Masem’s Gaming Blog

Hudson Soft’s Mario Party series has had several poor outings in the last few releases. Mario Party 7 on the Gamecube was rather uninspired and while the microphone use was new, didn’t add much. Mario Party 8 for the Wii used the Wii remote fine, but the minigames were uninspired, and for a next-gen title, it really didn’t look like next-gen that much. Fortunately, Mario Party DS does attempt to correct those poor titles – the gameplay has a bit more strategy to it despite still being based on a lot of luck, and the minigames are enjoyable, and having multiplayer over local wireless is a nice feature. However, it is still a Mario Party game, and will not change your opinion about the series if you dislike it already.

Review Helpfulness: (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Gameplay: A-

The standard approach of the game is unchanged: you play on a large board, collecting coins through movement and minigames in order to buy Stars; the player with the most Stars, and then coins, is deemed the winner of the game. There are 5 boards within the game, and each has a variety of gotchas and other catches to them. For example, normally the Star space will move once someone has claimed a star, but one board features a space that allows you to buy as many as you want when you pass it, while another generate 3 possible locations where the Star may be and you have to pay a smaller amount to check each one. One of the nicer additions is various playspace “traps” that you can collect or buy from the shops on the board; this allows you to select a nearby space that, should another player land on it, you can take coins or Stars from them, but also may be used to grant coins and Stars as well. While there’s still a lot of random chance to these, they do help to keep the gameplay relatively fresh since you can apply a bit of strategy to their use as well. Other items include the usual double/triple dice sets, snag bags to take goodies from others, and a warp pipe to take you right to the nearest star.

Key to any Mario Party game is the presence of minigames and there’s no lack of them here. One good feature is that the game can allow you to filter out minigames that rely on the microphone use, or if you are playing with younger gamers, relatively simple games. In this iteration of the series, Bowser has managed to shrink Mario and his friends to inch-high levels, and thus the bulk of the minigames are based on being of reduced size. Thus, you may have to avoid being vacuumed up, fling cherries like shotputs, or drive wind-up toy cars through obstacles. The games utilize a combination of the traditional controls as well as the stylus (and microphone if enabled). There’s also 2-on-2, 1-on-3, and 1-1 games in additional to 4 player battle games. When playing against computer opponents, the AI isn’t actually all that bad; there are four levels of difficulty, and I found that while games were pretty much straight-forward in Normal difficulty mode, I had some challenge at Hard, and really haven’t beaten the Expert computer in a significant number of mini-games.

The overall game contains a number of variations on gameplay. The Story Mode is a good introduction to each of the boards (though you’re playing the computer opponents on Normal difficulty) and necessary to unlock the boards and minigames for freeplay, and, assuming you win the board, there’s a relatively simple boss battle after each board. You can also choose to play on any board you’ve unlocked, adjusting the standard settings such as computer difficulty, number of turns, and Star handicapping. You can play through any minigame you’ve unlocked as well as additional minigame modes with overall objects, such as by the first to win 5 random minigames, or to set a minigame course to get the best score. There is also a series of puzzle games similar to Tetris that you can unlock, some which actually feature rather unique mechanics, and at least deserve note for providing something beyond just the based board/minigame stuff. Of course, not utilizing the DS connectivity features would be a waste, so Mario Party DS offers local wireless play for up to four players, and even allows for only one copy of the game to be used for all players.

Each of the various modes you play earns “Mario Party Points” which, after achieving certain levels, will unlock certain trophies and badges in the game (for comparison, the “best” badge requires 50,000 MPs to obtain, one time through story mode gave me about 2,000 MPs). There’s also other trophies and unlockables that you can get after satisfying certain requirements, such as beating boss characters a number of times or achieving a minimum minigame score. Save for a couple of game modes that also require unlocking, most of these additional unlockables are “cute” but really don’t have much value beyond bragging rights.

Value/Replayability: B+

In generally, there is potentially a lot of good replay gameplay in Mario Party DS. However, it would have been nice to have one more board or a few more unique mechanics, only because that to have to replay the game as much as necessary to complete the unlockable collections, you’re going to have to play through these boards a lot. I also wonder if it would have been possible to include internet-based play (if Mario Kart DS can do it, there’s no reason it can’t be done here) for those that can’t easily get local wireless going.

Graphics: A-

The game boards and most of the gameplay use 3D graphics, which are nice and sufficient to know which character is which and do perform the appropriate actions when needed.

Audio: B

Not much to say about the music or sound beyond that its appropriate for the game

Overall: A-

Compared to the last few Mario Party releases, the DS version is very interesting and the addition of better computer opponents and some strategic gameplay makes it feel less like a bunch of random stuff that you might happen to win. It’s nothing new compared to other Mario Party games, but certainly fits the bill for such a game on the DS if you have been hankering for such action.

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