Acosta02

@Acosta02

Oh, I forgot to note the absolute worst part of the game: battle-mini games in the old games were intense affairs; the coin reward for them was taken out of the players' pockets, sometimes up to 50 coins each! Unfortunately, in 9 they take a measly 3 mini-stars every time, and payout is 6/4/2/0. It's simply not worth the time or effort to play the games, and as far as I can tell, there's no way to change it. What a shame, it went from the most hype event in the game to the least.

I played this last night and can tell you that this is absolutely one of the best games in the series, if not THE best (heretical, I know). The mini-game design is almost 100% perfect, with a couple flubs here and there (these flubs, however, are only about as bad as some of the better games in the weaker mario parties!). I never thought a Mario Party minigame would ever immediately make me think of the prisoner's dilemma, but here we are.

It's actually bonkers to say that the game is "not tinkering too much with its familiar board-game formula." Yeah, you still "roll and move," but this game and the old ones have that element in common the way CoD and Metroid Prime have "aim and shoot" in common. And the great thing is that all the new and changed mechanics really play off one another amazingly. Removing items in favor of different dice gives you control over how the group moves, which plays beautifully off of the mini-stars/ztars system. The whole element of strategic positioning is in my eyes far, far better than the old system of "hope I roll as far as possible 90% of the time." No other Mario Party gives players such direct impact upon one another, which is exactly what you want in a party game.

I didn't really mean to turn this into a mini-review, but gosh, I'm excited about this game. Also, my friends and I have spent about as much time in the soccer mini-game as playing actual boards; look for it under the "extras" menu. It's the second coming of dunk bros (or the volleyball game in MP4... if you're a nutso).

...don't you have to hold it backwards for the eyetoy to see the tracking orb?

@Catalyst691

Coulda fooled me! ;)

Hmmm, looks interesting. Always nice to see xbox indie games getting some love.

@jsx92

To be fair, anybody who self-identifies with the word "gamer" probably is the worst type of person.

Gabe Newell has a posse.

The Miyamoto thing sounds like a terrible example; I would bet it was a language barrier thing.

@Chaosjay

Haha, I didn't even know there was a VEVO site... just that they put videos on Youtube, which definitely are censored. Bulletoftheyear's comment was my first thought, too.

Formerly GAME, soon to be GONE.