Super Mario Party (2018)

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 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.