The Mario Party franchise has been alive for 10 years now. It's unique design cleverly combines the minigame genre with the popular, real-life board games everyone enjoys. Unfortunately, after 7 (Or was it 9?) Mario Party games, Mario Party DS seems very repetitive.
The story begins when Mario and his friends are shrunk down to microscopic size, and must go on a seemingly rushed adventure to grow back to regular size. There are only 5 different boards to play on, and each one has it's own unique factor. For example, the Donkey Kong stage lets you but as many stars as you want to buy in that one spot, instead of the location constantly moving. Each board is also concluded with an easy to figure out boss battle. The game, as always, revolves around collecting stars by randomly rolling a dice to move enought spaces to earn a star. After each player has rolled, minigames are played in order to earn coins. ON special occasions, minigames are wagering, winner-takes-all type things. 10 coins are required to earn a star(
) and coins can also be used to buy items that steal opponents stars and coins. The player who has the most number of stars after 10 rolls each goes on to face the boss. Sadly, YOU must be the one to face the final boss, because the computer automatically loses the battle.
After 8 games, Nintendo seemed to have ran out of ideas. On the board, there are three different colored tiles, red, blue, and green. Red makes you lose 3 coins, blue makes you share 10 coins with one other character, and green gives you 3 coins. Some spaces you land on give you a chance to earn coins through luck. Affter 5 rolls, Bowser comes in and gives the person currently in 4th place to have a chance to spin a wheel to get either a good outcome(100 stars) or a bad outcome(your coins are shared equally with everyone else) Sound familiar?
The minigames manage to make up for this repetiveness. A lot of the games revolve around the concept of the make and touch screen, the most anticipated factors of the DS on it's realease date. The teams are different for every game: 1 vs 3, 2 vs 2, or 1 vs 1 vs 1 vs 1. Unfortunalely, thas is also over-simplified with it's Practice option. This allows you to take many,many practice sessions
The Game also includes Party Mode(4 human players on one board) MInigame Mode(Play unlocked minigames) The Pillar(Work your way up to the top of a pyramid by playing minigames)
Multiplayer(connect to someone without the game) and Boss Mode(Beat all the bosses with a record time{Unlocked after Story Mode})
Including the somewhat crappy graphics of the DS, this title really seems thrown together. The minigames help a little bit, but the game seems very repetitive, not just in the whole Mario Party series, bot in it's own game. You can only race across a clothesline on a coat hanger so many times before getting bored. Don't worry though: Mario's good reputation is kept spotless with Mario Strikers, Mario Galaxy, and of course, Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Rating: 4/10
Subject: Review: Mario Party DS 
Thu May 22, 2008 8:36 am
