Party Game Sundays: Mario Party 10 (Part 1)

Recently we've been taking a break from playing Party Games on Sundays, but today ushered in a new era of Party Gaming. We brought everything full circle and played the newest Mario Party release. I don't think I've ever talked about it here, but Party Game Sundays was initially started to play Mario Party.

One day we decided to play Mario Party, and then things spiraled out of control and we decided we had to play and own them all. Each week we would play another Mario Party game, which culminated with us playing all 9 on New Years Day of 2014. I never really liked Mario Party as a franchise, and I still don't. I do however recognize that it can be fun in the right scenario. 

Even though I dislike Mario Party I decided a long time ago that I needed to purchase Mario Party 10, and that we had to play it. We surprisingly played a whole bunch of it and that's why this is only the first part. We played the Mario Party mode and didn't even get to touch the cool new Bowser mode, which people seem to claim is the best part of the game. We'll get to that at a later date though! 

There's no party like a Mario Party! Well, maybe a doughnut party.

So, I went into this full expecting to hate every moment. I actually enjoyed myself a fair amount. Mario Party 10 is a fun, but deeply flawed game. For some reason it carried over most of the bad gameplay changes from Mario Party 9. Prior to 9 each player would individually roll a die and move the number of spaces they got on the board. The goal was to collect coins by landing on blue spaces, and winning mini-games. The coins could then be spent on stars, and items. Mario Party 9 did away with all of that. Instead all the players are seated together in a car and take turns moving it. Coins and stars were removed in favor of mini-stars. The player with the most mini-stars at the end of the board wins!

On the surface those changes don't sound terrible, but they have some detrimental effects on the overall flow of the game. Purchasing stars and using items actually added an element of strategy to the chaotic shitstorm that Mario Party tends to be. Mini-stars seem to take all of that away. You get them for passing certain spaces and winning mini-games. The problem that we seemed to have was one person would get off to an early lead and then keep the lead. Once you pass a certain threshold it's almost impossible for anyone to catch up. You can lose mini-stars quite easily, but at a certain point it just isn't enough.

Which leads to my other issue with the game, but this one is more just an issue with Mario Party. It's super random. The mini-stars make it even more random. If you're winning by a large margin like I said, then it's very hard for the other players to catch up. It is possible for everyone to lose half their mini-stars quite frequently. This can get super frustrating, because even though you you may be crushing it during the mini-games you can still get totally boned and lose for no reason. Basically what I'm saying is the game takes no skill to win, and it's random. At least before there was a stupid random element to the game, but you actually had to think about where to move and when to buy a star. This is just picking up mini-stars and hoping the game gives you a ton and takes them away from everyone else.

No joke, this was the mini-star spread in one of our games...

All of that aside, the mini-games are actually pretty rad. Mario Party mini-games are usually pretty good and these are no exception. Mario Party 8 had a ridiculous amount of motion control and a lot of the games controlled like garbage. Mario Party 9 did away with that because of all the complaints and did everything with the buttons and d-pad. Mario Party 10 is in the middle. It has a lot of basic motion controls, and a lot of games that exclusively use the buttons. It makes for a wide variety of game controls and game types. We did everything from catch fish to hit golf balls. The game does a good job of varying the activities you're doing. It doesn't seem as if the game has a whole lot of mini-games to offer though. We only played a handful, but we started to see repeat choices and that's a total bummer. It was cool to see that each stage had its own unique mini-boss and boss mini-games associated with it.

The most infuriating part of the game to me is when you tie with someone in a mini-game. Instead of going into sudden death, or using some other determining factor to decide a winner you have to roll a die. Whichever person gets the higher number is the winner! I can't even begin to describe how annoying it is when you desperately need a win, but the person rolls one higher than you. No one deserved that win, because all you did was roll a freaking die! It's 100% chance! My main issue with Mario Party as a whole is that it's too reliant on chance. I realize it's a board game, but in most of them you still need to use strategy. Sure, the first 8 had some semblance of that, but 9 and 10 are completely devoid of it!

