IF YOU ARE MARIO FAN YOU MUST GET THIS!!!!!!!!!
The Bad: No online play. Same great Mario Party gameplay you may be tired of by now.
Review: Well, this is Mario Party DS. It's exactly like the console versions. The game is based around playing through board games, hitting dice blocks, and competing in mini-games. The minigames on this DS version are as good as ever and make great use of the mic and touch screen, though they don't overuse them either. This game actually has a "story mode", so it gives the single player mode a bit of direction, though it's nothing fancy on it's own. This game also features a new "puzzle" mode, where you can play from 4 or 5 different puzzle games. They're supposed to be derived from other puzzle games, but since I'm not a big puzzle gamer, I forgot the names. The puzzle games themselves are actually pretty fun too, moreso if you're into puzzle games. Let's see, another good feature is that it saves the game automatically for you for after every turn in story mode. So it's easy to play in short bursts, which is always a good feature on a handheld game. Probably the best thing about this game is that it can be played with up to 3 other players with only 1 cartridge. That's the whole Party experience too, which includes over 70 minigames. Probably the worst part of this game, ironically, is that it doesn't have any online play whatsoever. :-( The game is so good on it's own merit, to have online play would have made this one of the best DS games ever I think.
All in all, it's a great Mario Party game for the DS. The only 2 drawbacks are the lack of online play, and the fact that it doesn't add much of anything "new" to the series. It plays out like all the other Mario Party's, so I guess that can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it.