Review: Mario Party 10

While its mini-games are great, Mario Party 10 as a whole is not.

I had four friends around at my place this weekend to give the game a whirl. Atter trying out various modes, we pretty much just played its mini-games one after the other, outside of packaged offerings. We had a blast… without structure.

We were also pretty inebriated by that time.

Mario Party 10 has been dumbed-down quite considerably compared to other titles in the long-running franchise. The simplification is very noticeable, too. One friend, who hadn’t played the franchise since Nintendo 64, look positively dumbfounded after playing for a bit.

“No, seriously,” she asked, with sadness in her voice. “Why are we all moving along the board together?”

Actually, it was less like a question and more like a demand, albeit with a drunken slur. My friend couldn’t understand why — as cut-throat competitors — Mario, Daisy, Yoshi and Wario were all aboard a single vehicle, rolling dice and moving around the Mario Party board as one unit. If the whole idea is to get the end first and with the most stars, why go as a team?

The game’s amiibo Party mode does bring back old-school play, allowing each player to move along the board separately. The downside to the mode is that practically every action requires tapping an amiibo against the Wii U GamePad. You can to roll the dice. You tap to stop random-chance rolls. You tap to use items you’ve collected. You tap at carpal tunnel-inducing levels. Moreover, amiibo Party doesn’t support five players, which is a bit of a buzz-kill with a room full of people. So, until we decided to skip modes altogether and play mini-games exclusively, we were forced into Bowser Party mode.

I liked it. My friends sure didn’t.

I’m thinking it was because I braved the GamePad to control Bowser himself, described by another friend as an ‘over-powered jerk’. Four players take turns rolling dice to try to escape Bowser, who then rolls four (or five or more, if you’re lucky with drops) of his own dice to try to catch up. If the baddie can make it to the players, it’s mini-game time. Over the course of the three Bowser Party 4v1 mini-games we got through, I’d used flame breath, flame columns and my huge girth to eliminate every single player from the game. I laughed maniacally as my four friends threw chips at me. Oddly enough, we didn’t go through the mode a second time.

Of all modes, the classic Mario Party is by far the most depressing. It makes Mario Party 10 feel generic and watered-down, devoid of all the fun I remember having with past iterations of the game.

Lacking the fun my friends remember having with their favourite instalment of the franchise too.

It’s not just that you move as a collective being, it’s that you barely get to play any mini-games. It’s that you earn mini-stars far too easily. It’s that the board is far too linear and there’s very little opportunity for strategy or planning. It’s that we played a cool little Boss Battle and while dead-even, someone got to leap ahead at the end of the game as they delivered the last hit on the baddie and got 5 extra points.

Actually, that last one’s awesome. That type of underhanded move is what I remember about Mario Party and what I wanted to see more of.

Anyways, back to whinging; it’s that we went through five different games and didn’t unlock the looming threat of Bowser before we hit the game’s home stretch. I have no idea what the big had Bowser does in the Classic Mode, but I’d love to know. We simply couldn’t roll the numbers 1-6 uniquely before we finished each game to see what he would do.

Mario Party 10 is just bland. It’s a simplistic version of something I used to love, Super Guided to the point where it’s not that fun to play. Unless you’re a child. Or an intoxicated adult. And just playing mini-games.

On the topic of those great mini-games, our group’s recommendations are as follows: the tilt-controlled balloon-riding soccer game, a couple Wiimote pointer memory games, a zippy, luge-like reflex tester and anything involving shrinking platforms and a contest to stay on top the longest. There’s a ton of games on offer, and apart from difficulties with drunks trying to point Wiimotes at the screen, they’re all easy to learn and great fun to play.

We cackled a lot.

It’s not bad, it’s just… well, meh. Even Mario Party 10’s Achievement-like ‘Challenges’ couldn’t tap into that OCD side I have and force me to play over and over again. It’s a forgettable instalment of a franchise that seems to wane with each new entry. Be warned.

Mario Party 10 was reviewed using a promotional code on Wii U, as provided by the publisher.