Back in the days of the Nintendo 64, it became clear that Super Mario 64 was going to be the only true Mario game that would be made for that console. Shigeru Miyamoto actually came out at one point and stated that he was limited by the N64’s processing capabilities in the making of Super Mario 64, and that the Italian plumber’s next true adventure wouldn’t be released until Nintendo’s next console. That, of course, didn’t stop Nintendo from featuring their eternal mascot in several other venues. One of the most original of these was Mario Party, a unique game that merged a traditional board game with a boatload of mini-games in which the players would compete. The game was a smash success, and spawned two more sequels that appeared on the N64, each a step above the last. Last year, Mario Party 4 was released for the GameCube, the first for the next-gen system. Instead of a real overhaul of the series, as one would expect with the transition to a new console, the fourth installment of the series was actually a step backwards. While the graphics were undeniably better, the mini-games were fairly uninspired, the boards were maddeningly frustrating to navigate, and the gameplay was still exactly the same as it was in the original Mario Party.
That said, I approached Mario Party 5 with extreme trepidation. Given that it was released only a year after Mario Party 4, and again by developer Hudson Soft who is known for making one great game and then beating it into the ground with sequels (Bomberman, anyone?), I wasn’t expecting Mario Party 5 to give me the same thrill as the first Mario Party games did. While Mario Party 5 did surprise me on some levels, and is undeniably better than Mario Party 4, fundamentally, it’s still just another dose of the same old game from 1999.
The basic premise of Mario Party 5, as it has been with all the Mario Party games, is that four players pick a character from one of Mario’s many games and travel around a board in an attempt to earn as many stars as they can. The character set has actually been shuffled around a bit; Donkey Kong is now an event character, and Boo has become a playable character (much to my wife’s delight; she likes to do the Boo cackle whenever she wins a game). In their travels, the players participate in mini-games and enter other events in order to earn coins with which to trade for the stars. The mini-games can be anything from pounding on the A button to a jumping race to a few laps around a speed skating track, and are generally easy enough for even the littlest partiers to pick up and play with only a practice round or two. As far as the main game goes, that still holds true in Mario Party 5, though the game does offer a new team play mode, where players are split into teams of two and compete that way.
The boards this time around, it must be said, are fairly bland. While there are themes to the boards, there are no interesting features to the boards to make them stand out from one another. Of course, the game attempts to make up for it by replacing its old item system with a new capsule system. Capsules are obtained by passing capsule dispensers around the board, and cost coins to use (as opposed to purchase) when that time comes. The capsules can do a variety of things, from the classic mushroom that lets you roll two dice instead of one, to the warp pipe that lets you switch places with another player. The twist is that you can either use these items on yourself directly once, or you can place them on the board, after which, any player who lands on that space will activate the item, for better or worse. It is an interesting change, but most of the capsules are the types of things that you only would want to have for yourself, so unless you’re playing with an anarchist, the board-altering characteristics of the capsules probably won’t get much use.
A bigger problem than the blandness of the boards, though, is just the general slowness of the gameplay, which has been a negative aspect of the Mario Party games since the beginning. The basic problem is that computer players are treated exactly like human players, in that they move at exactly the same speed, are presented the same events, and have to navigate the same dialog boxes that the human characters do. With more than one computer player (or, worse, playing by yourself), the game can slow to a crawl as you wait for the computer players (who the human players would often not include if they had a choice) to complete their turns. Hudson makes some half-hearted attempts at resolving the issue by including a single-player mode in which one plays against three computer players who move simultaneously, but it’s a completely different (read: less enjoyable) game than the main party mode. Simply put, Hudson has had five installments in which to make the party mode flow better with the inclusion of the computer players; still, nothing has been done in this regard, and by this point there’s really no excuse for it.
The mini-games are the usual mixed bag that is present in every Mario Party game. There are some winners, such as the aforementioned speed skating game, and one puzzle game where you need to punch Goombas out of the way in order to clear three rooms in a hotel. There are also the games that are variations of bashing A repeatedly and ground pounding over and over again, which are about as uninteresting as they sound. Most of the games fall in between the two extremes; they’re not boring, but you won’t remember them five minutes later, either. Some of the two-on-two and three-on-one games are rendered much more difficult than they should be when playing with a computer player, as well, which has always been a problem but never as blatant as it can be in Mario Party 5. One game in particular required alternating ground pounds with a partner to power a can opener; when playing with a computer player, this is reduced to ground pounding as often as possible and hoping that the computer player didn’t try to do it at the exact same time. Again, this is a problem that’s been around since the beginning, and it’s more pronounced in this edition partly because of the nature of the games that causes it to be noticeable, and partly because it’s a problem that is yet to be fixed after five installments.
One good thing about this version of Mario Party is that there are some additional modes included that are uncharacteristic of the Mario Party series and a welcome surprise in that regard. Mario Party 5 comes with an Ice Hockey game that is very reminiscent of the original Hockey for the NES, a volleyball game, and a Card Party mode. The latter is essentially a variant of the board game played out with cards and without mini-games, and can be fun for a few minutes, but by the end of what they called the “short game”, I felt like I had been sitting there forever. The other two games were interesting for a little while, but a better variety of games, like those that appear in the Super Monkey Ball games, for instance, would have made this feel less like an afterthought. Super Duel Mode, where you build a combat vehicle with parts you purchase via credits earned by playing the main game, is mildly interesting but a bit out of place here, and requires too much of a time investment in Party Mode to really be worthwhile. Also present are mini-game only modes that cut down on some of the overhead of the main game, but still manage to be just as slow-paced and actually become more tedious after a couple of plays through.
Graphically, Mario Party 5 is about on par with Mario Party 4. That is to say that the characters look nice and well-rounded, and there are some fairly impressive water effects to be seen here and there. Everything runs fine, with no real slowdown or clipping issues, which one would expect given that what’s being displayed often isn’t all that complicated. The game is colorful and happy, and generally easy on the eyes.
Sound is just as acceptable. The background music is jaunty and inoffensive, though you won’t be humming any of the tunes once the game is shut off. The sound effects are classic Mario, with the usual bouncy sounds, and familiar power-up noises that you would expect to hear in any Mario game. The voice acting, where there is any, is as good as it is in any GameCube Mario game; it’s not bad, but it’s not great, either. They finally did get Yoshi to shout “Yoshi!”, though, whereas before he just made some sort of growling sound that didn’t sound anything like him. Of course, for every good voice, there’s an equally bland grunt or growl that really could have been replaced by a simple voice sample. Really, some of the voices sound like they were carried over directly from the N64, and it just seems plain lazy on a current system.
Overall, Mario Party 5 is a decent purchase for anyone who hasn’t played the game before. This is also a fantastic kids’ game, as it is extremely easy to pick up and play and has enough imagery that will appeal to the younger set. However, if you’ve already played Mario Party in any of its other incarnations, there’s really nothing new for you here. The mini-games and boards may be different, but the game’s the same, and while it may be worth a rental, full price is way too much to pay for a fifth rehash of a game that, much like a popular song on the radio, was good the first couple of times around, but got old with heavy rotation. Hudson really should consider taking a year off to retool the whole Mario Party concept and make it something worth playing again. Otherwise, one more lazy entry like this might make me give up my Party-going lifestyle for good.
