Mario Party 7

A party I wish I was never invited to

3.25/5 (6.5/10)

Folks, you won't see me give a game this low of a score very often. I don't own very many bad games. So why do I own this game? I bought it when I was a kid, which is the only audience who could really ever find this enjoyable.

Mario Party 7 brings the same concept that has been used in just about every other Mario Party game: each character tries to obtain the most stars by moving around on a game board and playing mini games. Sounds alright, but multiplayer games can get boring, and fast. In this iteration of the Mario Party series, the developer tried to mix things up a bit by creating special conditions for each game board. For example, on one board, the highest bidder will receive the amount of stars that are in a windmill. On another, you can steal other people's stars by riding chain chomps and crushing your opponents. I actually give credit to the developers, because at least these new twists make things a bit more interesting.

Even with the new features in the multiplayer party, it's still quite a drag. A simple 10 turn party takes an entire 40 minutes, at the least. I shudder to think of the suffering some people would go though if they choose to play the 50 turn party. So, with the multiplayer party being not quite as fun as someone who's never played a Mario Party game would expect, it comes down to the mini games. You play mini games after every turn in a multiplayer party, and you can also play them whenever you want in the mini game area of Mario Party 7. However, you can only play the mini games after unlocking them in the monotonous multiplayer party mode. Shame on you, Nintendo.

So, are the mini games any fun? Well, kind of. There some stand-outs, such as Spider Stomp, Balloonatic, Fun Run, Funstacle Course, and Ice moves, but there are also many mini games that fall flat. If you can stand some of the bad puns (try Synch-Row-Nicity or Grin and Bar It), you can have a really good time playing some of them. However, I find that some of the mini games are just too short. Yes, I know that they are called mini games, but some games can end in about 8 seconds. I would have liked it if some more thought had been put into them.

Now, not to worry- there is a new feature in the game, in the form of 8 player mini games. But perhaps you should worry, because they aren't really anything special. If you can actually get 8 people into one room to play Mario Party, you'll have to share the controllers at the same time, forcing you to have to get close with the person your sharing with, which I can only imagine would be rather awkward. And another problem will arise if you have an odd number of people- one person will have to team up with a dumbass computer player, putting them at a disadvantage. While I was playing a mini game named Rope a Dope, my computer partner was constantly pulling me into the abyss. As you can imagine, it was impossible for me to win.

There's a solo mode, of course, but it's completely pointless. All it does is gets you points to buy crap at the store. Which brings me to the way Nintendo tries to get you to keep playing: you earn points by playing games, which you can use to buy useless souvenirs and less than helpful secrets (Did you know? When viewing souvenirs, say the colored words into the Mic for a surprise!). I miss the good old times in Mario Party 4 and Mario Party 5 when you could complete solo mode to reach a final boss battle with Bowser. The huge cube in Mario Party 4 was a fun challenge for me when I was a kid.

The graphics are so-so, and the music is fine.... not much to talk about in that area.

The Final Verdict:

Mario Party 7 was the fourth Mario Party game to be released on the Gamecube, and came out just a year after Mario Party 6. More should have been done with this game, and perhaps it would have been a truly great party game. But it is not.

Mario Party 7

THis is a fun game that your whole family would like beat your friends in you play tons of fun minigames and play with your favorite charcters I recommend this game for all.

Mheh

This game has a lot to live up to, the Mario Parties in the past were excellent and this one didnt quite fill the shoes. The game was ok they had new ideas but it was not a game that was good enough to keep me interested for more than a week or two. I would like to see more classic games with a brand new look to them. I miss the other games becuase this one didn't tickle my fancy.

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