Wii Spot Podcast from WiiSpot.com

I lucked out yesterday, and my local super-retailer, Wal Mart, had a copy (many, actually) of Mario Party 8! I picked it up without hesitation, and completed my Wii Remote collection with a total of four, and hosted the first ever Wii Mario Party at my house.

There were a total of three of us, and one computer AI player, whom we set to a ‘Normal’ difficulty level. As we started up the game we were excited about the theme, as the game is based around a carnival setting, with various tents, events, and a bizarre that represent assorted amounts of places in the Party universe. We pointed and clicked at the Multiplayer option, which we were pleasantly surprised was represented before the single player button. The initial amount of levels were presented to us, and I’m not going to lie: I didn’t count, because we panicked and selected the first attractive board we saw - the logo had a Goomba wearing a pirate hat.

The board loads, and we’re on our way. You get the simple introduction of how the board works, and this one surprised us. As opposed to being a circular, or winding board, the map is a straight race to the pirate Goomba. As opposed to paying for the star as you usually would, the star is rewarded to everyone who makes it to the end of the race. There are shortcuts (dolphins that take you further, or to a secret island) and the linear path, but the shortcuts will take you further along, skipping 20-30 spaces, but it’s a real expensive convenience.  Now we’ve got the rules and such, let’s party!

Wait.

What’s that on the side? Those curtains on the side, why are they there?

Oh.

They aren’t curtains, they’re curtain-like sidebars. I’ve got blue sidebars on my television, taking up a large portion of my Mario-esque party, and they won’t go away. There’s no setting in my ‘pause’ menu for screen options, nothing in the game and no way of getting rid of these insanely bothersome distractions that are plaguing the sides of my television. We quit the game. It’s bothersome enough that we’ll go to the main menu, and look there.

I find no setting options anywhere. Fruitless, we return to our party, slightly heartbroken, but we play anyway. Despite these aggravating distractions, we find ourselves having a good time playing the board, and starting up our first mini-game. As the board fades, and the game description arises, the bars go away! Hooray! The sidebars are only there for the board, and don’t take away from the core-fun of MP, and we play in full widescreen glory. The first game has us punching the remote outwards to destroy a Bowser statue. Okay, that’s good, the Wii Remote controls are utilizing the technology. As we go on we notice two things: The visuals are disturbingly grainy, and I can’t find a way to fix that either (and yes, I’m in 480p) - the second thing is that as we play on, the minigames seem to be total rehashes of older Party games with Wii Remote controls tacked on, which was disappointing, but definitely acceptable. A friend of mine also found that the controls in certain games were simply off, which we universally agreed on. By the time the game finished, we had gotten over the sidebars, and generally had a really great time playing these games together. Some require you to turn your controller and use it in the classic manner, which we found to be kind of a cop-out, but still provided a nice change from the motion-based games.

Overall, I’m totally satisfied with Mario Party 8. It’s a satisfying party game, and makes for some more deep gaming than the other minigame collections that the Wii is so abundant with. It’s worth it if you’re a Party player, and need a great new Wii game now. It’s perfect for the summer drought, so embrace it, because it will embrace you right back.