The 'Shroom:Issue LX/Review Corner

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With Mario Party 9 coming out and all, I figured I would review Mario Party DS this month.

Gameplay
Mario Party DS is a great Mario Party Game. There are flaws but also lots of things that are perfected. There are 8 playable characters in the game: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Toad, Yoshi, Waluigi, and Wario. I feel that they could have added up to 10 because it seemed kind of short for what it could have been. In Story Mode after choosing your character you play each board with a boss battle at the end. The plot is kinda dumb, Bowser shrinks them down and they have to fight back to turn back into their regular size. I felt there could have been a better plot for the game instead of this. The boss battles provide some fun. However after you complete it, you never really care to redo them. Story Mode is kind of disappointing.

Besides Story Mode, you can also do Party Mode and Multiplayer Mode. Party Mode allows you to play on any of the boards, while Multiplayer Mode allows you to play with a single-card multiplayer, something the other Mario Parties didn’t have. I felt this really added to the gameplay, and I enjoyed it the most out of anything on the game.

However, if I did do multiplayer, I usually did minigames and not the party boards. The boards in this game were really disappointing, and there was only one good one. The items and hexes were also not that great. I found that the minigames were amazing.

After beating Story Mode, all I did was the minigames. And even if there weren’t boards, I would still buy the game, just for the minigames themselves. The minigames are probably one of the best out of all the games. My favorites would have to be Camera Shy, a minigame that involves snapping pictures of the other players in a maze first, and Flash and Dash. After those every minigame is amazing except maybe 8.

So if you plan on getting this game, I would suggest making sure you have somebody else to play with, and won’t mind playing minigames only and not the boards.

Good Features: Multiplayer, Amazing Minigames Bad Features: Story Mode, Character Selection, Bad Boards, Items and Hexes NSM’s Rating: 8.5/10

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