My family has been playing Mario Party together since our children were big enough to hold a controller. I firmly believe that families who play together, stay together; some of our favorite memories are centered around this title. We’ve been playing the newest edition all weekend, (yeah for cold rain) read-on to find out how it holds up now that the kids are in their teens and accomplished gamers in their own right.
If you’ve never played a Mario Party game before you should watch a round on YouTube or Twitch they can be very entertaining. The game is a melding of traditional “roll the dice and pick your space” board games combined with multi-player mini-games as events that are triggered when you land on certain spots. You make your way around the game board to collect coins and stars, the player with the most wins. There is of course far more to it than that, but a fuller description would be boring to read.
Many a gamer disliked the car in Mario Party 10 on the Wii U. It forced the players to move together and removed the strategic element that most board games thrive on. Neither the mini-games nor the board game is strong enough on their own. Thankfully Nintendo has realized that and added path choice on a multi-directional board back to the title. In this version your decisions regarding the route your character takes are more important than ever.
You’ll need a Joy-Con for each player, your Switch came with two, but if you want to play with four players, you’ll need an extra set. At sixty to eighty dollars for a pair, this can be expensive. Especially if you have no other reason to own an extra pair. The controllers work really well as long as you stay in bluetooth range. Keep in mind the signal runs on the same 2.5 Ghz wave length that Wi-Fi does, so the range can be shorter than the listed 33 feet due to interference. Look in your router’s settings for an option to get along better with bluetooth, some wireless systems have the setting and some don’t.
The mini games are easy in practice or when playing on your own against the AI, but challenging when playing against human opponents. They can make for some spirited play if you are with a competitive group like ours. The bad luck and good luck spaces on the board along with special abilities and random rewards keep the board play fun as well. I expect our family will get lots of entertainment hours out of the game this winter. I liked playing with the kids when they were younger better, I could win that way. Now they are able to beat me seemingly at will, I’m not sure how those tables turned. Apparently this makes the game even more fun for them. Shouts of “Yes, I destroyed dad” were ringing through my living room only moments ago.
If you liked previous Mario Party titles but didn’t care too much for 10 or, if you’re from a board game generation and looking to do something with your video game playing children/grand-children, I think you’ll enjoy Super Mario Party. Happy gaming and remember it’s not the motion controls, it’s just you!
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