Mario Party 8 worth the wait because it is excellent
User Rating: 9.3 | Mario Party 8 WII
I got Mario Party 8 last night at Toys R Us, the idiots got their stock early and put it on the shelf instead of waiting for today i guess to put it out, so yay for me i got it a day early. Here's the goods, from the main menu you can pick from 5 different tents, one is a battle tent, it has the basic game with all the boards 1-4 players, the next tent is the 1 player challenge mode, didn't explore this one yet. then there is the mini-games tent, 1-4 players where you can play any mini-game that you have encountered in the board game. Then there is a brazer tent where you can use cards ( that you get at the end of a board game, i got 20 cards playing a 15 turn game and won) to buys figures, mini-games, and other stuff. The last tent is a mini-game tent that houses extra mini-games that you wont see on the actual game, here you can use your Mii characters as well as the Mario party characters. The characters in this game are the usual + hammer Bros and Blooper, they are greyed out at the start but you unlock them later others are Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Boo, Yoshi, Wario, Waligi, Toad, and Dry Bones and others. I only played one board, it was the DK Jungle style map, it was of good size, stars are randomly located across the map, The games master/announcer is kind of annoying, he consists on a creepy floating guy and his talking hat Mr. big top anyways typical 10 coin start, jerk you control up to punch the spinning dice block above you, you start moving around the board, there are pieces of candy scattered around the map and as you pass by them you can pick them up, you get the choose to use them before your turn for an added bonus, example, i got one that turned me into a tornado and anyone you pass on the board will get sent back to the start effects only last 1 turn. the map has a candy store on it to buy additional candy from shy guy, it has a DK cannon that you pay 5 coins to get shot to a random location on the map, a water slide short cut that you can take it you land on the proper green square and some Parana pipes that could lead you to a secret section of the board. To the mini games, the controls work excellent, not like in monkey ball where it was to sensitive and hard to work some games, Mario party seems to have done a great job getting the controls right, we played a w few 3-1 games where the goal was to stay away form the lone person and on game that the 3 shot at the one duck hunt style to prevent him from climbing the tower, free for all was Good with punching the bowser statue and shaking up the coke can in the lead, the 2 vs 2 games where good, we go skipping, a football style game and a driving game where you had to burst all of you color balloons to win. overall it was very impressive to play. At the end they handed out secret stars to the most coins won in mini-games, who landed on the most red squares and who landed on the most green squares. after it was finished i visited the section that you play extra mini-games and used my Mii to play some carnival bowling, its a fast passed bowling game, it didn't seem as accurate as wii bowling probably because it was and after thought to the real game, you have 10 seconds per ball to bowl and you can play either 5 or 10 frames, i ended wit a 98 in 5 frames because I'm not great but it seemed fun to play. Anyways it seemed worth the money and will be a great addition to the multi-player library.
