Mario Party 4

Richard finds himself lacking in party spirit with Mario's latest outing.

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Whenever I read comments that Nintendo is too cute or too kiddy I normally just dismiss them as the illiterate idiotic rantings of a forum poster who hasn't had their Ritalin dose for the day. Certainly most Nintendo games are somewhat colourful but we forgive them for it because they also happen to make the best games in the world. Mario Party 4 has the requisite credentials with all the cast of usual suspects and that illustrious Nintendo 'seal of quality' stamped on the box. After about an hour of playing it though it was a case of the Emporer's new clothes. I was going to need something a lot stronger than Ritalin. Now I am not a religious man but I pray to the gaming Gods that Nintendo see the light and never release this kind of Crayola coloured crap again.

The first title in the series came out years ago for the N64 and while at the time multiplayer gaming wasn't totally new it was in its infancy. Since then multiplayer gaming is seen as a much more important aspect for games and many developers put considerable effort into titles in this regard. Mario Party 4 hasn't really moved with the times and comes across as a tired product. Mario Party 4 purports to be a fun game for one to four players, it is not. In it you choose a character and then take turns on a virtual board game to collect stars. At the beginning of each turn you roll a virtual dice and then move around the squares, landing on various bonuses that might help or hinder you. Along the way you can pick up gold coins, mushroom bonuses and magic lamps, plus a large number of squares will trigger random events like leaping to another player’s position. At the end of every turn you will then play one of the fifty mini-games to win money. Somewhere in amongst that there is 'mega-fun' to be found but I didn't find any, and neither did the other people playing with me.

The mini-games are probably best likened to those free internet 'flash' or 'java' games but with better graphics. They are very simple, often consisting of little more than timing a button press or a little running around. While those types of games are often quite fun they have very short term appeal and are certainly not something you'd want to spend a lot of money on. The games here vary from being played as either three versus one, two versus two or every one for them self. The better games involve a little bit of skill, such as you when you all ski down a slope, trying to escape an avalanche whilst avoiding the rocks. The mediocre ones tend to just be button bashing and are mostly forgettable. The worst involve pure chance, like when you take it in turns to push a plunger and if you're lucky you won't get blown up. Each of these mini-games is chosen at random at the end of every round.

Randomness in fact plays far too big a part in the proceedings. Every turn starts with a random roll of the dice. Squares can offer random bonuses. At junctions on the board your path is chosen at random. Little lottery games offer a random chance of winning random prizes. The list goes on. Even gambling leaves less to luck than this game. So winning the board game by collecting the most stars is, you guessed it, a bit random. One thing is consistent though, the entire game is consistently sllloowwww.