It’s-a Party Time!

I’ve recently been playing the Mario Party games with some friends and I’ve decided to rate them based on my experiences in these recent games

Mario Party (N64)

The game that started the series

Overall one of my favourites due to the originality of the games, you could tell this game was stepping into unknown territory and it did well despite the lack of try-and-tested formulae for this area of electronic gaming. (As far as I am aware, all there was before this was digital versions of Monopoly)
However, in our 4 player brawl, it didn’t stand up as well as hoped
The board felt small, and Toad sat himself in a corner that was awkward to reach due to the board’s layout and gimmick. Also, it felt half of the board was under-travelled, though this may have been due to our desperate attempts to nab the trapped star rather than by board design.
This game also has a great minigame selection, with a lot of them being very memorable and fun as well as original. However, there is the problem this game is famous for: the “Rotate the control-stick” minigames. On current consoles, I reckon this might not be such an issue due to modern control-sticks being more comfortable, but on the N64, these minigames can easily cause blisters, especially when having to be repeated.
Also, I liked the idea that you chose what items you wanted activated from the start and they randomly appeared during the game, it shall be missed

Rating: 3/5 Stars (Yes, I’ll be making that joke)

Mario Party 2 (N64)

The game starts as it means to go on...

I’d been looking forward to playing this game, though it does have one of the the most broken gimmicks out of the series: Hidden blocks containing Stars. I played a game against 3 computers and the winning computer won with half its stars gained through this method.
This game does feel less adventurous than the first one, keeping a number of minigames from the previous game
In our battle, though, it felt… lacking. Stars were “traded” least out of the games played and the board did feel very small. It also felt like the prices were mixed up as a board event cost 20 coins to pull everyone to the previous space, yet Mini Bowser only took 5 coins . It didn’t feel right
As mentioned earlier, this game re-uses some minigames from the previous game, and because of this it did feel that the selection was poor and lacking originality at times, though the battle minigames were most welcome.
The items were a welcome addition, but they seemed few and infrequent

Rating: 2/5 Stars

Mario Party 4 (Gamecube)

All I can think of is "awesome"

Another favourite and possibly the easiest, a good starting point for anyone new to the series. This game was the first (I believe) to actually use the party idea the series had been named for, with every game beforehand being a contest to find the Superstar.
In our rampage, this game had held the most surprises in my opinion, suddenly changing the players positions very close to the end. Unfortunately, this did sort of feel that events were out of our control during this point…
The board did feel a reasonable size and had plenty going on to keep things interesting.
The mingames were colourful and had creative premises and twists to them, the 3-1 ufo springing to mind. However, as always, there were some that let us down, but they were very minor nits compared to the whole experience
The addition of a random change in the last 5 turns is brilliant, I like it very much

Rating 4/5 Stars

Mario Party 5 (Gamecube)

This is just how jam-packed the game is

While this is a favourite of the series, I don’t think so highly of it. I didn’t like the lack of choice when it came to what capsules you got, you couldn’t really come up with a strategy or tactic if you couldn’t choose what you had to use.
In the multiplayer mayhem, it did feel like there was a lot more player interaction: just because you were half way across the board from everyone else did not make you any more safe or ignored.
The board itself was certainly sizeable, but I feel this worked against it as it did feel empty and character-less a lot of the time, despite there being a number of events available.
The minigames, again, were colourful and creative, but they feel that they had lost the spark from the original game and were just a “do this to win”. The context felt irrelevant in a fair few of them (not actually what I mean, but my brain is refusing to word what I want to say at this point, bed after this methinks)
It should be pointed out that stars and coins swapped hands very frequently, which is always a plus as it means that no-one really gets left behind

Rating 3/5 Stars

And there you go…
I might proof-read it at some point, but not tonight