Neal emerges after a bender of (sober) Mario Partying. What's his first impression?
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressions/29437
My personal Mario Party history completely skipped the GameCube era, mainly because they all seemed the same to me. The only reason I took a flier on Mario Party 8 was because in my 19-year-old state, I was obsessed with using college life as a means to experiment with a Mario Party drinking game (It never really went anywhere, but that's the subject of another post).
I am pleased to say that, after eight mainline iterations, Mario Party has finally been updated and refined. After playing through four game boards and numerous extras over the course of a night with friends, Mario Party 9 has become a day-one purchase for me. It's the freshest the series has felt since Mario Party came out in 1998.
The game does this in a few very smart ways. The first one being that turns are a thing of the past. Instead, each game board is linear, with a defined beginning, middle, and end. Also, all four players (or less if you so choose) reside in a vehicle, moving together. What happens is the players rotate rolling the die to move, and when they are the "captain" of the vehicle, they reap the benefit/penalties of whatever space they land on or go past. These additions make the game feel a lot snappier, giving it a much quicker pace than usual.
Mini-games are still a factor, though you don't automatically go to one after everyone rolls. Instead, they either randomly show up after players roll or are triggered by landing on certain spots. Generally, the player who triggered the game has the chance to pick between three, which means you have some degree of choice to play games you enjoy and avoid ones you hate.
Boss battles are another major addition. Twice a game (in the middle and at the end), you team up with the other players to fight a boss. These mini-games are generally excellent, forcing you to cooperate with other players while trying to do the most damage to the boss. The breadth of these different games is surprising, and you'll get to fight classic Mario series enemies such as Dry Bones, King Bob-Omb, and Wiggler.
There are no coins or large stars this time around, as well. Instead, players vie for mini stars, and the person with the most at the end is the winner. There are also purple mini ztars that take away from your total, and naturally, there are dickish ways that you can gain or lose mini stars. It is still Mario Party, after all.
The most surprising part of the game was the Extras menu, which showcased a few of the mini-games in a different form. There is a weird Perspective Mode that lets you play through 10 mini-games in single-player in more of a third-person manner (e.g. right behind your character), Goomba Bowling, which is a novel twist on the sport, and Shell Soccer, which is also a novel twist on the sport.
The best part of all these Extras was the full-fledged and interesting puzzle game included called Castle Clearout. You have to use marbles, which are affected by gravity after you place them and are dropped in groups of three, to create groups of six of the same color. In addition to just making large groupings of marbles, you can make lines, hexagons, and pyramids, which remove all of the marbles of that color, and also dump garbage on your rival's screen if you're playing two-player. It has some issues (in two-player, games can drag on), but it's a welcome inclusion that feels like the mini-games found in Kirby Mass Attack.
Mario Party 9 comes out in North America on March 11. I am shocked at how good it is. If you've always wished the series would be refined, then I implore you to give this game a look.
Topic: Mario Party 9 Impressions (Read 995 times)
