"It feels like a Birthday Party without cake..."

The Mario Party series has been going on strong for how long now? Since 1999? Each year a new, colorful, exciting new installment has been added to the franchise. However, each time not quite as good as hoped. That is exactly what can be said about Mario party 8. Mario Party 8 is the first Mario Party installment for the Wii. It is also the first Mario Party game that involves the new use of the Wii Remote. I found, however, that the Wii remote is the only thing that has kept this game alive. Relying on the new technology, Mario Party 8 lacks what all the other installments were praised for.

To begin, Mario Party 8 has six brand new boards. The first, a classic "Old school Mario Party" board entitled DK's Treetop Temple. Although it is one of the classic Mario Party board types, it lacks all excitement compared to the new Mario Party innovative board designs. I mean, the theme is DK, how many DK boards are there now, like five? Next, there is a board entitled "Goomba's Booty Boardwalk." This board resembles "Pagoda Peak" from Mario Party 7, for it is a board that is all about racing to the end of a long stretch of spaces. This board relies strictly on chance, and it does tend to constantly fall into the computer's favor. That is why "Goomba's Booty Boardwalk" fails in comparison to previous boards in previous installments. Coins hardly matter at all in this board, and it is just plain old boring. Thirdly, there is board with a totally new concept entitled "Boo's Haunted Hideaway." This board will satisfy you right? Well not quite. Here, you will run around through a haunted house that resembles a maze with dead ends. There is three dead ends throughout the whole entire house, two of which will send you back to start. The other will allow you to purchase a star from Boo for ten coins. This sounds fun right? Well not exactly. When you realize this is another board of the six that the creators decided to have rely strictly on dice roles and chances. The fourth coarse is called, "Shy Guys Perplex Express." I believe this coarse to be the most fun out of the six. It has beautiful scenery, and the coarse design was very creative and well thought out. I suggest you play this one first so you don't get disappointed from the very beginning. Moving along, remember Windmillville from Mario Party 7? Well it's back! No wait, sorry I mistook it for "Koopa's Tycoon Town" due to the fact that the only difference is the building you invest your coins in. Lastly, there is a coarse entitled "Bowser's Warped Orbit." This board also shows exact parallels to a Snowflake Lake in Mario Party 6, and the desert coarse in Mario Party 7. Every player starts out with five stars, and through the use of items you try and steal your opponents remaining stars. It isn't too bad of a course, but it doesn't exactly add to Mario Party 8's subtitle either. "The Wildest Party Ever." The downfall of Mario Party 8 is the fact that only about 3 or 4 of these boards are enjoyable and playable. The remaining just rely way too much on luck of the dice role, and they get old fast. I have played all the previous seven, and believe me, this year's party does not involve skill in the least. How can I possibly credit the playability highly when 4 boards are up to par? How many times can I possibly enjoy playing this game when I have this "huge variety" of boards to choose from?

I guess the creators tried to add a little spice to the board by adding a new gold space called the "Lucky Space." This space takes you to a remote area on the board only accessible through this space. The area is a stretch of blue spaces with 3 coins on top of each space. When you pass a space, you gain 3 coins. When the stretch of spaces ends, you always get a free star. Sounds fun huh? Well when Daisy lands on it 3 times and gets 3 free stars, it isn't quite as fun, and it adds to to my argument that the game relies way to much on chance (or should I say "the computers decision.")

By creating this new and improved "Lucky Space" (that certainly lives up to its name), I guess the makers decided that the happening spaces didn't need to have any excitement to them, because they sure didn't. When you land on a happening space you usually get around 1-5 coins. Some boards shook it up a bit and allowed you to jump ahead a space or two. Holy cow... how creative. In previous installments, every happening space was different then the last. They actually did exciting actions, and took you around the board. Where have the years gone?

Getting over the coarse designs and the creativity, I realized it's pretty hard to get past the next problem, the items. In the past two installments, capsules were used to accomplish various tasks on the board. Now, they changed it to candies. These candies allow you to do the same thing as capsules/items do. The only problem is, they took away all the excitement introduced by the capsules.You cannot throw the candy and claim spaces for your own, and there is only a total of 14 candies in the game, two of which are only used on Bowser's coarse. How exciting is that? Also, certain candies are only relevant to two or so boards out of the six. For example, "Bloway" Candy is used specifically on Goomba's Booty Boardwalk." Does anybody else realize this takes complete excitement and variety from the game play? Who wants a choice of 8 candies per board?

