibo Party is compatible with figurines of characters who appear in Mario Party 10 – including Rosalina, Bowser and Donkey Kong. Each Amiibo unlocks a very simplistic square board with a few gimmicks here and there that fit the character. The flow of these matches is almost perfect for fans of the classic Mario Party style. You move around the board, collect coins, buy stars, and play a mini-game at the end of each round. It’s the Mario Party most original fans know and love.

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But it’s absolutely marred by some shoddy forced implementation of the Amiibo figurines. First off, players have to select a dice with their Wii Remote and then place their Amiibo on the gamepad and remove it to roll the dice. Secondly, when a player picks up an item on the board, they have to put that Amiibo on the gamepad as well. Whether or not the Amiibo is actually saving anything, it’s an incredibly jarring process that means everyone needs to have an Amiibo and pass around the gamepad just to do what a one button press could easily do in-game. It’s this kind of forced gimmickry that recalls moments of the DS and Wii launches that make Amiibo Party really fall flat. It doesn’t help the boards are quite small and devoid of personality (ie. Not like the main boards) either.

In fact, this is a large issue with Mario Party 10 in general. All the ideas are half baked, which is perplexing considering how long this franchise has had to get it right. But the ideas that work really well are relegated to separate modes, and can’t be enjoyed across the entire package. The idea of playing Mario Party in the classic, old-school mode isn’t doable in either of the other modes – it’s only available in Amiibo Party.

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This problem persists into the other new mode – Bowser Party. A five player affair, it has one of the other players controlling Bowser. The player who is Bowser uses the Gamepad, while the other players use the Wii Remote. The goal of Bowser is to deplete the hearts of the other players, which replace the ministars from Mario Party 9 and Mario Party 10’s main mode. Bowser rolls multiple dice in an attempt to catch up to the main crew and steal their stars. Mini-games are a bit different in this mode too – most of them utilise the asymmetric nature of the GamePad and are rather enjoyable, but they’re only available in this mode and only if you’re playing as Bowser. It sounds like a petty complaint but it’d be nice to see the asymmetric elements from Bowser Party incorporated into the other modes rather than restricted to one.

Mario Party mode is pretty familiar to players of the previous Mario Party game. In it, everyone “carpools” together but all bonuses are awarded to whoever is rolling the dice. You no longer buy stars anymore, instead you just collect them as you pass through the board. It’s a different way to play that some people love and some people hate, but personally I think it has its strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, it keeps the game flowing at a much brisker pace than usual – with most matches taking thirty or so minutes to complete rather than upwards of two hours. On the other, some questionable decisions have been made to accommodate this new playstyle.

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Arguably, Mario Party has always been about the mini-games. It’s where the more competitive, active aspect of the competition lies. It’s also a large part of the game that is determined by skill rather than luck (in most cases). In Mario Party 10’s classic mode, mini-games are only playable when you land on a space that says so. This means it’s totally possible to play a whole match without playing more than two or three mini-games, which is kind of disappointing.

This new approach completely changes the dynamics of the game. First of all, the strategy in which players approach their turns is slightly different. Let’s say you know that in two turns time your main rival will hit a star checkpoint and be awarded with more mini-stars. You can purposefully use certain dice to slow down the progression of the group so that that person misses out. On the other hand, if you don’t have any special dice, you’ll be leaving everything up to (a literal) roll of the dice.

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Of course the mini-games are the true star of the party and honestly, when you’re actually playing them in Mario Party 10 they rarely disappoint. Some are really fast and frenetic, others are slower but tenser. But all in all, they’re easily the best part about the game – and thankfully there’s quite a few here to keep players going – and even better, if you’re into them, a mode lets you play just them for as long as you like.

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Some of my favourites are the boss mini-games, which have players playing together a single enemy but at the same time competing against one another to come out as the strongest player. It’s this mix of co-operative and competitive play that makes Mario Party it’s most endearing, but some of these moments are borrowed from previous games so they’re not necessarily new.