I feel like I end up saying this every time I talk about a first party Wii-U game, but Mario Party 10 looks incredible. The graphics are ridiculous, which makes each stage exciting to go to for the first time. The magic fades a bit if you look at some of the background textures, but that's not really the point. Nintendo is great with their art direction and it has been leading to some beautiful games. The sad part to me is that this game costs $50. If I wasn't going to be playing this with a group of friends who will play Mario Party with me again I never would have spent the money on this and if I had, then I would have been severely disappointed. Just by playing through all the maps, we were able to unlock almost everything worthwhile the game had to offer. Yes I'm saying this before having played what is supposedly the "best" mode, so I'll defer my final judgement until after I play it.

This image perfectly represents how I feel about the Mario Party franchise.

Look forward to part two next week!

Game Time - February 2015

I only played two new games in February. Sure, I played a whole ton of Inazuma Eleven 2 and 3 on stream, but this month I'm here to tell you all about the hot new releases I played!

Well, I guess the first one isn't so hot. It's technically not new either... I'm almost ashamed to say that one of the two games I played a ridiculous amount is One Piece Treasure Cruise. It's a mobile game, and it's not exactly what I would call an amazing game. It's not even that fun to play. I sure played the hell out of it though, and will probably continue to do so.

The game I played the most in February was just as I predicted in the last edition of Game Time, and that was Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. I pre-ordered the New 3DS XL bundle from GameStop. The way GameStop does pre-orders for exclusive bundles is stupid, so I thought I wasn't going to get it until the 23rd. However, it came a week earlier than I had expected which afforded me a great deal of extra time to hunt monsters.

This month we only have two games to talk about, but I definitely have a bunch to say about both. It's game time!

One Piece Treasure Cruise

While browsing Siliconera I found an article about a stealth release of One Piece Treasure Cruise here in the U.S. Being a huge One Piece fan I downloaded it, no questions asked. I had nothing better to do, so I ended up playing it a whole lot the night it came out. Normally I download mobile games and expect them to be minor time killers, or something I'll play for a week and then give up on. It's surprising, but I genuinely like One Piece Treasure Cruise and will continue to play it for the foreseeable future.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's a great game. It's not. In fact, it borrows heavily from the Puzzles and Dragons formula. You collect units, some of which are generic pirates and marines, while many units are One Piece favorites like Luffy and Zoro. You build a team of six units in order to battle. In order to battle you need to tap the screen at the right time. Words fly around the character being attacked and eventually converge in the center of the enemy. If you tap your next unit right when the words converge you'll get a "perfect." You'll do more damage and be granted a multiplier for future attacks. 

The part where it's like Puzzles and Dragons is outside of battle. The way you keep your units, level them up, and evolve them are all ripped right out of P&D. Each unit has a stat and color associated with them. For example Luffy is red, which is the color for strength. As you play you'll collect units which you can feed to the units you use frequently. If you feed Luffy other red characters he'll get bonus experience for the color match. Once a unit reaches their max level you can evolve them, which obviously makes them stronger. 

In order to evolve a unit they must be max level. In addition you need to have the proper "evolution" type units. It's the same as in P&D, except the evolution units take the form of crabs, seahorses, dragons, and penguins. Each day of the week there are special levels where you can collect the things you need in order to evolve your units. Each unit you feed to another one costs in game money. The higher the level of the unit you're feeding, the higher the cost is. That's why you want to try to get turtles, which grant a ton of experience.

The team in this picture is nuts. No way they started with that...

Yeah, it's a mobile game. Each stage takes a certain amount of stamina and when you run out you have to wait for it to recharge. If you want you can pay 0.99 for a rainbow fruit. You can use them to refill your stamina, try to recruit special units, increase the amount of units you can carry, and come back to life when you lose in battle. So far there has been absolutely no reason for me to even think about throwing money at the game. They were having a launch event that gave a rainbow fruit every day. Now there's a new event for the game reaching 1 million downloads, which is also giving one fruit a day. Currently I'm sitting at 30, which is a ton. Shit, that would cost $30!

