N-Philes

Mario Party 4

Posted by Archived.

The Mario Party franchise began life on the Nintendo 64 in 1999 and has seen a subsequent every year up until now. If my math serves me correct, and it should, that means we're on Mario Party 4. For those of you unfamiliar with the Mario Party concept, imagine a big board game with Mario characters and special little mini-games after each player has had one turn. Along the way, you collect stars, which are like points. Whoever has the most stars at the end of the game wins. Hot diggity. Please note that the Mario Party series sucks by yourself, you need to have three other friends or it's simply not worth it.

Each summer, my sister and I have rented the latest Mario Party installment and devoured it. Here's my brief overview of the series. Mario Party was cool. I was down with it. It was remarkably unfair and had a few kinks to work out, but, all in all, it was a good game. A few mini-games were so horrible, like spinning the joystick repeatedly in a circle, that they caused blisters. Mario Party 2 fixed all of the problems, got rid of the dangerous games, and upped the ante. All the levels were costume themed. The characters dressed up as pirates and cowboys and other things, oh my. It was absolutely awesome. So, we naturally expected Mario Party 3 to be even better. Alas, the costumes were gone and somewhere along the way, the fun was too. My sister agrees, it just wasn't fun anymore. And I know it's not just that we were tired of the formula, because I went back and played Mario Party 2 with my friends and had an excellent time.

So naturally, when I heard a Gamecube version was coming, I was less than enthralled. Mario Party 3 really left a bad taste in my mouth, and I honestly was expecting the same from Mario Party 4. But this one's had a longer development time than the rest, instead of one year it was a whole year and a half. Truthfully, it could have used more.

The Mario Party franchise has never been known for taking advantage of a system's graphical capabilities. This one is more of the same. It just looks shoddy compared to graphics hogs like Super Mario Sunshine and Super Smash Brothers: Melee. I'm not asking for much, but there are no graphics intensive items that would give a reason for them to look like N64 graphics.

Why must Nintendo insist on subtitles?!? There's a whole Toad FMV with subtitles and then at the end, it says, in the freaky new Toad voice, "Let's party!" Scares the crap out of me every time. Sound in the rest of the game is your typical average game fare. Nothing special, but nothing 80's movie score either. So, I guess that's good.

Nintendo did its best to make the one player mode somewhat enjoyable, but there's a reason it's called Mario Party, emphasis on the "Party." It's not Mario Sit By Yourself Because You Have No Friends or Mario You Have to Play This Game By Yourself Because All Your Friends Think You're a Geek for Writing at a Nintendo Website. Guess which one I was forced to play. There's a mode where you can play all the minigames, but I'm sorry, I don't really feel a sense of accomplishment when I bust out my mad button-mashing skills on a computer. The computer, if it wants to, put in a random button mash and beat me anytime. That angers me. Minigame mode is not for me. There's also a mode where you must "beat the boards" on one player mode. Ha ha, no thank you. There's only been one more time in my life where I can describe being so bored, and that was playing Jeremy McGrath Supercross World.

This game gets an N-Philes score of D.

There's a reason why the original Mario Party was one of the top rentals for the N64. It's not a game you own. The new minigames don't add anything, and I just don't care for it. The franchise has become an exercise in monotony.

Posted in: Reviews

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