Anyway, if the whole candy thing wasn't bad enough, they also partially ruined the bonus stars. Now you can get a bonus star for almost entire luck... again. I guess it matches the rest of the game. Anyway, you used to get a bonus star for collecting the highest amount of coins, or landing on the most happening spaces. Although it is rare, in Mario Party 8 you can get a star for landing on the most red or blue spaces. Whoa, I know dice roll depends on skill doesn't it? It just seems like you have way to many coins in Mario Party 8, and you quickly find out you always have enough coins to buy a star. It all comes down to the luck of the roll.

Next, two new characters have been invited to join in on the festivities.Those two are Blooper and Hammer Bro. Ok, really. Who thought of this? If you thought Boo was a stretch... These characters add almost nothing to the game play whatsoever. They are unimportant sub-characters to the plot in all of the other Mario games and they don't belong anywhere near playable characters. Why can't Mario Party get it right anymore? Anyway, to unlock these characters you have to suffer through 2 rounds of single player mode. I began to think the makers get a kick out of watching people suffer through this. I really do not enjoy spending two hours playing one other boring computer player alone. Once you unlock the first, you wonder if the next is worth the suffering.

The hardest part of reviewing Mario party 8 is probably putting into words the fact that something is really missing from the overall appeal. Looking back, you realize most of the time you weren't playing it yourself, you were to busy watching the computer choose your fate for you. The game relies way to much on the computer's decisions. You can no longer gloat when you win, because you realize you didn't win, the computer decided that for you.

After suffering through the anger of single player, I decided to invite some people over and party the night away (well not really). What I found was that Mario Party 8 is at its best with other people. With other people, I realized that this game was actually a Mario Party, and I started to actually enjoy it. Even though it suffers from many other things, you realize it is still a Mario Party, and no matter what, you still will have a blast. I don't suggest that you buy this game for single-player mode, or just to play on your own. I also don't suggest you buy this game if you have no friends. You will need them to get your moneys worth out of this game.

The only thing that kept Mario Party 8 from crashing and burning was the mini games. The unique use of the Wii remote keeps the game alive. When it comes down to it, all the mini games in the past Mario Party games were fun, but this game just went the extra mile. Whether you were shaking your hand up and down, or moving your arm back and fourth, every game was beautifully unique and it brought the game out of the boring, continually played boards. I have to say, every Mario Party 8 mini game worked very well. None of them did not work, or were too hard to control (Super Monkey Ball) and I did not have to run on the computer and complain about any being broken.

The second wonderful aspect of the game is the scenery and graphics. Looking at the screen, the characters are delightfully detailed, and the overall appearance is exceptionally well done. Everything is articulate and detailed. Every course looks unique, and it should, this is the Wii! Mario Party 8 makes you feel proud of how far technology has comes. Matching the graphics was the music. Everything sounded catchy and wonderful and nothing was too annoying.

To conclude, Mario Party 8 pretty much suffered from things that the previous installments didn't. The re-playability just wasn't there like it was in the others. Also, the lack of playable boards caused a problem. Thirdly, it just doesn't seem like you are even playing it anymore. In every coarse (and even some mini games now) the game has complete control over what you do, even more than they did in the previous seven. And I must say... they do cheat... a lot. The change of capsules to candy brought the game down another notch, and the new characters did nothing to add anything to the game.

On the brighter side, the mini games were absolutely spectacular. They were unique, exciting, and didn't get old like some mini games in the previous installments. Also, the graphics were transfixing. The colors, the music, the details, it all made the overall appearance of the game wonderfully articulate. The multi-player was pretty fun as well. I believe that Mario Party 8 is probably the most entertaining multi-player games currently on the Wii. Thank goodness the makers of Mario Party 8 decided to do something right!

If you are a die-hard Mario Party fan, I believe you might enjoy this game, you might not. I suggest you rent it first, see if you like it. Chances are you will get bored of it pretty quickly. If you aren't as much of a fan, I suggest you just don't even respond to this year's party invitation.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/19/07

Game Release: Mario Party 8 (US, 05/29/07)