It's definitely not a masterpiece, and it's normally not even the kind of thing I'd play. However, I love me some One Piece so that's helping out quite a bit. The one thing that bothers me is how little content there seems to be in the game currently. It only goes up to the fight with Arlong, which is almost nothing in the grand scheme of things. For some reason they've decided to release one island a month, which is cool, except for the fact that the Japanese version of the game is way farther along. I know they need to try and sell each new batch of units, but it seems like they could have thrown it all out at once and had people going insane to buy a chance to get their favorite character. I'm not a mobile business man though, so what do I know?

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

In April of 2013 I found myself deep in the clutches of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. I tried the demo and for some reason that I can't truly explain it hooked me. Since then I've played over 400 hours of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, which is by far the most played game on my Wii-U. Eventually the game's grip on me loosened and I moved on with my life. When I saw that Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate would be coming stateside I was ecstatic. My body was ready to dive deep into the Monster Hunter universe again.

A few weeks prior to the game's release I began to feel some apprehension. I began to think about whether or not my love for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was something that could be repeated. See, this past year I played Dark Souls and loved it immensely. I actually think that Monster Hunter allowed me to appreciate Dark Souls, whereas I wouldn't have previously. I will reiterate, I love Dark Souls. It is now one of my favorite games of all time. Dark Souls 2 on the other hand I did not like quite as much. It wasn't as well put together as the original, and it was trying to emulate something I had played a loved. This is why I thought of Monster Hunter. Each iteration is very similar in terms of mechanics and general gameplay. What if my love of Monster Hunter 3 couldn't be replicated?

The Gore Magala is an awesome new monster.

I'm glad to let you know that my love of Monster Hunter 3 can, and has been replicated. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is everything I had hoped it would be and more! It's the same monster hunting action I loved before, but it has so many new elements that make it even better. For starters you can totally jump now. That might sound like a seriously mundane thing, but it completely changes the game. You can run off of edges, and in a Zelda-like fasion your hunter will fling themself into the air. In the air you can attack, ad if you manage to knock the monster down you can mount it! This triggers an animation of your hunter holding on for dear life. You have to repeatedly stab the monster until a bar fills up. The monster will struggle, so at specific times you need to stop attacking and hold on. If you succeed the monster will fall and you'll have free reign to beat it down for a few moments. It's pretty brutal, but very effective.

There are tons of nuances that people who've played the series will pick up as they go. There is one major change that benefits the series greatly though and that is the addition of a proper tutorial. Normally I wouldn't celebrate the addition of a tutorial, but for Monster Hunter it makes all the difference. If I hadn't looked up tutorial videos for the previous entry in the series I never would have been able to pick it up. There is so much that the series just assumes you know and at times it can be very frustrating. Now that's not really something new players need to worry about. Since the game has a legitimate story now there are characters who will tell you what to do as you go on hunts. There are tons of missions in the beginning of the game that are dedicated to teaching you all the basics, and even a bunch of later missions that teach you some sweet advanced techniques. There are even tutorial missions for each of the weapons that tell you what they do and what attacks are effective in what situations! It's crazy that it took the developers so long to put a basic tutorial in, but now new players can ease into the game. I'm sure there are a bunch of hardcore fans who are upset by this addition, but personally I think it's a huge step forward.

I still use the Great Sword exclusively.

Just like with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate I've played this game a whole lot so far. I think I'm sitting at around 85 hours right now. It's cool, because it seems like I still have a lot of content to get through. Somehow there are even more monsters in this than there were in 3, and there were a whole boatload in that. You can bet that when I'm not streaming Inazuma Eleven, I'm playing Monster Hunter. If you've never played the series before or are scared to try it you should read the thing I wrote when I first played it here.

And Then There Were Games

March will finally be the month when I begin to buy a ton of new games each month. Off the top of my head I can think of Final Fantasy Type-0, Mario Party 10 (*Barf*), Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stones, and Bloodborne. At some point I will be streaming all of these except for Mario Party, because no one wants to see Mario Party, including me...

Anyways, I need to get back to playing Monster Hunter. I'll see you all next time.