Mario Party has long been a staple in Nintendo’s lineup of fantastic four-player party games—its frantic fun and competitive spirit has enchanted players since its first entry in 1998. These touches which make the series so beloved have been waning with each new installment in recent years, and Mario Party 10 makes no effort to save that sinking ship. In fact, it drives a Bullet Bill right through the hull.

That’s not to say that

Mario Party 10 is a bad game—you’ll still find yourself having a fair deal of fun in the 70+ minigames it has to offer. But it’s the mechanics at play outside of those minigames that continue to drag down a series which desperately needs lifting up.

The game gives you three main options, each of which represent their own style of play: Mario Party, Bowser Party, and Amiibo Party.

Mario Party

Mario Party is effectively the classic mode of Mario Party 10. As with previous games, four players (CPUs, if you have no friends) will roll dice to traverse a boardgame-like map, earning various goods along the way. But this mode retains too many poor ideas from Mario Party 9 to deliver the same fun experiences as past entries in the series.

Mario Party 10 pools all four players into a single car that moves everyone to the same destinations at the same times as they progress across a linear board towards a single goal. There are still items, roadblocks, and effects that shake up the standings of the game, but lumping everyone together removes any semblance of skill from the equation. And while minigames are just as fun as ever, even winning every time can’t save you from the seemingly random effects the board imposes on its players.

This is largely due to the fact that the goal of a given round of

Mario Party is no longer to collect coins and use them to buy stars; the goal is simply to collect coins, now called “mini-stars.” Now that the core mechanic of buying stars has been thrown out the window, there’s nothing protecting any of your coins (or Mini Stars) from being redistributed in any amount to anyone at any moment.

The game feels decided entirely by fate, which has come to mean less and less in the series’ more recent years. Past titles challenged players to overcome fate by doing better both in and outside of minigames, but it’s no longer possible to do better outside of minigames, and doing better in the minigames doesn’t end up mattering.

Bowser Party

Bowser Party is the second main mode of the game, and probably the one players will find most enjoyable. Bowser Party works in largely the same way as Mario party, save for a few key differences.

Players collect hearts, which function as HP, instead of Mini Stars. Bowser rolls four dice at the end of each turn in an effort to catch up with the Mario Party crew’s vehicle. Minigames are entered when Bowser catches up to “Team Mario,” as they’re called. These minigames consist not of a competition between four players, but of Bowser trying to successfully attack the other players, whittling away their HP in the process, and ultimately knocking them out of not only the minigame, but the rest of the entire play session.

Bowser Party also makes use of a few GamePad gimmicks to rig the board in certain ways that Team Mario cannot see, but it never does so beyond telling the player quickly, ”

hey, throw a trap over here,” and feels far more like an empty shell of an idea than a clever new feature.

Bowser Party is fun enough, thanks to the fresh new dynamic Bowser brings to the game, but it ultimately fails to deliver a satisfying experience. There are only three boards available (all lifted straight from Mario Party mode), and players who have been knocked out stay out, which not only limits everyone’s engagement, but skews the game further in Bowser’s favor upon every new victory.

Perhaps the most tiring thing about Bowser Party is that it only features ten minigames.

Mario Party is the paragon of diverse multiplayer gameplay, and Mario Party 10 is this series’ debut on the Wii U—a console built specifically for varied multiplayer experiences and asymmetrical gameplay. It’s pitiful, then, how little mileage this mode, which is clearly designed to embody those ideals, has to offer.

Amiibo Party

The last of the three modes is Amiibo Party, which is unlocked by tapping a compatible Amiibo to the GamePad. Amiibo Party functions much like ye olde tyme Mario Party games in that you take turns going around a board, collecting coins and trading them in for stars when you land on the appropriate space, but the content has been watered down to a linear map more reminiscent of Sorry or Monopoly than Mario Party.

Without much to do on the board, I found that Amiibo Party becomes more of a vehicle for minigames than its own enjoyable feature—an intrusive one, at that, given that you have to tap your Amiibo to roll the die, collect items, or really anything you’d press A to do in any other game.

The Verdict: Mario’s Getting Worse at This “Hosting” Thing

Mario Party 10 is a good enough game, and it comes with all the polish we’ve come to expect from Nintendo. Younger players will love its gameplay to bits, but older gamers, especially those who have played previous titles in the series, will find far more excitement in some of its decade-old predecessors. Nintendo may have a fantastic track record of games that are equally fantastic for people of all ages, but Mario Party 10 sadly doesn’t fit that bill. One thing is for sure: this series needs to go back three spaces.

No

ChannelImages

5

Our Verdict

Mario Party 10

Fun minigames

Mario Party 9 mechanics return; tedious Amiibo mode; not enough Bowser minigames

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