Mario Party 6

"You're invited to another Mario Party. I suggest you "lose" your invitation."

Introduction

Let's start this review out with a less-than-rhetorical question; how many parties does Mario NEED?! Seriously, I'm sure all of his friends are tired of having to come back again and again, playing repetitive minigames one after the other. I used to like Mario Party. I loved the first one, really liked the second one, tolerated the third one, slightly disliked the 4th one, didn't even touch the fifth one... and... hate the sixth one. I shouldn't have even rented it at the sleepover me and my pals had, it's like Hudson isn't even trying anymore.

Story

With every installment to this forsaken series the story gets a little more idiotic. In Mario Party 6, the sun and moon dudes are arguing about who's the best or something. I didn't even pay that close attention, honestly. It was boring me to tears. Anyway, Mario and his band of morons decide to compete against each other and earn starts to shut the guys up. I seriously missed the point of getting these stars, so the whole thing sounds like a load of crap.

Graphics

Bland. As. Hell. The Gamecube versions of Mario Party have candy-ass styles and coloured that would appeal to children, but totally make me annoyed. I can barely concentrate on the game. The characters look rough, the backgrounds look unappealing and everything else is not worth noting about. I'm being pretty harsh on this even though the reality is that the graphics are the best part of the game.

5/10

Sound

Sound Effects - Horrible and annoying. It's like every 5 seconds the characters need to shout some stupid phrase or make an unbearable grunt. You can't escape it. I swear, later that night I dreamt of Toad going "WHAAAO" over and over again. Good God. Mario Party was never this irritating.

Music - Not as bad at the sound effects, but still pretty bad. It's painfully generic and happy no matter what the minigame is. I don't want to go in depth of exactly how bad the music is.

2/10

Gameplay

If you were to call this game "Mario's Midnight Knife Fight in the Suburban Streets of LA" but kept everything about Mario Party in it, it wouldn't be any different, right? That's sort of how I feel about the mic add on. It barely adds anything to the actual series except a few shallow and analogous mic games, when the mic add on was advertised as "INNOVATIVE" and "A DRASTIC CHANGE TO MARIO PARTY!". You know what Hudson did? They added something irritating and useless instead of fixing the formula.

Mario Party 6 follows the same gameplay as the previous ones. Roll, move, land on a space x 4, then play a minigame. The minigames aren't that great, unfortunately, and some are obviously recycled. You'll see yourself playing a minigame, then playing a different one and think to yourself "Didn't... I do this before?". It's a ripoff.

The actual boards are... not too hot. Some ALSO feel like repeats, but of previous Mario Party game boards. It must be tough to think of new boards for every installment.
Even though everything else bites, I applaud Hudson for putting in a good system of unlocking items. If it wasn't for the rest of the game being terrible, this would have been a good add on.

3/10

Replay

Uh... there is none. After a few rounds I wanted to throw the game into an incinerator, but alas it was rented. I don't want to pay any fees.

Pros
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+ Slightly good graphics
+ Nice system and number of unlockables if you're dedicated enough to play the game more than once

Cons
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- Horrible sound
- Mic games are useless
- Too formulaic
- Adds NOTHING to Mario Party
- BORING

Final verdict: 4/10

~ Sunny

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/29/05