Mario Party 8 Review
Published by dasme 1 year, 1 month ago in Reviews.
Mario Party has, for nearly a decade now, been a mainstay of the party gamer. Those people who love to get a group of people together and just have fun playing videogames. That’s the reason why I first picked up Mario Party, and it’s the reason why I still love playing it today. I’ve been waiting patiently since the announcement was made that Mario Party 8 was coming to the Wii, not the Gamecube, to get my hands on it. Surely the unparalleled control and freedom that the Wiimote provides would make MP8 the best in the series. right? Lets find out.
If you aren’t familiar with the game series I’ll give you a little primer. Mario Party has you and up to 3 of your friends playing a virtual board game to win stars. Between rounds you and your friends, or the computer-controlled opponents, play a random mini game to win coins. Coins will buy you stars or helpful items to make your game easier. In this iteration of the game candies have been added that you can find on the map. Each of these candies has a unique power to help you on your quest. Powers like double or triple dice rolls, a coin sucking vampire transformation and a coin draining electro zap can be used to temporarily give you the upper hand in your battle.
In this version, the party takes place at a carnival. Your ringleader and master of ceremonies, Ballyhoo, is there to help you on your way through the five game modes. All of the major modes are here, but for the Wii version they have added the Extras Zone and a Star Battle Arena. The Extras Zone allows you to play some mini-games that are only available in that mode such as a simplified version of Wii Bowling or Ping Pong. Mini-games in this mode are played with your Mii, which was a nice touch. I would love to see my Mii in almost all the games I have played on the system! The second new mode is the Star Battle Arena. This is a single player adventure mode that has you taking on a series of computer-controlled opponents all vying to be crowned the champion.
Throughout the game you gain Carnival Cards that you use as currency to unlock other items. Two additional player characters are up for grabs here, as well as a plethora of other items such as new voices, mini-games and movies. For some reason they’ve added in some mini statues that you can unlock. The thing is, these statues do nothing but sit there when you unlock them. I was hoping that these would give you mini-games, costumes, voices, or anything really. Instead they just sit there collecting virtual dust in the game’s carnival Wagon. This to me was a strange addition, but it’s something else for the completists to work at collecting I suppose.
The main focus of this title is, of course, the mini-games, and I was hoping that this is where the game would really shine. There are 3 main control schemes while playing through the games. The first is using the Wiimote as something, for example you swing it as a bat, use it as a hammer or lasso. This is what I was hoping for when I placed the game into my Wii, and it delivered perfectly! The second main control mode is using the Wiimote as a steering wheel. You tilt the wheel left to right, forward to back, and hope that your tilts will register. The strange thing with this mode is that some of the flying minigames don’t use it. Instead you use the dpad and twist the wiimote left to right, a strange control decision, and one that feels like a last minute tack on. The final control method is sadly used far too often; holding the wiimote on it’s side like a NES pad and mashing the buttons. To me there should have been no games using this lazy control style. Part of the fun of playing a game like this on the Wii is using the waggle control to it’s fullest. Games using this control style sadly feel like shoddy Gamecube ports thrown in to up the mini-game count. We expect more Nintendo!
By far my biggest surprise with this game was the number of varied game boards you have to play on. There are a total of 6 boards in Mario Party 8, and all of them bring you up and close to the action instead of the normal bird’s eye view used in the older titles. Boards like Goomba’s Booty Boardwalk and Koopa’s Tycoon Town really change the way you play the game by throwing in a nice dose of strategy into the mix. On the Booty Boardwalk stage you race to the finish line in basically a straight line, the first to get there gets a chance to buy the star, then gets transported to the start. Tycoon Town has you playing a simplified game of Monopoly where you invest your coins into the hotels to secure the stars they hold. The cool this about this stage is that someone can come up right under your nose and invest a few more coins then you did, taking the 1,2 or 3 stars that that particular hotel holds. I loved this stage, and it is by far the most played one at my house.
With this game showing up on the Wii, the graphics and sound could have been pumped up a notch from it’s Gamecube cousins. While a few new graphical effects have been added, and the close up view of the stages now allow you to appreciate the detail, a decision was made to not present this game in a widescreen mode for those who have a widescreen TV and component cables. This is a huge issue for me as Nintendo should be the ones setting the bar from a graphical standpoint. While not everyone has a widescreen TV, having that option for those who do is a heck of a lot nicer then the “curtain” bars we are given on the left and right of the screen while in widescreen mode. I hope a decision is made from here on out that makes widescreen modes mandatory in all Nintendo published titles. I know that Hudson was the developer on this title, but by working closely with Nintendo I hoped that they would have adopted some of the design practices that Nintendo uses.
