Mario Party 10 has been released for the Wii U at America on March 20, 2015. Does Mario Party 10 successfully follow up to it’s predecessors? In some ways, Mario Party 10 is a successful game, but it’s dreaded with some significant problems that bring the overall score down.
The three main attractions (modes) that Mario Party 10 has to offer are the regular party, Amiibo Party, and Bowser Party. Sadly, story mode that has been present since Mario Party 3 (released in 2001 for the Nintendo 64) has been removed in this game. The regular party mode plays similar to Mario Party 9 (released in 2012 for the Wii) which has all characters riding in a car to travel across the board together. The main objective is to see which player can collect the most mini stars that are scattered throughout the board. In order to actually play the mini-games, someone first has to land on a mini-game space instead of having mini-games after each round of every player’s turn. There are two boss battles, which one is present midway, and the other is placed at the end of the board.
The Amiibo Party is basically a watered down version of classic Mario Party. Just like the previous games, each player has to collect 20 coins to buy a star. I say that the Amiibo Party is a watered down classic Mario Party because the theme boards for most characters are just regular, small squares that lack the design and creativity compared to the boards featured in the past Mario Parties. However, the character theme boards (such as Peach’s Birthday Cake and Luigi’s Engine Room) originated from Mario Party 1 (released in 1999 for the Nintendo 64). Note that I said that there were only theme boards for most characters, because there are no theme boards for characters such as Daisy and Waluigi due to them not having an Amiibo design yet.
The Amiibo Party, while a nice throwback to Mario Party 1, is still plagued with problems. Perhaps the biggest problem is that you’re required to buy at least one Amiibo just to play the Amiibo Party mode. In order to play on all of the character theme boards, you’ll have to buy an Amiibo for all characters that can easily jack up the price especially since Mario Party 10 is already an expensive game to buy. Plus, it can get annoying to pass the Wii U game pad to a friend just to use an Amiibo to activate a character rolling the dice.
Another problem with Amiibo Party is that the square boards (like I mentioned earlier) are too small and don’t have any particular designs to give it some flair. The backgrounds have some design to them, but still look like children’s boards because of the cute nature behind them. Note how the character theme boards have a proper title such as Peach’s Birthday Cake for Mario Party 1. In the Amiibo Party, the character theme board just says Peach Board. It’s bad enough how the developers can’t even come up with a proper title for the character theme boards because it shows you that they aren’t showing enough imagination and creativity. The final problem is that there are no options to select from 5 to 50 turns because each rounds only consist of 10 turns.
Bowser Party has one player controlling Bowser and has the rest of the four players controlling characters. The main objective is to have Bowser take away all of the character’s hearts while they try to reach the end of the board by having at least one heart remaining. The Bowser mini game is activated when Bower catches up to them, and they lose hearts when Bowser attacks them.
There are a total of 13 playable characters and some newcomers are playable for the first time such as Rosalina and Spike (an enemy from the past Mario games). Donkey Kong, who was last playable in Mario Party 4 (released in 2002 for the Game Cube) returns to being a playable character again. Toadette, who was last seen playable in Mario Party 8 for the Wii and Mario Party DS (both released in 2007), returns as a playable character. For the first time in history, Bowser finally becomes a fully playable character. The rest of the playable characters are Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Yoshi, Toad, Wario, and Waluigi.
In my past GameSpot reviews, I averaged out the scores out between presentation, graphics, sound, controls, and lasting appeal. For Mario Party 10, I’m slightly changing up the score system because there’s nothing particular to say about the graphics (since the visuals already look stunning in HD), music and sounds (since they already sound as catchy as usual). Plus, the controls for the most part work well, except that there are some control stiffness in some mini games such as Soccer Brawl. For the lasting appeal, Mario Party 10 brings some new ideas to the table such as Bowser Party, and returns some previous modes that balance between classic and modern Mario Party. Although, there is still no online mode in Mario Party 10, it won’t necessarily affect the ratings like it did back then because I realize that it’s truly meant for a local multi player experience to enjoy with friends. Plus if Mario Party 10 had an online mode, connections would be frequently lost and interpreted against strangers online.
I'm aware that I was a bit too harsh on the Amiibo Party mode, and I did give Mario Party 10 a somewhat low score. It's just that it's the 10th installment of the Mario Party series (not including the portable Mario Parties). Plus, Nintendo needs to place a lot more effort in if they are truly bringing back a classic Mario Party mode which should be expanded upon, not watered down from Mario Parties 1-3. My advice to Nintendo if they are planning to develop a Mario Party 11 for the Wii U is to stop forcing players to buy Amiibos just to play classic Mario Party mode. Plus, the specific character theme boards need to be larger, more creative, and actually have proper titles for each character theme board.
The Good - Bowser Party is a neat addition to the franchise, Rosalina is finally a playable character, modes feature a nice balance between classic and modern Mario Party, visuals look stunning, and music and sounds are still catchy
The Bad - story mode has been removed, Amiibo Party isn’t quite creative enough to be a true throw back to Mario Party 1, requires Amiibos just to play the classic Mario Party mode, inability to select the number of turns for each round
GameSpot Score 6 out of 10 (Fair)