Mario Party 10

After the disappointing changes made during MP9, most notably the all players on the same "car", you would think Nintendo would listen to it’s fans and revert back to the old school way we love. They didn’t. Basically what we get is the same dumb down, simplistic Mario Party 9 that appears to be aimed at 4-7 year old children. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that the target audience is more from the younger demographic, but the great thing about Nintendo is that (even since I was young) they have been able to let developers like Camelot make fantastic MP and Mario Sports games that ALL ages could enjoy.

My friends and I were excited to get this game. When we saw a Bowser mode as well as an amiibo mode (which was supposed to get MP back to the roots) we thought that they were maybe turning back to the old ways. We were wrong.

MP mode itself is exactly the same as it was on MP9. The only difference being that they did add more mini-game squares. That is a good edition, but while still having the ridiculous "all-in-one car" feature, it’s just as if you’re putting icing on a piece of poop, no one wants it to begin with, Not to mention they didn’t even include the same number of maps that MP9 had. What it boils down to is that basically everything is based on luck. You have zero control over where you want to go or do. You mindlessly roll the die and go directly forward until the game ends. Which leads to hardly no replay value at all.

Bowser mode is basically the same as Mario Party mode. The difference is one player will take the Wii U gamepad and will have a chance to chase down the "player car". When Bowser does catch the car (and he will, over and over) he sends all the players to a Bowser mini-game. It’s Bowser’s job, to attempt to eliminate the other players. This game mode sounds fun in theory, until you realize that once a player is eliminated by Bowser, you lose their dice roll. A dice roll you need to escape from Bower, who will always roll 4 die. I have played this mode with friends over a handful of times and only once did the players defeat Bowser.

As for the amiibo mode, it feels like something that was thrown in last second and really isn’t even worth playing. You get one stage to play on. ONE. It’s a square. That’s it. One stage, and it’s square. You can use different amiibo, to change the look or a space or two on the square, but that’s it. The worst part of it all is that you have to use the amiibo to play, which doesn’t sound too bad until you realize you have to use them for EVERYTHING. Every time you roll the die you have to pass the Wii U gamepad, every time you get an item, you have to pass the gamepad, every time you do basically anything, you guessed it, you have to pass the dang gamepad. It’s tedious and makes the game play go by so slow, by turn 3 everyone is tired of playing it.

So after a terrible Mario Party 9 idea fails, Nintendo allows the same disappointing game play ruin another one in the franchise. What was once a must buy Nintendo title is now just as sad game that no one of any age will remember. And that’s sad, because I have fond memories of being a kid, risking my palms, battling my friends in Mario Party 1 & 2 and then even growing up and having a blast with Mario Party 7 and the microphone. I just hope that Nintendo will listen to it’s fans and bring back the goods.

You can unlock everything within 30 minutes, you can play every mini game within 2 hours of playing. There just isn’t much to this at all and I can’t believe it was released as such. I find myself being just frustrated at the luck aspects of the game as a whole. The older games used to make you hate your friends but now it just makes you hate the game and playing it as a whole. I’m returning this because it is just such a disappointment.

Pros:
Lots of mini games for all ages.
Many of the more challenging games are a lot of fun.
The mini games and board games are easy and straight forward to play.
The amiibo mode gives that nice nostalgic Mario Party vibe.
The game is child friendly.
Bowser mode is fun to play, but is very unbalanced.

Cons:
The board game is overly simplified. All characters move together in a cart.
You can buy all characters and levels within the first 3 or 4 games.
The game doesn’t leave you wanting to play again.
The game is luck based. With the removal of stars in Mario Party 9, the game lost its competitiveness. In previous games stars were hard earned. You were protective of them and wanted to keep them. With their removal, they now feel like coins and don’t seem to matter. You felt loss when losing your hard earned stars. Now they have become like coins and don’t matter. In a single turn it is frequently possible to go from first to last due to luck.