"Mario Party is back......., for the 7th time too."

The Mario Party Series has went on for quite a long while. The original Mario Party will always be a great game. Right now, you'd be thinking that the original would have the most basic minigames ever compared to the newer Mario Party games, but I had to say that Mario Party 1 did have the best minigames out of the Series. I have played all the Mario Party games except for the second one. The N64 ones were great. As for the GC ones, Mario Party 4 was the best Mario Party I played for the GC, but had the least minigames. Then there was Mario Party 5, it got alittle worse due to the Sound and a few other gameplay styles. Then Mario Party 6 came in with more dissappointments. Now Mario Party 7 is here and doesn't really improve much. All in all, the Mario Parties for the GC get slightly worse, but fortunately, not so much to make them look terrible or bad. They are still fun to play and this latest entry should be no exception.

Gameplay:7/10- Same old gameplay with few new twists, just like any other Mario Party game. Though, the story in the game is kind of boring, but not as bad as Mario Party 6's. Mario has been invited to a cruise vacation and he invited all his friends. Bowser wasn't invited and was so mad, that Mario's Vacation would turn into a disaster. It's up to him and his friends to stop Bowser from ruining their party. Once again, another bad story, but expected to be though.

Last years Mario Party consisted a Solo Mode for the lonesome to play. That Mode(in Mario Party 6) was made to unlock minigames easily. I liked that idea, but I wanted a story mode like Mario Party 5. The Singleplayer here didn't really help at all, but can be fun only for a few days because in this mode, you go through all the boards in order and you have certain objectives depending on what board you are playing in. You could play this mode with another friends as well, but I wouldn't say it would be for the better though. I wished they add the Solo mode from Mario Party 6, because that was very useful to unlock minigames.

Now for the multiplayer. Mario Party 7 is still a fun game to play. It's essentially a board game. Up to 4 players( I'll talk about the 8 player mode later) can play and the objective is to collect the most Stars out of anyone else. After everyone takes their turns, they play in a mini game and go back take turns and so on. There are six all-new game boards to play in, but unfortunately, like Mario Party 6, each board has different objectives to earn Stars. One has the basic Mario Party objective. It's Just like the ones you played previously. Another one would involve using chain chomps to steal your opponents stars. Thats all I'm going to tell for the objectives, because I don't want to ruin the game for you. All these different objectives from the different boards are nice in all, but Hudson should add options so that you could play any of the board games with all these objectives because you wouldn't want your favorite game board to have a boring or bad objective.

The minigames in Mario Party 7 are good, though some are bad. There are over 80 minigames to play in. Most of the Minigames were pretty much action and their were no luck games to be found. Those games were annoying, but they could still be fun. Depending on what spaces you or your opponents land on, the minigame could be a 4 player mini game(Which are free for all minigames), 1 Vs. 3, 2 vs. 2, duel, battle minigames, and many other extra types. Oh yeah, the mic from Mario Party 6 returns. But like Mario Party 6, the board game automatically saves for every turn. There is still no option to choose "don't save" or save after one turn. I wanted that option back and I think it was still gone due to the Mic option, but the Mic minigames were still fun. There is also a minigame mode, to take away the board game and go straight to the action.

When you are playing a duel against someone, you can no longer wager coins which was what I liked from the previous games and now was replaced with the Slot of Stupendous which can range from stealing ten coins to stealing Stars. Come on Hudson, give us more options to stuff. Also ever since MP5, Battle games happen randomly, which I think should have spaces on the boards.

New to the series is the edition of the 8-Player Mode. I haven't played this mode yet because I don't have enough people, so I may only know a little of it. I think that there are 4 teams and 2 people in each group have to share a controller. I wouldn't know if it was flawed or not, because I haven't played it.

Graphics: 7/10- Oh, where to begin? Mario Parties 4 and 5 had great graphics, but then Mario Party 6 had some worse graphics and these aren't really any better. The Character Modelings are pretty bland and everything except the water lacks texture. To its credit though, the water int game has more texture than MP6 and looks fantastic. Plus the board game, Neon Heights, while not having rich texture, the variety of buildings and other styles look great. Mario Party 7 doesn't have bad graphics at all, but they could be better. Mario Party 4 and 5 still look better. Though all else I can say is that the graphics here are very colorful like most Mario Party games.

Sound: 6/10- Well this time, the sound has improved quite enough from Mario Party 6. Honestly, all the GC MP games sound were tolerable. MP4, having the best sound with simple music. Then MP5, with having more childish and annoying music. On to MP6 with less childish music, but with more happieness and comedy. This game continues that style with MP6 but this game has better music overall. The Board maps had some very catchy music. The Minigames have some decent if annoying music. Suprisingly, Sound effects haven't changed since MP5. The voices are the same from MP6. Bring back the voices fromMP4/MP5. Those were so much better. Especially Bowsers voice. Oveall, the sound here has been improved, but not as good as MP4.

Value:7/10- the same with every Mario Party game. Fun to play if you have three other people. Two would be decent, but bad if you are playing by your self. There are many unlockables which I think quite alot were useless, but I wouldn't know until I unlocked them myself.

Mario Party 7 is still a game that fans will enjoy. I enjoyed it myself too. I believe it was okay to release 3 to 4 Mario Party games for each console since in ways they can improve over the old ones. We all know the old ones would always be classics, but you're trying to find options on the GC, here's my advice(s). If you want the most simple one to enjoy and can tolerate the less minigame selection, Choose MP4. If you want more minigames that are fun too and can tolerate few changes, choose MP5. MP6 should have the same values with this MP7. All these MP's are still fun to play and the Series may continue if not. Like I said before, every release of MP dissapoints, but not so much to make any of them stray too far or make any of them boring. Well.......... at least so far.

Note*- scores are not necessarily averaged to any game I review. They could vary.

Score: 6.6/10(C+)

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/23/06