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But what’s most disappointing about Mario Party 10 and easily is its biggest shortcoming is just how weak it feels in terms of content. The main Mario Party mode only comes with five boards which feels incredibly anaemic considering that the last game had at least seven. The Amiibo bards are a nice touch but they’re too small – in fact even developing these into something a  little more substantial might’ve made Mario Party 10 feel a little bit more complete. Sure, you’ve got a Tetris-like sub-mode that has two player support too but it just doesn’t feel like Mario Party 10 wasn’t ready – that it’s guests arrived way before Mario and his friends finished preparing (sorry, I had to).

On the plus side the game does look pretty impressive, being the series’ first foray into high definition. Menus and the user interface are especially bold and colourful and as a result Mario Party 10 is never a game that’s particularly hard to look at. It runs smoothly. Some of the worlds are erring onto the side of generic, however, so perhaps in the future it’d be nicer to see more original experiences borrowed from Mario’s incredibly storied history rather than a rather typical water world, desert world or lava world.

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Mario Party 10 is best enjoyed with friends and you’ll probably still enjoy it’s tenth iteration with friends. But even now it’s starting to get a little bit stale. The mini-games are just as enjoyable as you remember them, but the way in which they’re accessed with this “new” kind of Mario Party diminishes the enjoyment. It’s almost like the best part of the game, and its role in deciding the winner, has been drastically reduced.

The newer modes have some good ideas in theory, but also falter in their execution. Amiibo mode could be great if Nintendo didn’t force you to use them in clumsy and cumbersome ways. The boards could be fun if they were more fleshed out. Similarly, Bowser’s GamePad based mini-games are enjoyable but not experienced enough to validate the package. But most disappointingly – Mario Party 10 just feels half baked.

There’s fantastic concepts here – many of which could be amalgamated into something more in future instalments. But for now, Mario Party 10 is lesser than the sum of its parts.

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About The Author
James Mitchell
Avid gamer since I was as young as three years old when I received my first NES. Currently studying full time and consider myself a balanced gamer. Enjoy games on all systems, from all genres, on all platforms. Sometimes feels like he's too optimistic for this industry.
2 Comments
  • Burak H
    March 24, 2015 at 9:42 am

    I’ve only played the amiibo Party mode so far, and I agree with your criticisms. Unless data is going to be written to the figure, then there is no reason why an amiibo should constantly need to be tapped when the Wii Remote can suffice. There was so much potential in this mode and it was quite enjoyable, but the constant amiibo tapping really disrupted the momentum, and I found myself tapping the amiibo on behalf of the other players because this arbitrary process felt so exhausting even by the third round.

    I’ll probably try Bowser Party tonight, but that too sounds like a wasted opportunity considering that all of the players are travelling together.

    I can’t help but feel that this game is a prototype for what is to come. I’m expecting Mario Party 11 to be released sooner rather than later, and I hope that it addresses all of the problems that have hindered the potential of Mario Party 8 through 10.

    Failing to incorporate 5 player multiplayer in the amiibo and Mario Party modes was also a missed opportunity. I think Nintendo should make an effort to incorporate 5 player multiplayer in as many of their games as possible by default. It’s ridiculous for a console with a 5 controller set-up to continue to limit themselves to the conventions of years past.

  • SpriteMaster
    March 24, 2015 at 12:32 pm

    Nice review. I’ve only played a couple of times so far, but I’ve enjoyed that time. Though dare I say, playing one of the minigame tournaments with a group of 3 others, was probably even more fun than the boards themselves. I welcome the addition of amiibo party, as I prefer these more substantial unlocks to things like costumes in mario kart 8.
    I noticed you said the bowser minigames are exclusive to the bower party mode, though infact if someone plays amiibo party as bowser, the game will take a similar form to bowser party. Personally I didn’t feel this worked so well in this mode though, considering everyone is competing for stars, it gives bowser the disadvantage (he moves just like everyone else here, but if he loses the minigames it’s instantly hard to catch back up, as everyone on the board is now ahead). It just doesn’t seem to balance as well here, so no one wants to be bowser in amiibo party anymore.

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