Super Mario Party

This is a real misstep, with tiny maps and mini games which aren't really very fun. Just play Mario Party 7, to be honest.

I haven't played a Mario Party game in at least 4 years, I remember back in my Senior year of college I was introduced to the Mario Party games by my friends and we'd play them during that winter and during my final semester in college we'd play the first three Mario Party games on a regular basis during our game nights on the weekends, and it brings back good memories, although 2 was probably the one we played most, 1 just felt too outdated and 3 didn't have as fun maps or mini-games. I happened to visit a good portion of my college friend group a few weeks ago and they had this on switch and we played it. Its way different in terms of controls and style, most of these mini-games center around motion controls. The maps feel similar to the past games with the item shops you can buy and mushrooms you can use to get extra die rolls.

I guess my problem is it really felt a bit more random than previous Mario party and this game didn't feel like it added anything significant. The game we played was something like 30 or so rounds, and the stars were only 10 coins, and each time someone bought a star, another star spawned in that same area over and over and over, which began to felt cheap and unfair. I'm not sure if this was random luck, but it was annoying seeing the star spawn in the same area only a few spaces away from where the last star was. The other thing was I felt coins were way too abundant in this. Everyone in our game was able to afford enough to steal a star from another player and everyone was able to buy the item that transported them to the star. I remember in the older Mario Party games coins weren't that easy to come by and it was actually a gamble to choose whether to buy an item or save up for the star. But in this game, I ended up getting 50 coins saves up more than one time, something I don't think I ever did in the past Mario Party games. Sure this game occasionally punishes you and there are traps and spaces that can take away your coins, but to be honest, its not quite as punishing as previous games.

Now the mini-games, are okay. They are somewhat fun, but come nowhere near as memorable as the ones in Mario Party 2. Plus they kept the annoying button mashing games. I mean, Mario Party just has been around for too long and Nintendo just keep giving us the same game with slight variations. This game is no different. This does have a co-op mode where you help your friends in mini-games and row a boat through a river, and this mode was fun and different, but it didn't feel unique enough, and was way too easy. I get that Nintendo needed to put a Mario Party on Switch since that's their big new console and sales are massive, but I just wish Mario Party would go back to its roots at this point. It was most fun when it was just a simple party game with simple, yet memorable mini games and maps. Instead we just got another Mario Party game that will quickly be forgotten when the next one comes out. People still plug in their N64's and break out the emulators at their parties to play Mario Party 2 and I feel like that is just a long, lost era where Party games were fun and competitive.