Super Mario Party (2018)

I’ve been a Mario Party fan since the OG one on the N64 but I usually play them on my own. But recently, I’ve roped my husband into playing. It’s nice to have someone to play them with even though he is very lukewarm on the franchise.

This got a lot of hate so I went into this expecting to be disappointed but it’s actually a really nice game. I mean, it is Mario Party so if you don’t like the franchise it won’t change any minds. Also I hate being required to use the joycons and some of the mini games are super LAME (but that’s typical with Mario Party games I’ve found - some are winners and some are losers).

The co-op mode is really fun and it’s a nice strategy to be able to free-form move around even though it’s super annoying when you have like 8 spaces to move and you try every possible combination but you just can’t get to the star. Also some of the board gimmicks you have to learn which can be annoying the first time you play them.

Overall I feel like if you like Mario Party this is a solid choice. But with the new Super Mario Superstars coming out in a few months it’s probably better to wait for that unless you can get this game cheap or you want to play Mario Party NOW. That one is supposed to improve on the drawbacks of this one, which hopefully include being able to use a non-Joycon. Also, Boo better be in it!!

Well I ended up getting all 5 of the gems in the Mario Party game on the Switch (congrats Goomba, on being the super star). Overall I found it a fun enough time, and the update adding online play makes it all the better. Obviously this is best played with friends in person, but it's nice to have options. The co-op river raft game is a hoot, and the team VS mode is a nice change of pace from the regular mode. There's also some hidden bonus games and a silly rhythm game mode to mess around in.

It's still Mario Party, which means you can be doing well the whole time and then still lose at the end (and vice versa) but as a "turn your brain off" sort of time-killer this isn't a bad entry for the series. (Though to be fair, the only other one I've really played a lot of was Mario Party 4 on the Gamecube, which I didn't care as much for. Also, Sonic Shuffle on the Dreamcast I guess, lol.)

I don't think I need to say too much about this one. It's Mario Party, and it's at the top of its game. Sure, there are only 4 maps, but there's also a lot of other things to do. The River game can actually suck a good amount of your time (even though it's pretty repetitive) and the Sound game might be fun for people, but I particularly liked the Partner Party game. It was a fresh new take on the Mario Party formula, and it had four different boards (or at least, variations on the other four). In total though, that's eight boards, which is enough I think.

This game's great downfall is that you can't play online. I rarely have people over, and this is a party game, so it would be perfect if I could play online. But you can only do mini-games. But I think enough has been said about that. Still a solid game.

I really, really hope this gets supported with free content like Mario Tennis and Kirby. At its core, it's a great game, but I hit the bottom so fast. There's 80 mini games, but that's spread across all of its modes. So the EXCELLENT Sound Stage mode only has like 6-9 games that get cycled. So you can only really play it 2 or 3 times before you're like "Oh, I did this."

River Survival is even worse. You end up going through the same set of mini games every time you play it, which really limits how repayable it is. And only having 4 maps for the standard MP mode is a little rough.

If Nintendo dropped 2 new maps, 20 or so minigames (including new Sound Stage ones), and a few new characters for fun, I think I would confidently call this the best game in the series. It's JUST too light on content right now. The pieces are all there. The allys, special dice, in-window mini game practices... all excellent additions. It just needs more reasons to revisit it.