Mario Party 4

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

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Everything happens at an insufferably glacial pace. Every time you select a menu you have to endure some chirpy tune or watch some twee animation. A number of menus aren't labeled so you'll have to point to them before you know what it is for. That is a terrible way of doing an interface and is similar to the 'mystery meat' navigation that some websites have whereby you must hover the mouse over a menu before you can read it. Even the options screen, the options screen for chrissake, will test your patience. As bad as the menu system is the board game is torture in comparison. If you play the single player game in the so-called story mode you play alongside three computer opponents. For every turn you are forced to watch them perform every small action, every roll, every spin of a wheel. It just takes forever to get through a turn. The worst part is that you must always have four players, so in a multiplayer game if only three of you play you'll all have to sit and watch the computer take a turn. A ten round match, i.e. ten rounds of one turn each, will take over an hour to get through. That time is not because you are actively participating, it's because things happen so slowly. You can change the setting to make play fast but it doesn't make much of a difference. Imagine you're playing cards and someone gets up to make a cup of tea and you're all left sitting, waiting for them to hurry up and take their turn, that's what playing this game feels like.

Playing the virtual board game part of Mario Party is not fun. You can throw as many virtual bonuses into the mix as you like it is never going to be as good as playing with actual pieces. I remember Monopoly as a kid and our set had a ripped 'chance' card. If you got that particular card you had to pay a tax on all your houses and hotels. So whenever it came to the top of the pile it was immediately noticeable from the tear and you'd have to frantically sell all your buildings. If you were losing it was a saviour as you had a little breathing room with no really expensive spaces to land on, if you were winning the reverse was true. You can't recreate that kind of experience in a computer game and nor would you want to. Much of the enjoyment then comes from the mini-games and thankfully you don't have to play through the board game part every time you want to have a go of a mini-game. Once unlocked you can access them directly from a separate menu, but to unlock the mini-games you must have played them first via the board game, because they are chosen at random this quickly becomes an annoying hoop jumping exercise that could have been avoided. Once you have got a few unlocked games you can organise play lists for tournaments, which is quite a neat feature. You can also play Tic-Tac-Toe in pairs, each choosing a move to make and then you compete in a mini-game to see who gets their chosen square. These modes are very welcome and playing the mini-games without the board game nonsense is much more enjoyable but still far too pedestrian.

The main strength of this game is meant to come from the multiplayer aspect. When you consider the average age of gamers is now in the mid to late twenties you'd be hard pressed to find four willing volunteers to wade through it. It is much more suited to a very young audience but even then I can imagine them getting annoyed with some of the aspects. A cartoon product can appeal to a very wide audience if it's done well. A film like Toy Story is evidence of this outside of gaming. Mario Party though is not a particularly good game and it's up against much better titles like Super Monkey Ball that manages to bridge this age gap by having inspired game play and a quirky feel. Most Nintendo games have this quality but it is sadly missing here.

- Have your own party instead with blackjack and hookers. In fact forget the blackjack, ah screw da whole thing.

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By Richard Clifford