Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this is a typical tame Nintendo title. Players are pitted against each other, but any violence is cartoonish – at worst, expect to see characters being squashed or falling off a ledge. On the positive side, while playing on the Tycoon Town game board, characters will stop and look both ways before crossing the road.
Families can talk about teamwork since this game allows players to form 2-on-2 or 3-on-1 teams for certain mini-games. What makes a good team player? How can you apply the principles of teamwork to everyday life? This game has an element of random chance. Do you think the randomness makes the games more or less fun?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Erin Bell
Another year, another Mario Party title from Nintendo. Since the first Mario Party debuted in 1999, Nintendo has been releasing a sequel roughly once per year, which in game industry terms is a breakneck pace. While the eighth installment is starting to show its age a little bit, the Wii's touch sensitive remote control adds a brand new dimension of fun.
MARIO PARTY 8 lives up to its name by offering a decent multiplayer experience. Play is structured like a board game where up to four players compete both against each other and in teams by rolling dice, landing on spaces with various consequences, and participating in mini-game challenges to earn coins and stars. (If there are less than four players, computer-controlled characters round out the teams.)
Familiar Nintendo characters like Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Peach, and Wario are all playable this time around too, with the ability to unlock several more as the game progresses.
Mario Party 8 boasts more than 60 new minigames, and several innovative new boards including DK's Treetop Temple, the pirate-themed Goomba's Booty Boardwalk, and the bustling metropolis of Koopa's Tycoon Town where players invest money in hotels to earn stars, much like Monopoly.
Many of the mini-games in Mario Party 8 incorporate the touch-sensitive Wii remote in creative ways, letting it double as a paint brush, hammer, dart, stamp, and lasso to name a few. It's accuracy as a pointing device also comes in handy, and it makes it that much easier for novice gamers to jump right into the fun without having to familiarize themselves with a complicated controller.
Mario Party 8's biggest issue is that it relies too often on elements of random chance, which might prove frustrating for more competitive gamers. Another disappointment is that Mario Party 8 still looks like it did almost ten years ago on the Nintendo 64.
That being said, if gamers are able to look past these issues, there's still a great party game to be found that's made all the more fun thanks to the intuitive Wii remote .
For other party games that can be played on the Wii, check out Wii Play, WarioWare: Smooth Moves and Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree. Another fun party game is Donkey Konga for the Gamecube.
Reviewed: 07/03/2007
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