"Throwing yourself a party? Yeah, me too..."

I like to think of myself as a Mario Party kind of guy. There are lots of people that groan when they flip through a magazine and see that another installment of Mario Party is coming out. Personally, I love to play new Mario Party games. I've only ever played the first three on the N64 and Mario Party 4 for the Gamecube, so I was very excited to see that one of my favorite game series was jumping to a portable system like the DS. I got a lot of what I expected to see.

Every Mario Party is essentially the same. You are playing a board game, "rolling" dice to move around the board, with the goal of reaching the star spot to purchase a star. The person at the end of the game with the most stars wins. You can purchase stars on the board, but you have to have coins to do it. You get coins by landing on certain spots on the board and by winning mini-games which are played after every round. The system really hasn't changed much since the very first Mario Party, and in my mind, that's a good thing.

Mario Party DS boasts 5 different playing boards. In my opinion, the more boards the better. The five that are presented are pretty small in comparison to the earlier versions of Mario Party. This is really a problem because there are several places to buy inexpensive items throughout all of the boards. Rarely a turn goes by that a player does not reach an item shop and pick up an item that allows the player to use two dice blocks on their turn. Towards the end of the game, players can purchase items that give them 3 dice blocks. This is bad news on a small board, as players can literally pick up multiple stars on a single turn because there are only so many places for the star to be, and if you can move 15+ spaces on a single turn, you can get to it a few times per turn.

Still, the board diversity is pretty good, as none of the boards play like the other ones do. That is a good thing, as even though you may not particular board, a friend of yours might, and there is some variety for everyone to choose from. But like I said, all of the boards are pretty small, and items are easy to get, so strategy is lost on a lot of the boards.

I felt the story wasn't very interesting. Mario and his pals are shrunk down and must go through boards to win the "Sky Crystals" from the "bosses." If you finish the board in first place, you must play a special mini-game against the boss of the particular level. These range from incredibly easy to moderately difficult. It gives the game more of a platform feel, as a few of them aren't really mini-games per se, but more like the final battle with Bowser from Mario 64. They are pretty decent to play, but you can't play them on a regular board game, as they are single player only, so they aren't much to brag about. Also, the competition in story mode is pathetic. They must be placed on "easy" as you can win almost every mini-game without breaking a sweat. I went looking for a difficulty setting for story mode, but none exists. Oh well.

The purpose of going through story mode is to unlock the boards and various "extra" items. These items are basically just stuff to look at. Not very interesting at all. There are a few extra games that you can unlock, but I found most to be boring and simplistic. You can also unlock the "expert" difficulty, but playing at that level is no fun at all. The difference between the "normal" and "expert" setting is very obvious. On normal, the game is too easy and you can't hardly be beaten. On expert, you can't hardly win. It leaves most players stuck with playing on "hard" mode, which is a very interesting experience. In some games on hard, the computer is practically unbeatable (including most of the games where you must tap a single button repeatedly), while in others, you still can't lose. Hard mode is where the realistic fun is at though, as it gives you a chance to win some of the games, even though you are in big trouble in certain other ones.

The graphics are pretty decent for the game, and they look very "Mario Partyish." Nothing very spectacular, but the colors are bright at least. The sounds are okay, but the music is forgettable. Not that it is bad, it just isn't anything that I hum throughout the day.

Standard games are now 10 turns, which seems like too few when you first start out (the first few games in the series started with 20 rounds per game). But when you factor in the small size of the playing boards, you find that 10 rounds is perfect. You can get through a game in 40 minutes or so, and everyone has a chance to pick up some stars.

The mini-games themselves are fairly varied. There is a decent balance of games that utilize the stylus and ones that don't. There are some games that require you to use the built-in microphone, but you can choose to play without any of the games that involve the mic. That's a good thing, as the microphone games are all essentially the same and they just have you blow into the mic a lot. For me, it is just easier to play without the mic games, and it was nice of the game designers to add that ability to the games.

If there are any real problems with the games, it is with the 1 vs. 3 mini-games. They are the only really unbalanced games, as the single player is in big trouble against the other three. Luckily, not all of the 1 vs. 3 games are really against the other competitors; some are you doing one thing and the other 3 combining to do something else. In that regard, the 1 vs. 3 games work pretty well. But when a single player has to eliminate three other players, the games are unbalanced and very difficult to win if you are the single player.

There are a few other modes besides the story and simple party mode to play through with the games you have discovered. You can set up a series of 5 games to play, and a winner is decided after the 5th mini-game. You can also play a series of 10 random games, where your scores and times are translated to points. The points are added after every round to decide the winner. You are limited to regular everyone vs. everyone games for the 10 round mode, but you have some latitude in the 5th playoff mode.

Sadly, there is no wifi in this game. I can imagine that it would have been somewhat difficult to pull off, as some of the 2 vs. 2 games require the ability to talk to your partner, and there wouldn't be any way to hear your partner with the wifi set-up. Still, the way around that is to include modes without these select few mini-games (like the ability to play without microphone games). Mario Party DS would have to have about 5-6 extra games in the 2 vs. 2 section to make this work, however. It could have been done, but it is anyone's guess as to why it wasn't worked out. The DS is a portable system that is made for wifi.

On the plus side, you can play an entire party game with a buddy sitting next to you with just one Mario Party DS game. Your friend doesn't need one. You can set up all of your friends to play with just one copy of the game. That's pretty sweet. It certainly helps to make up for the lack of wifi capability.

-- Bottom Line --

Mario Party DS is a decent single player game. Story mode isn't very interesting, but you need to only play it once to unlock the boards for free play mode. Hard difficulty feels pretty realistic, even though it is virtually impossible to win a few of the games on that level. Expert difficult is practically impossible, so it is useless to even have included it. The game boards are varied, but very small. The mini-games are also varied and make decent use of the stylus. The microphone can be used in some games, too, but you have the ability to play without any microphone games. The graphics are bright and colorful, but the sound is average at best. The single player experience is good enough to keep you playing, as the mini-games are fairly well designed. There is no wifi capability, but you can play next to your friends and play the entire game with just one copy of the the title.

For a portable party game, Mario Party DS is an excellent starting point to tide gamers over until the next installment begins showing up in gaming magazines -- which you know it will.

Peace.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/11/08

Game Release: Mario Party DS (US, 11/19/07)