Mario Party 8

In Mario Party 8 the Star Carnival rolls into town, and MC Ballyhoo, (the main host) along with Big Top, Ballyhoo’s talking top hat, challenges everyone to the “Star Battle” which the winner is crowned Superstar and wins a year’s worth of candy with a relic called the Star Rod. Bowser comes along to steal the Star Rod, and it is up to the player to save the Star Carnival. New characters Blooper and Hammer Bro have been added to the character roster making 14 playable characters. There are many mini games in Mario Party 8. Once again, no mini games from previous editions appear. There are 8 types of minigames in the game: 4-P, 1 vs. 3, 2 vs. 2, Battle, Duel, Challenge, Extra, and Last. The controls range from pressing a button repeatedly to using the control stick and buttons. There are no Bowser minigames, unlike the previous installments in the series, however, there is a minor Donkey Kong minigame.There are many mini games in Mario Party 8. Once again, no mini games from previous editions appear.

The rules specific to these different boards could’ve injected some much-needed strategy to the action, if the game just would’ve let them, but fortunes still reverse so severely and so easily that any planning seems futile.Perhaps even more disappointing than the same-old structure of Mario Party 8 is its lackluster presentation. The Mario Party games have never looked particularly amazing, and have relied on the strength of its cast of characters and a real air-horn level of enthusiasm to make up the difference. Mario Party 8 is certainly loud in multiple senses, with a garish color palette and a stomping, blaring marching-band soundtrack, but the visual fidelity hasn’t been improved at all in the move from the GameCube; in some ways, it actually looks worse now.

Mario Party had been the only persistent minigame franchise for years, and Hudson got a little too comfortable because of it. The fact that there are more interesting minigame collections out there now, like Rayman Raving Rabbids, puts that laziness in stark relief and makes it more difficult to tolerate. If you’ve got the patience to dig past the skill-free board game portions of Mario Party 8, there are some genuinely inventive minigames to be played. The point, though, is that you shouldn’t have to dig at all.

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