“Mario Party 10” — Nintendo — for Wii U
7 out of 10

By Cameron M. Bray ’16
THE ROUNDUP

To be honest, I’m not sure why I bought “Mario Party 10.”

Before going to the store, I asked myself, “Don’t I have enough ‘Mario Parties’ already?”

I have played many “Mario Parties,” so I wondered how different “Mario Party 10” really could be.

What really sold me on “Mario Party 10” was the game’s new “Bowser Party” mode, which adds a fifth player to the mix.

In a “Bowser Party” one player plays as a Bowser, using the Wii U GamePad, and up to four others play as Mario and company, using the basic Wii remotes.

The four players share a car and roll dice in order to flee Bowser and reach the end of the board, which is how they win.

The Bowser player, on the other hand, rolls an average of four dice and tries to hunt down the four players.

Whenever the Bowser player reaches the same space as the four players, a minigame begins in which he tries to steal as many life points as he can from the other players.

If the four players lose all their life points at any point during the “Bowser Party,” then it’s game over and the Bowser player wins.

Playing Bowser is probably the best part of the game. In the minigames, you can spit fireballs at your opponents and even dive-bomb them, among other things.

As “Bowser,” you truly feel like a devious villain and a scoundrel as you battle and annoy your friends–a feeling that is insanely gratifying after an especially stressful day.

The “Bowser Party” also makes the best use of the Wii U GamePad.

Cleverly, Nintendo gives the Bowser player his own screen and controls so that others can’t see and interfere with his scheming.

It’s a shame, however, that the rest of the game does not live up to expectations.

Unfortunately, the game carries over bad ideas from “Mario Party 9.”

In a regular “Mario Party,” everyone still moves as a group and the board is still a linear progression rather than an open-ended, go-where-you-please-style map, both taking away your sense of independence.

In addition, the minigames still do not occur once a turn as they did before “Mario Party 9” (though they do, thankfully, in the “Amiibo Party”).

A minigame only occurs when someone lands on a minigame space. So, in theory it’s entirely possible to go through a “Mario Party” without playing a single minigame–the one aspect of the game that requires skill, not just dumb luck.

Finally, the “Amiibo Party” mode is simply not interesting enough to be played multiple times.

Sure, the “Amiibo Party” is new and has some good ideas, such as the ability to move individually and to play minigames each turn, but it’s just boring.

The minigames involve too much tapping of the Amiibo figures onto the Wii U GamePad and the maps are all dull, square-shaped circuits.

Overall, “Mario Party 10” offers some very good new ideas, such as the “Bowser Party,” as well as some very bad ideas–those adopted from “Mario Party 9”–and for that it gets a 7 out of 10.