Mario Party Advance

"Disappointing and absurdly unlike the game it tries to be"

Mario Party is a series that has a disturbingly large amount of sequels. Granted, it was a great idea and the original Mario Party was one of the most addicting games of its day, but as a whole the series seems to be stretching thin. The latest release in the series, which now totals 7, is Mario Party Advance. Nintendo realized that the Gameboy Advance is primarily played as a single-player device, because multiplayer requires each person to AT LEAST have their own Gameboys, whereas the Gamecube and Nintendo 64 had controller ports for easy multiplayer goodness. The problem, however, is that Nintendo placed far too much emphasis on Mario Party Advance as a single-player adventure, which is a hugely disappointing change that literally makes the game pointless. Mario Party Advance sports a number of modes, most of which designed exclusively for the single-player game. Within the confines of "Party World" the player can go to "Shroom City", where they can help random locals out with pretty uninteresting quests. They can also choose "Play Land", which is basically the compilation of whatever minigames and gaddgets you've earned. "Party Land" is what Mario Party Advance should have been... multiplayer party games. The thing is, these games are near pointless without the usual "board game" style overworld. "Challenge Land" is just completing minigames under certain conditions.

Graphics

Bright, colorful, and cheery are the three words to describe Mario Party Advance. It's a good-looking game with a lot of charm. The animation is also impressive, but Shroom City's "style" is extremely mundane. Overall, though, the game is one of the better-looking GBA games.

Sound

Usual Mario fare. As in most Mario games, there's new and old music to be found. The old music, however, tends to be much better than the newly composed pieces. All things considered, it's not bad.

Gameplay

Take everything you know about Mario Party and throw it out the window. Mario Party Advance is primarily a single-player adventure where you are given a certain amount of time (dice rolls) to accomplish as many resident missions as possible. Along the way, the game will challenge you to typical Mario Party-style minigames for the chance to earn more dice rolls. There is no star collecting or passing a "starting point" or anything of the sort. You simply roll your way around Shroom City, solving people's absurd dilemmas. It's a crude concept that doesn't fit well with the Mario Party atmosphere.

One of the biggest problems, however, is that the minigames themselves don't seem to work quite as well in 2D as they did in 3D. The isometric perspective of most games doesn't provide enough depth perception for accurate control, and many of the games have brief explanations that don't do a good enough job of letting you know exactly what you need to do. Also, you'll find that the minigames are usually your character vs the environment. Since Mario Party Advance isn't a challenge against the other players, you're really just fighting the game for extra time. This takes out a lot of the "party" fun that the Mario Party series is known for.

To top off all of these problems, the missions themselves are really dull. Most involve retrieving an item from one location and bringing it to another. Then you'll engage in some fashion of minigame or quiz and that's that.

Overall, the game just isn't Mario Party. It's a butchered and half-baked attempt at making Mario Party a single-player game. At the very least it would have been nice for Nintendo to make it a classic Mario Party-style game with computer-controlled opponents that could be replaced by real players.

Overall

Mario Party Advance is a disappointing game. It doesn't accurately reflect the mayhem and dog-eat-dog atmosphere of its console counterparts, and it lacks appropriate multiplayer modes. As it stands, this game is simply not worth your money.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/08/05