Mario Party 5

"Failed miserbly like its cousin Mario Party 4"

Mario Party has been a franchise along for a long time. It all started with an insanely simple concept. It was that several character would take turns rolling dice blocks and moving around a game board. After everyone had taken their turn they would play a mini-game and the winner would receive several Coins with which they could spend however they wanted to. The main object was to collect Stars for 20 Coins each. After finishing the set number of turns the game would be over and the person with the highest amount of Stars was crowned the winner.

It has been quite some time since then, and over the many years the Mario Party franchise has grown considerably. Each Mario Party has several boards, famous Mario characters and plenty of exciting and interesting mini-games for everyone to play. In Mario Party 3 a story mode was invented into the game. You would play boards and if you were the winner you'd move to the next and then play a super long mini-game with the final boss. Pretty cool stuff. Mario Parties 1, 2, and 3 were simply amazing on the Nintendo 64.

All good things die eventually and soon the Nintendo 64 became nothing but a blurred memory to those who still loved it. The Nintendo Gamecube was released later and houses Mario Party 4 as an early release. Mario Party 4 I assumed would take everything that made the previous games amazing, tweak them some and shove it at us for some awesome fun. We got crap. Ugly, hideous, and downright boring and dull and non-inspired crap.

Here we are at Mario Party 5 though. One could assume that Hudson had learned their lesson with what they did to Mario Party 4 and try to get the series back on track and try to regain its fans once more. However hard they tried to get some interesting concepts they were just half done. They just didn't put in all the effort they could for this game.

The graphics have been improved greatly since the previous installment. The boards look simply amazing. Instead of just a flat square like Mario Party 4 we have actual stick out boards. You climb ladders to higher levels, jump up poles and more interactive stuff upon the boards. It looks simply stunning. The characters look much, much better than before. Mario, Luigi and the like haven't actually changed much but Peach, Daisy, and especially Wario look much better and not with oversized dresses and tiny heads. As for Wario his face actually looks right instead of tilted an odd direction. The mini-games also look much better than before with some awesome graphics. You will notice detail that couldn't have been easily installed in previous games like an immense column of smoke coming from blown up balloons, heat waves that bazookas leave once they have been shot, and also other details that are cool to notice should you have a keen eye for detail.

Mario Party 5 also contains a story mode that isn't the most interesting of all things. Remember the Star Spirits that Mario saved in Paper Mario? They now watch over Dream Depot, some mystical place in the sky where the Star Spirits make the good dreams and wishes of kids come true. Its not a Mario Party without Bowser somewhere in it, so he decides to invade Dream Depot. Simple enough. He then uses the Star Spirits power to make the nightmare's of the world come true instead of dreams and its up to the player to fight through multiple boards and have a showdown with Bowser. Its incredibly stupid. This story really slaps the kiddy factor onto Nintendo when they don't want it. I don't actually enjoy playing a game where there's something called "Dream Depot". Also, Koopa Kid, Bowser's minion, splits himself into Red, Blue, and Green Koopa Kid often in the game. That doesn't really cut it for me when I want something interesting.

The gameplay is where Mario Party 5 falls flat into the trash bin like its predecessor Mario Party 4. Its just half done. Everything in the game only feels half complete which is really disappointing. There are six boards this time around and a seventh unlockable Bowser's Nightmare boards. The other six boards revolve around different "dreams". There is Toy Dream, Sweet Dream, Pirate Dream among others. Each of these dream related boards have a bunch of themed stuff placed on their boards. Pirate ships and cannons and treasure on Pirate Dream, a toy train and soldier men with wind-up keys on Toy Dream and so on. It seems interesting at first but these kind of events will happen so many times during the game you just want to skip them, and you can't. Gameplay is also very slow. Characters run around at a snail's pace on the board without any way to speed up their movements.

On the plus side, two new playable characters have appeared. You can play as Toad, the previous host of Mario Party and Koopa Kid, a newcomer nobody really appreciates. That may be fun and all, but remember the story of the game. There is a story mode this time around as well and it drops the hammer on the floor, so to speak. Instead of traveling around the board gathering Stars against 3 other players to become the winner, you are stuck on a syndicated version of each board with the Red, Blue, and Green Koopa Kids with you. The object is now to duel them (either by passing them, landing on a space they are on or land on a Duel space). Then if you win you steal 15 Coins from them and vice versa. If a Koopa Kid loses all their coins they are out. Same goes for you so you must start over at that point. If you make it to the end then you get to play a mini-game with Bowser and save Dream Depot. All of the Koopa Kids roll at the same time on a zoomed out board, speeding things up. Everything is over quite fast so its a short story mode, yet a very poorly planned one because all you can play are duel games.

There are some other modes as well. There is Super Duel Mode where you can create a custom vehicle out of machine parts and use it to battle an enemy vehicle, shooting weapons at each other to wipe out your enemy as fast as you can. It is a small idea that could be expanded it bit more if they tried hard enough making it another disappointing mode. There is also an extra mode with some other mini-games attached to it. There's a miniature Mario Party board game there where little token pieces move around a dotted board reaching cards that the players hope are Stars and landing on roulette wheels to steal or give items or Stars to other players. Its kinda boring since everything moves so slowly. There is also Ice Hockey which I admit is very fun. If you have friends then that may be the one mini-game you will be playing the most. The rest of the mini-games within Mario Party 5 are very dull and repetitive. Many games require luck which is impossible to train for and button mashing. I can understand one or two button mashing games, but nearly 15 is outstanding and totally not necessary.

Finally in Mario Party 5 gameplay wise are the addition of Capsules. Instead of items on the game board you pass a Capsule Machine and they will hand you a random capsule. These are kinda like items. Mushrooms make you roll more dice blocks, Bob-omb Capsules steal Coins from other players among other effects. But you actually have to pay coins to use Capsules on yourself. That kinda defeats the purpose if you have to pay extra to reach a Star before someone else does. Ruins to hole strategic concept of the game.

Finally to be discussed is the replay value. Because of all the horrible things that were only half done in this game its not one of the parties I enjoy coming back to. The game gets very boring fast with its awful mini-games and boards. If Hudson had put all the effort they could into this game then I bet the end result would be much better than what we are playing currently. Sadly, that isn't the case here and we are stuck with a half finished game.

Buy or Rent? A definite rent or even a stay away. If you hated Mario Party 4 then you certainly won't enjoy this game any better. You may even hate this one more. Get Mario Party 6 instead, or a used Nintendo 64 and the other 3 installments on that system since they were perfect back then.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 02/04/04, Updated 07/31/06