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!