Ah, Mario Party, everyone's favorite board game/video game hybrid from the days when a N64 with 4 controllers was where it was at. After everybody was done playing Goldeneye someone would suggest Mario Party, the others would begrudgingly agree, (as long as it's no more than 20 turns!) everyone would crack a Mountain Dew to keep the caffeine high up, then hurt their hands spinning the control stick with their palms (Mario Party Stigmata).
That was then (junior high school) though, this is now (old, in college too long). Nine Mario Parties later does it hold up? Maybe if you replace the Mountain Dew with alcohol.
Eh, that sounds a little harsh, but it's true. You can still manage to have a good time with Mario Party 9, you'll just need friends and the ability to look past it's many flaws (that's where the alcohol helps). That and the ability to just roll with it when the game screws you, which it inevitably will, especially if you are currently wining. This would have to be Mario Party 9's biggest flaw-- it tries to even the ground between it's players a little too much. Much like in newer Mario Kart games where the items you are rewarded with get significantly crappier the better you are doing, the winning player seems to have a higher chance of getting dumped on than any of the others. On top of that, mini games even reward losing players with a meager reward just for participating. You can also receive a bonus at the end of a game for getting the most purple ztars, which are actually bad to get during the game. I'm not against everybody having a good time, I just wish less relied on luck or the game was a little less slanted. The game goes from being fun and strategic to about as fun as playing "who can roll some dice and get a higher number".
I will applaud Nintendo for trying something new with the Mario Party formula, though. Instead of having everybody go their separate ways on a branching game board, everybody jumps in a car and takes turns at the wheel. It makes the game faster and easier to follow, and when you throw in the additional dice you can pick up on your travels (slow rolling dice, dice that only have 1-3 on them or 4-6, or even a d10), it adds in interesting layer of strategy where you can use these dice to put your friends/enemies in bad places when their turn comes around or make for certain you'll roll enough to get to the mini-stars before your opponents. Speaking of the mini-stars, that's something new as well. The developers threw the whole get coins to get stars system out the window, instead opting for a new system where you just collect as many "mini-stars" as you can. This certainly simplifies things and is refreshing considering the old system has been around for like 14 years. The lack of coins does remove the ability to buy items from shops, but with the new dice I didn't even notice the difference-- that and now you don't have to wait for other players to decide what to buy, which is a total plus. Also new are boss battles, which give the game a scrap of story and a clearer goal. They also helpfully mark the clear end and middle of every board. The boss mini-games are actually a pretty fun bunch too, requiring that weird, passive aggressive co-op competition where all the players are working toward the same goal but also against each other thing that Nintendo is so good at (See Zelda Four Swords or to a lesser extent New Super Mario Bros.) It allows some of the more obscure Mario enemies to get some well deserved screen time too (I'm mostly talking about Spike here, he's awesome!). Another improvement is the fact that you don't have to have computer controlled AI characters if you don't have a full 4 players which definitely speeds up the slow gameplay of the previous Parties Mario, but what would be even better would be having the empty spots filled with online opponents. This, of course, is a Nintendo game, so online play is too much to ask for. It's like they tried to solve the problem in the least fun way possible.
The graphics are fine, I guess, nothing impressive though. If I saw a screenshot, I probably couldn't tell if I was looking at Mario Party 4,5,6,7,8, or 9. The music and sound are reminiscent of any Mario game in the last ten years (except for 3d Land and Galaxy's brilliant (and sometimes fully symphonic)scores.) Presentation-wise, there's nothing to complain about, but then nothing to get excited about either.
The mini-games are a middling bunch as well. None of them are bad or annoying, which is good, but none of them are so fun I would ever want to play them outside of the context of winning mini-stars for the board game. Some of them are refreshingly Mario platforming-like challenges though, and it's always good to have more Mario in your Mario Party. There's also some slightly meatier mini-games in the game's extras menu which are decent and a nice bonus. One of them is bowling though, which haven't we had enough of that on the Wii already!?
Overall, if you're some kind of huge Mario Party fan (and won't get pissed by changes to the formula) or have three friends who can turn their brains off just enough to enjoy it for what it is regardless of the flaws, you might just enjoy Mario Party 9. As for everybody else in the world, you're reaction to Mario Party 9 will probably be a resounding, "meh".
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