 |
 |
| Mario Party 6 Cardcaptor Yoshi Review Over-view: The third Mario Party to hit the Gamecube claims to be the best of the series, with streamlined gameplay, a new microphone peripheral, a new one-player mode, over 80 minigames, and a revolutionary day-night system! But does it come through on its promise? I'm here to tell you the answer! Graphics: 7.8/10 Meh. That's the graphics summed up in one word. The graphics here simply parallel those of previous Mario Parties, without making a big effort to strive for the best. The boards are pretty, the characters look decent, and the backgrounds are colorful. But nothing really new. Sound: 8.3/10 Mario Party is always a good game for music and sound, and this one is no exception! However, it does not quite stand up to some of the catchiest tunes. I found the minigame music to be catchy and fit the mood well, but it wasn't something you could sing in public and not feel ashamed of ^_^. The voiceovers have been re-recorded for the most part, and I feel that it hurt the score a little, but not too much. Maybe I'm just used to the old voices. Yoshi's the same, so I'm happy :D Controls: 9.8/10 Mario Party, as usual, is a great pick-up-and-play game for anyone! The controls are simple to get used to after a game or two (but you'll lose anyway to my skills!), and my only gripe is that a few games use both analog sticks to drive a vehicle, for example. It's hard to understand why, but I think that they were trying to make it hard to control though. Oh well. Challenge: 6/10 Would you like easy or super-hard? Mario Party fails the challenge section again this year. I thought the difficulty was quite erratic- Normal felt like Easy, Hard wasn't that difficult, and Brutal (the new name for the difficulty past Hard. again) alternated between super-easy and impossible o_O. I'm not quite sure what Nintendo was aiming for here, but you would be better off playing with your pals in any case. Replay: 10/10 Winner! Mario Party 6 is a game guaranteed to keep you occupied for days on end! Normally, the party game is enough, and there are plenty of modes to do (like the 5 different minigame modes, the mic games, etc.), but Nintendo's thrown in a Star Bank where you can unlock lots of neato things by spending your stars earned in the various modes! Gameplay: 9.2/10 Mario Party's gameplay is excellent, but misses a few things. The capsule system has carried over from MP5, and is renamed Orbs now. You can now purchase them at a store if you wish (better now, Pirate? :D), but you can also get them for free from set spots on the board. The actual party mode boards have changed a little too: not all of them are the standard get-20-coins-and-but-star fare anymore, thankfully! One board changes the price of the star at night, and one of my favorites has no star space at all! You star with 5 stars, and the object is to steal them from your buddies by stomping the heck out of them with Chain Chomps! Also, the board game play has been significantly speeded up, much to my delight. New in MP6 is the day-night system. Every 3 turns, it changes from day to night or vice versa. At night, some spaces change, move, dissapear, and all that great some. Minigames also change in appearance, or even in gameplay! While it sounds like a lot, it doesn't affect the game drastically...but it's a nice addition. Solo mode is meant to be one-player material: you move about on a short one-way board, where the spaces are mini-games! It's great for getting stars and minigames, but be careful not to fall off the edge or you lose EVERYTHING! (which drove me crazy) You can also quit before the end of the board to safely save all your stuff. And then there's the microphone...you can play in an assortment of modes here with the peripheral, which fits in somewhere between gimmick and cool-thing. The minigames, the meat of the game (duh) are a mixed bag: there are the awesome (Lift Leapers), the stupid (Treasure Trawlers) and the oddly-familiar (What goes up...)...you'll find at least one you like. One of my major gripes, however, is that they murdered mini-game mode. The Decathalon has crummy games, the Circuit is gone, and we have a Bingo game which is ok in its place. Yay. But still, overall the gameplay is VERY good. **Story: .05/1 Just keeps getting worse every year eh? This year the sun (Brighton) and the moon (Twila) are fighting because the sun asked who's better. It's always the guy who asks the wrong questions. And, how do we solve this problems! WE COLLECT STARS! Because stars are your friends! Stars solve everything! ...really only because you can buy stuff with them at the bank :P Come on, I've seen better plots in sports games! (Because they had none) **Multiplayer: 1/1 It's Mario Party...the king of multiplayer games! Any Mario Party game is great for parties (wow, surprise), and since it's made for multiplayer(tm), you and your friends will have a blast playing this game! It's instant fun! Well...most of the time :D (Stop stealing my stars...X_X) Graphics: 7.8/10 Sound: 8.3/10 Controls: 9.8/10 Challenge: 6/10 Replay: 10/10 Gameplay: 9.2/10 **Story: .05/1 **Multiplayer: 1/1 Overall Score: 8.7 |