Mario Party Advance

"Finally a Mario Party that is more single player based"

I've been a fan of the Mario Party series since it began. It only had one major fault to me. Poorly constructed one player modes. I rarely end up playing the games against friends, so I spend alot of time on the story modes. This game is largely based on the single player story mode. The multiplayer mode is there, but not as important to the games. Alot of the multiplayer features, such as some gadgets, only require one system to be able to play against friends.

Gameplay/Story - 9
The premise of the story is to collect 50 stars so you can once again gain access to a battle against Bowser. The stars are obtained by completing various tasks. These range from beating a mini game, solving a puzzle, traveling from location to location around the board, and and even more odd jobs. Most are simple and straight-forward. The challenge to the tasks involving traveling around the board is to not run out of mushrooms. A mushroom is used every time you spin the dice to move. If you hit 0 you lose and have to restart the story mode to retry your current errand. You earn mushrooms through mini games that are started either by Tumble appearing every 3 spins or landing on a mini game space. The trick is to carefully calculate where you land after each spin. If you choose your paths correctly you can use far less mushrooms than would be needed for a direct route. The best way is to always try to land on a dice space when possible. Even if it takes you on a small bit of a detour, you can just turn around and continue towards your destination on the free spin you just earned. The traveling around the board can gets lengthy and dull, but there are a wide variety of different tasks to to keep the game fun and interesting. The location you start at is determined by the character you select when you begin. Either Mario, Luigi, Peach, or Yoshi. They all have the same abilities. The only other factor in deciding is if you need a certain character for a task. There are a few that you need to play as a certain character to be able to complete.

Replay Value - 7

You beat story mode, now what? Enjoy the prizes you've earned. As you completed errands throughout the story mode you were rewarded with mini games and "gaddgets". The gaddgets are just random little toys to tinker around with. They range from simple to incredibly simple. Some are multiplayer. They just require one system, since each player controls certain buttons on the same device. It can lead to some good competitive fun. Continuously trying to one-up your competitors in simple games that rarely last longer than a few seconds each. Then, replay the mini games you won. The fun of that is often trying to constantly do better than your record or how well you did last time, which can be a good challenge.

Sound - 7
You get what you would probably expect. Simple and catchy tunes with a fun theme. Also like you would have probably expected, over time they get very repetitive. Sound effects aren't very numerous, often just consisting of variants of different beeps and such.

Final Impression - 8
It's an entertaining game which is often very fun, but only while it lasts. After you've beaten story mode and worn yourself out on replaying the mini games and gaddgets, the game has very little left to offer. It has a strength of being the type of game that once you complete it like that, your likely to return and play it again a couple months down the line. When you start again you'll probably have just as much fun messing around with the games and gaddgets that you did when you first played. The best part to me was the overall fact that it can easily be fully enjoyed even when playing alone.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/24/05