Marty Party 8 for the Wii follows in a long line of party games developed in the Super Mario universe, however, this is the first time Mario brings his party hat to the “next-gen” on the Wii. From new mini-games to Wii-mote controls, this game had a lot of potential. But does it hold up? Here is a breakdown of some of the facets of Mario Party 8 for the Wii:

Presentation and Graphics: The presentation of Mario Party 8 seriously confused me. Not so much how it was laid out, which was fairly easy to navigate with the Wii-mote, but more-so why Nintendo did the things they did. First off, the main menu system looks very nice in 480p widescreen. Pretty much a standard for this generation. Imagine my disappointment when I jumped into a game, only to find that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, other than the main menus is not widescreen. You get Xbox Live Arcade style sidebars to frame the picture on a widescreen display. In the HD era, this is very disappointing. Shame on you Nintendo. If you’re going to make one portion of the game support widescreen, you better damn well make sure the rest of the game does too. Once I got past that anger, the game didn’t really look any better than the last couple Mario Party games on the Gamecube. 2 of 5

Sound and Music: You get some standard Mario character sound effects here, but again, really no voice-overs. Why is Nintendo so against voice acting? There’s nothing wrong with putting text there to read, but at least give me some aural stimulation. I’m used to 5.1 channel (or more) surround sound, and I can accept Dolby Pro Logic IIx coming from the Wii. But when there’s hardly anything there to begin with, it starts to get boring. The stage background sounds and the effects when you use a power-up are standard Mario fare. I expected something more in this iteration. 2 of 5

Gameplay: You would seriously think that with the graphic and sound downfalls, this game would shine in it’s gameplay. Well, you would be sadly mistaken again. The base gameplay type of Mario Party 8, like previous Mario Party titles, has you and 3 friends (either CPU controlled or actual friends, if you have any) moving around a game board collecting power-ups and competing in various minigames. My problem with this version of Mario Party is the gameplay is entirely too slow. It’s a good 3-5 minutes between minigames when playing on the board. It got to the point where me and my friends would stop paying attention until the Minigame screen was waiting for us. There’s just not much to offer moving around the board. Collecting Stars isn’t that interesting. Once you get to the minigames, they’re very fun. The use of the Wii-mote is very good for the variety of minigames present. If only there was a better way to unlock all the minigames to play in the stand-alone multiplayer mode without having to play endless hours on the board games. Come on Nintendo… I want to hop in and get some fun multiplayer action going, not sit and wait for long turns on the game board before I can play. 2 of 5

Multiplayer: Like I mentioned above, you have to spend countless hours unlocking minigames in the board game mode to be able to just hop in and focus on the minigames themselves with friends. I had friends complaining of the wait times between minigames, and I can’t say I disagree. What’s the point of a party game with the pace of Catan? To no one’s surprise, there’s no online component to the game. Maybe that would help the score here if it existed…. 2 of 5

Lasting Appeal: If the gameplay wasn’t so slow, I’d want to play more. If you could unlock minigames other than in the slow board game mode, I’d want to play more. As it is now, I lost interest in the game after a few hours of play. 2 of 5

Final Word: Please Nintendo… speed up the gameplay and make a way to unlock the minigames without the slow board game mode. If I could start playing minigames with friends the minute I put the game in the Wii, I would have loved it. As it is, I lost interest very quickly. I expected a lot more from the first Mario Party for the Wii

Overall: 2 of 5

1 = Not worth the bandwidth.

2= Demo is enough, not worth your money.

3= Game is good, depending on the price, seriously consider picking it up.

4= Worth your money. Should provide some good times for quite awhile.

5= Buy the game. Lock your door. Pick up a case of beer. This could take all night.