Complaints aside, Mario Party 8 is a great title to fire up on your Wii; provided that you are playing with others. Like all previous Mario Party titles the single player modes are far from the focus, but nothing is better then getting a room of your friends or family together to play and laugh along with this title. The Wiimote controls may not be there for all of the games, but the ones that have it are great multiplayer fun. And isn’t that what gaming on the Wii all about?
I give Mario Party 8 on the Wii a 7/10 - This is a worthy party title to add to your collection provided you don’t already have copies of 6 or 7 on the Gamecube handy.
My friends and I put this game through a bit of a different acid test and as a result we choose playing it above 6 or 7. The reason is that we have had a problem in the past finding a reliable fourth. A couple of our friends have been interested in the franchise, but having to push abxy on the cube controller in that order and other such games made them feel as if they had no shot playing against us. The simplified controls, even for games that simply play NES pad style meant that anyone can play this game with us and as a result it gets more play and is my fav of the series.
this is my first nintendo wii game its cool but i dont like it as much as i liked super paper mario when i rented it.
First of all, very nice review! *Thumbs Up!*
The lack of Widescreen is indeed an issue for me, as I’m playing the game on my new LCD TV screen with component cable. This was really disappointing.
The second issue I’m having with Mario Party 8 is the candy instead of orbs. Usually I’m playing the game with my family, like girlfriend, sister and brother-in-law. The women in my family are not that good in the mini games and score their points mainly by placing their orbs smart. With the candy in Mario Party 8 you can’t place them, but use them. So putting a “stop-orb” (that big blue spiky thing from previous MP’s) on a red block is out of the picture now.
They love to screw you over with their orbs, and now that is getting more difficult unfortunately.
On the other hand, by simplifying the controls, they should play better in the minigames. I hope this works out for them, otherwise because of getting rid of the orbs, it gets rid of some competition aswell in my case.
I haven’t played long enough to conclude how I feel about the game. beside the points I’ve mentioned above teh game feels great to me. and I haven’t had that feeling since Zelda Twilight Princess on the Wii.
Me and my family are having a difficult time playing the game with more than one control, I don’t know how to get the other 2 to work in the game so we can all play against each other instead of having the hassel of using one. So how do you get all 3 controls to work in the game?
If you haven’t figured it out yet, you can do a couple of things to make sure your wiimotes are working. First make sure you have no dead batteries in your wiimotes. 2nd, all you should need to do is press the power button on the top left button of each of the wiimotes and they should come one and you should see a cursor that shows 1 and another cursor that is a different color with 2 and so fourth…
im having difficulty getting my second third fourth controller working on the mario games ive done the batteries and the on off button but its not working could u please tell me how to do it as its getting on my nerves sharing a remote
You need to sync your controller to your Wii. Do this by taking off the battery cover on the Wiimote you want to use and press the red sync button. You Wiimote should start blinking, then press the red sync button located on your Wii console thats located where the SD memory card goes. That should do it, hope it helps.
Craig, I’ve tried what you suggested also and still the game isn’t picking up my other controller. It works fine with Wii sports but Mario Party ain’t playing ball!
Great multiplayer fun especially after a few drinks. The single player is a bit naff and gets boring quite quickly. No widescreen option is available which pretty much makes no use out of my 42 inch widescreen.
Same here the 2 player doesnt work in mario party 8 , ok in other games
mario is a very good active game but i am stuck but ill do the rest later
I can’t get two player to work either. I’ve sync’d remotes. they both show on the pointer (hand) on the screen. As soon as I start MP8 it turns off the 2nd remote. Any help?
Same problem here. Second player has stopped working…. one minute OK the next not. New batteries, resynch, wii update etc with no luck. It’s only been out of the box for 5 days, what gives???
I’ve tried Everything to get the 2nd wii control to work and it won’t. Really P***ed off as my kids are gutted.
i was wondering if anyone know how to register a second wii remote in the multiplayer version of mario party 8? please respond asap to the email
I agree. This is really annoying. How can it be this difficult to set up the second controller??? Especially when the menu says “P2: please connect a Wii Remote”. How do you want me to connect it?!? THERE SHOULD BE BETTER INSTRUCTIONS DAMMIT!!!
hi ,i got this game its brill1
I can only play with two people as it says i need a controller each. How do i go about sharing so i can play with 4?
Read Craig’s July 28th post CAREFULLY… it helped me!! thanx =)
hi i have had the same question since christmas about 2 player remote but finally sussed it.Press the home button on your remote then go to remote settings it has a reconnect button press it then you can add both controls by pressing 1/2 hope this helps enjoy