Post by Leverish on Jul 4, 2005 21:05:12 GMT -5
After many long dreadful months school is finally over, meaning I have more time to write reviews. Joy! Anyway this is my Mario Party 6 review. I hope you like it.
Developer: Hudson Soft
Publisher: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Players: 1-4
Price: $ 49.99 as of July 4, 2005
Release Date: December 6, 2004
Mario Party originally began on the N64 in 1999, and has had a sequel each year sense then. When Mario Party 2 came out the game was definitely an improvement from the first. A year later Mario Party 3 was released and not only was it the best Mario Party at the time it was arguably one of the N64 games at the time. But after that it went down hill from there. Mario Party 4 was released for the Gamecube, and it just didn’t have near the same caliber of quality that the third did. A year after that another Mario Party was on shelves. This time the fifth and it sure did help the series get back on track. Now we’re here one year later with the release of Mario Party 6 the sixth installment in the series. Did it build on the fifth’s momentum or disappoint fans, again?
In a game of Mario Party four players play on a game board. The objective is to get the most stars, which are randomly placed on the board, but in order to get these stars you need 20 coins to buy them. In order to get these coins you need to win mini games which are randomly selected after everyone has played on that turn. This year there’s a new twist: Day and night switch after three turns, which is very similar to the Halloween board in Mario Party 2. Like that Halloween board the switching of day or night might give you a shortcut or black off your path to the stars. Unfortunately this feature doesn’t help make the boards more interesting. This is rather a shame since most of the boards in the other games in the series were. The day and night feature also works with mini games. Most of the time the day for night switch just changes the setting’s time, but sometimes it may change how you play the mini game. Like with one mini game you have to jump up clouds to as high as you can before the time goes out, but at night you have to go down the clouds as fast as you can. While this may sound neat it just adds a bunch of repetition to the game, because basically you’re just pushing A to jump to the next cloud, and the same mini games seemed to be picked a lot in one game, which also happens to make the game more repetitive..
There’s another new twist this year: The microphone mini games. Each copy of Mario Party 6 comes with a Microphone with no extra cost, which you use to play the microphone mini games. Too bad they aren’t all that fun. They’re basically like any other mini game except with voice recognition. Like one game where one person in a giant robot is trying to destroy three other people in smaller weaker machines, before time is up, except no you can say “Bomb” or “fire”. The microphone had loads of potential, but it just went to boring, uncreative mini games. And just to make things worse the microphone isn’t very responsive, especially if you have an accent of some kind.
Anybody who has at least played one game in the series should be ware of the “Push a certain button as much as you can” or “Push the button that’s indicated” mini games. And we all think it’s pretty fun for a while, but after six years you would think that the developers would think of new ideas. But that’s not the case here. And that’s basically what all the mini games are old ideas used again from the previous mini games in the series. And then the makers try to hide it by putting a new result from the success of doing that objective. Like instead of pushing the right button indicated to stop the shy guy from throwing you off the boat push the button indicated to get the perfect golf swing. At least the others in the series had some new ideas for mini games like Coney Island in Mario Party 5. I can’t remember a single mini game in any Mario Party where you had to catch ice cream falling from the sky and have more ice cream on your cone than your opponents. And if you’re going to repeat the idea of a mini game at least pick the fun ones! Like Fowl Play in Mario Party 3. (It was a duel mini game and there was a chicken running around. First one to catch the chicken wins.) I will say this, though. There is one mini-game called Dunk Bros., and it is just fantastic. It’s a basic two on two basketball game, but it’s unbelievably fun and addictive whether it’s a multiplayer game or not. And there is nothing better than jumping on your friends head for a slam dunk. It’s clearly one of the best mini games ever created.
Mario Party has never been known for its single player mode (Even though, in my opinion the third’s was superb.), but this game takes it too far! First off from my experience there has never been enough difficulty settings in the entire series. Easy mode was always a tad too easy and normal mode was a little hard for me. This on its own drops the fun a person like me can have with this game, but too add to it the solo player mode is horrible. Basically you’re on a game board with only you on it. Each space will determine what type of mini game you’ll have (1vs1, 2vs2, 1vs3 or 1vs1vs1vs1) with the enemies being none other than the three Bowser Juniors. Each mini game you win will be at the mini game bus so you can play it later. But the boards here don’t go in a complete circle. They end at one point. Here’s the catch. The final space has one special mini game, (one of these happens to be Dunk Bros., but the other ones are pretty bad) but if you go over the final space you fall off the board and lose all the mini games you worked so hard for. The game would have been a lot better off with a story mode instead of this, because lets face it, nobody wants to spend 50$ for a solo mode that lasts 5 minutes. And as if the solo mode wasn’t bad enough who wants to win mini games that aren’t even fun.
