The party is over, go home.
Story:
This year is the Star Carnival in the Mushroom Kingdom! Mario and friends gather around with their new host MC Ballyhoo, a colorful looking dude, and Bigtop, his talking hat. After choosing your character, you start your journey in the carnival by challenging others in the new boards. The prize for comming out on top? A year's supply of!....candy? (WTF? -_-) Ok so for whatever reason the party has sweet thooths and want candy and does that not bother anyone? No? All right...
So yeah the story is kind of lame to me and just silly to the point that it isn't funny. So let's start with the good first...if there is any...
The Good:
-Good multiplayer. Mario Parties were always good mulltiplayer games, this one is too.
-Some fun minigames. Some of them are actually really fun, but that's not saying much. The 1 vs. 3 and 4 players are maybe the best.
-Miis (must bend ego... O_o). As...HIDEOUS as they are, people love playing as their characters they created themselves. So that's pretty good, but personally I rather play as the Mario characters rather than the even less detailed Miis.
There's really not that great games or boards for that matter, but whatever the series is repetitive. Ok the bad now...
The Bad:
-Bad graphics. Seriously, it looks like the Game Cube. It's just bland, solid, any really has no detail.
-Same minigames. Some were just brought back from the older Mario Parties and just spruced up a bit to look different so we'd think there was more new minigames but in reality, there isn't.
-Unresponsive controls. Most minigames don't work like the should, like a mingame where you have to tilt the remoted left and right to guide a robotic monkey to the top of the tree avoiding coconuts that fall down. When you preform the action it takes about 2 seconds before the action you requested occurs.
-Removing Mic and 8 player games. Those were really fun back on GC, but the mic was removed after two games and 8 players after one. Is the laziness getting to nintendo all of a sudden?
-Repetitive. You're doing the same thing with Mario Party too much. Play chance heavy boards with chance heavy games and hope you win. After you're done, you get whatever currency in the game as a prize and buy usually useless stuff in the story. I did it so many times in other Mario Parties that I didn't do it at all in this one.
-Chance Heavy. The game leans heavily on chance. You might be first on the board, but a Battle Minigame might pop up forcing you to gamble some to a lot of coins or even a star (if I'm right). If you happen to be unlucky, you'll loose most to all of your coins which can put others in front of you in the last few turns. It's more about luck than it is about skill.
-No Wi-fi. Another chance with wi-fi just flew right by again. I really don't have to explain myself.
Overall the game is just a wreck. The formula is repetitive and nothing is different really different other than some minigames and boards with graphics from a Game Cube. Mario Party is over. Nintendo needs to realize it.
Mario Party 8 gets a score of 4.5/10. A game I don't recommend to anybody except to a 7 year old. DSK out.