If you wanted to get this game, because of multiplayer, then I’m sorry to disappoint, but this won’t be the game you’re looking for. Boring mini games, boring game boards, and repetitive gameplay isn’t fun even with friends. Having bad multiplayer just broke one of the major rules of Mario Party. The multiplayer wouldn’t even be good even if it was an online game.
Like all of the Mario Party games, graphically, this game doesn’t do the series justice. If I was shown a screenshot of the game and didn’t know what system it was for I would say it’s a N64 game. Mario Party may not be intended to be the prettiest looking game ever, but you got to beef up the graphics a little. And it doesn’t really help that Mario Power Tennis, which easily has the best character models for any of the characters in this game, was released only a month before this game and makes this game all the more uglier. And the same goes for the sound department. Basically the same sound clips and sound effects we’ve been hearing every year, which isn’t a good thing. I swear all the carnival music is just unacceptable.
And by reading all this you can assume the game has no replay value. The mini games are boring, which will make you turn off your Gamecube pretty quickly, and it lacks a story mode. And there’s not even a decent multiplayer to enjoy with your friends. You’ll basically spend your entire time with Dunk Bros. heck that’s what I did.
Overall Mario Party 6 is a mediocre game. The game boards are all boring and non-inventive, it has bad multiplayer and even worse single player, absolutely no replay value mainly, because the game isn’t very fun to begin with, the day to night switch is useless, the game is horribly repetitive, the microphone had unbelievable potential, but Hudson failed to use it wisely, and they didn’t even improve the graphics or sound department. What’s strange is that Nintendo talks about innovation so much, and they make a game like this. Really the only thing going for this game is the wide character selection, Dunk Bros., and the easy controls, which aren't very good qualities to describe a game if it's good, but then again this game isn't. My final word: Don’t buy or even rent this game. This includes you people who are crazy about the series. Trust me. I grew up with Mario Party, and it’s not very to accept this game is a part of it.
Pros:
+ Large character selection
+ Dunk Bros. is one of the best Mario Party mini games in the entire series
+ Easy Controls
Cons:
- The series still needs more difficulty settings
- Too many non-original mini games
- Horribly dull single player mode
Gameplay: 5/10
Graphics: 5.5/10
Sound: 5.5/10
Replay Value: 4/10
Overall: 5/10
Well that’s the end of my review. I personally think it’s my best review to date. Tell me what I can improve on. All critiquing accepted.
Note: There may have been problems when I copied and pasted this from MS Word so if you spot one can you point out and then I'll fix it.
*Sweats at the fear it may be a bad review*
Developer: Hudson Soft
Publisher: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Players: 1-4
Price: $ 49.99 as of July 4, 2005
Release Date: December 6, 2004
Mario Party originally began on the N64 in 1999, and has had a sequel each year sense then. When Mario Party 2 came out the game was definitely an improvement from the first. A year later Mario Party 3 was released and not only was it the best Mario Party at the time it was arguably one of the N64 games at the time. But after that it went down hill from there. Mario Party 4 was released for the Gamecube, and it just didn’t have near the same caliber of quality that the third did. A year after that another Mario Party was on shelves. This time the fifth and it sure did help the series get back on track. Now we’re here one year later with the release of Mario Party 6 the sixth installment in the series. Did it build on the fifth’s momentum or disappoint fans, again?
In a game of Mario Party four players play on a game board. The objective is to get the most stars, which are randomly placed on the board, but in order to get these stars you need 20 coins to buy them. In order to get these coins you need to win mini games which are randomly selected after everyone has played on that turn. This year there’s a new twist: Day and night switch after three turns, which is very similar to the Halloween board in Mario Party 2. Like that Halloween board the switching of day or night might give you a shortcut or black off your path to the stars. Unfortunately this feature doesn’t help make the boards more interesting. This is rather a shame since most of the boards in the other games in the series were. The day and night feature also works with mini games. Most of the time the day for night switch just changes the setting’s time, but sometimes it may change how you play the mini game. Like with one mini game you have to jump up clouds to as high as you can before the time goes out, but at night you have to go down the clouds as fast as you can. While this may sound neat it just adds a bunch of repetition to the game, because basically you’re just pushing A to jump to the next cloud, and the same mini games seemed to be picked a lot in one game, which also happens to make the game more repetitive..
There’s another new twist this year: The microphone mini games. Each copy of Mario Party 6 comes with a Microphone with no extra cost, which you use to play the microphone mini games. Too bad they aren’t all that fun. They’re basically like any other mini game except with voice recognition. Like one game where one person in a giant robot is trying to destroy three other people in smaller weaker machines, before time is up, except no you can say “Bomb” or “fire”. The microphone had loads of potential, but it just went to boring, uncreative mini games. And just to make things worse the microphone isn’t very responsive, especially if you have an accent of some kind.
Anybody who has at least played one game in the series should be ware of the “Push a certain button as much as you can” or “Push the button that’s indicated” mini games. And we all think it’s pretty fun for a while, but after six years you would think that the developers would think of new ideas. But that’s not the case here. And that’s basically what all the mini games are old ideas used again from the previous mini games in the series. And then the makers try to hide it by putting a new result from the success of doing that objective. Like instead of pushing the right button indicated to stop the shy guy from throwing you off the boat push the button indicated to get the perfect golf swing. At least the others in the series had some new ideas for mini games like Coney Island in Mario Party 5. I can’t remember a single mini game in any Mario Party where you had to catch ice cream falling from the sky and have more ice cream on your cone than your opponents. And if you’re going to repeat the idea of a mini game at least pick the fun ones! Like Fowl Play in Mario Party 3. (It was a duel mini game and there was a chicken running around. First one to catch the chicken wins.) I will say this, though. There is one mini-game called Dunk Bros., and it is just fantastic. It’s a basic two on two basketball game, but it’s unbelievably fun and addictive whether it’s a multiplayer game or not. And there is nothing better than jumping on your friends head for a slam dunk. It’s clearly one of the best mini games ever created.
Mario Party has never been known for its single player mode (Even though, in my opinion the third’s was superb.), but this game takes it too far! First off from my experience there has never been enough difficulty settings in the entire series. Easy mode was always a tad too easy and normal mode was a little hard for me. This on its own drops the fun a person like me can have with this game, but too add to it the solo player mode is horrible. Basically you’re on a game board with only you on it. Each space will determine what type of mini game you’ll have (1vs1, 2vs2, 1vs3 or 1vs1vs1vs1) with the enemies being none other than the three Bowser Juniors. Each mini game you win will be at the mini game bus so you can play it later. But the boards here don’t go in a complete circle. They end at one point. Here’s the catch. The final space has one special mini game, (one of these happens to be Dunk Bros., but the other ones are pretty bad) but if you go over the final space you fall off the board and lose all the mini games you worked so hard for. The game would have been a lot better off with a story mode instead of this, because lets face it, nobody wants to spend 50$ for a solo mode that lasts 5 minutes. And as if the solo mode wasn’t bad enough who wants to win mini games that aren’t even fun.
If you wanted to get this game, because of multiplayer, then I’m sorry to disappoint, but this won’t be the game you’re looking for. Boring mini games, boring game boards, and repetitive gameplay isn’t fun even with friends. Having bad multiplayer just broke one of the major rules of Mario Party. The multiplayer wouldn’t even be good even if it was an online game.
Like all of the Mario Party games, graphically, this game doesn’t do the series justice. If I was shown a screenshot of the game and didn’t know what system it was for I would say it’s a N64 game. Mario Party may not be intended to be the prettiest looking game ever, but you got to beef up the graphics a little. And it doesn’t really help that Mario Power Tennis, which easily has the best character models for any of the characters in this game, was released only a month before this game and makes this game all the more uglier. And the same goes for the sound department. Basically the same sound clips and sound effects we’ve been hearing every year, which isn’t a good thing. I swear all the carnival music is just unacceptable.
And by reading all this you can assume the game has no replay value. The mini games are boring, which will make you turn off your Gamecube pretty quickly, and it lacks a story mode. And there’s not even a decent multiplayer to enjoy with your friends. You’ll basically spend your entire time with Dunk Bros. heck that’s what I did.
Overall Mario Party 6 is a mediocre game. The game boards are all boring and non-inventive, it has bad multiplayer and even worse single player, absolutely no replay value mainly, because the game isn’t very fun to begin with, the day to night switch is useless, the game is horribly repetitive, the microphone had unbelievable potential, but Hudson failed to use it wisely, and they didn’t even improve the graphics or sound department. What’s strange is that Nintendo talks about innovation so much, and they make a game like this. Really the only thing going for this game is the wide character selection, Dunk Bros., and the easy controls, which aren't very good qualities to describe a game if it's good, but then again this game isn't. My final word: Don’t buy or even rent this game. This includes you people who are crazy about the series. Trust me. I grew up with Mario Party, and it’s not very to accept this game is a part of it.
Pros:
+ Large character selection
+ Dunk Bros. is one of the best Mario Party mini games in the entire series
+ Easy Controls
Cons:
- The series still needs more difficulty settings
- Too many non-original mini games
- Horribly dull single player mode
Gameplay: 5/10
Graphics: 5.5/10
Sound: 5.5/10
Replay Value: 4/10
Overall: 5/10
Well that’s the end of my review. I personally think it’s my best review to date. Tell me what I can improve on. All critiquing accepted.
Note: There may have been problems when I copied and pasted this from MS Word so if you spot one can you point out and then I'll fix it.
*Sweats at the fear it may be a bad review*