Mario Party 5 Review

By Tom Bramwell Published 9 January, 2004

Expect the expected!

Version tested: GameCube

There aren't many game series that stretch to a fourth sequel, and, of the ones that have, Mario Party is perhaps the least understandable. While the Final Fantasies of this world could feasibly go on forever, reinventing themselves once every couple of years, consistently growing and harnessing new technology inventively to satisfying effect, Mario Party is a perpetual board game where event icons throw up mini-game challenges for an immovable cast of familiar Nintendo characters decked out in sugary Fisher Price coating. All the same, here we are with Mario Party 5, which offers yet another selection of vacuous mini-games, a board game to justify them and a few more perks for single players than its predecessor. It's top of the charts in Japan as I type, and it's not at all obvious why.

Welcome back

'Mario Party 5' Screenshot 1

Through various revisions the four-player board game at the core of Mario Party has now grown into a relatively complex beast. Here's what you need to know (pay attention): between one and four human players (with CPU controlled adversaries making up the numbers) pick a Nintendo character and roll an apparently ten-sided die to move around a mostly circular board, occasionally branching off or wandering into a teleporter. The object of the game is to collect stars, which are positioned in the farthest flung corners of the board and require 20 coins for any player to "win" them when they get there. Coins meanwhile are won or lost by competing in various mini-game tasks, which befall players when they land on a circle with an icon, and these mini-games are split into various categories that we'll deal with later on.

Another way to collect or lose coins is to make use of capsules, which are dispensed by a chirpy gumball machine whenever you pass it (rather than being purchased from a shop, as they were in MP4), and allow players to use a given item on themselves, or place it on a blue circle up to ten spaces ahead - if it's something like a mushroom (which gives you an extra spin of the dice), then it's worth holding onto, while something like a piranha plant trap or Donkey Kong slapping is worth deploying to snare a few coins when opponents pause on top of it. Anyway, when the chosen number of rounds has elapsed, the game is over and the player with the most stars wins - while the game will or won't award bonus stars for various feats depending on your preference in setting it up.

Does that sound like fun to you? Because, for me, it's needlessly complex. Not to mention slow-paced. Although developer Hudson has tried to make the waiting time for each player slightly less agonising this year, it's still ridiculously boring sitting around waiting for each individual player to move, waiting for any resulting animation to finish, waiting for the game to skip through the same dialogue boxes when dispensing capsules, and generally waiting for events to unfold. It's particularly aggravating when you're watching a CPU player, with no control over how fast or slow the little silicon bastard skips through text boxes and navigates menus. And why you can't skip the repetitive animations - like a palm tree rising slowly out of the board and Donkey Kong appearing to punch whoever's on top - is anyone's guess. They're quite ticklish the first time, or when someone unfortunately wanders into yours, but they're not exactly comedy gold. It's just bizarre, really, for a fifth-in-the-series title to be so, well, unrefined.

ACME board games

'Mario Party 5' Screenshot 2

However it is clear that Hudson has made some efforts to try and remedy this, particularly for single players. This time out there's a Story Mode in addition to the vanilla Party Mode, in which Mario or one of his seven partying pals gets to take on a trio of Mini-Bowsers, who all move simultaneously. The goal here is not to win on stars, but to run each of the three Mini-Bowsers down to zero coins within the allotted number of turns. This is pretty easy because, unlike the main Party Mode board game, here events are almost all of the "Super-Duel" variety, in which the player goes one-on-one against a Mini-Bowser, robbing them of between 5 and 15 coins depending on whose go it is. With five boards to conquer, the single player game takes around three hours or so - including an incongruous final boss fight that genuinely rivals most platform or adventure games.

But while the Mini-Bowsers are carbon copies of one another and move simultaneously, there's no escaping the wait for animations to complete, menus to be dispensed with, capsules to be placed, challenges to be undertaken, etc, so Mini-Bowser turns still take a good long while. Given the huge dose of chance involved in much of Mario Party and you can add "frustrating" to the list of complaints - it's easy enough to start the game and find yourself at an irreparable disadvantage without it having anything to do with your own skill level, and that's hardly a plus point for a single player game by any stretch of the imagination.

It doesn't help matters that the quality of the mini-games on offer varies immensely, and this drags down even the rowdiest of multiplayer games - and certainly leaves you gagging for something else when you're left to contemplate it on your own. For example, one mini-game has you and your opponent pick one of three ropes and pull on it, the idea being that one of them has a 100-ton weight at the top of it. Loser gets squashed. It's pure chance, and when you lose against a CPU opponent you'll think it's a complete farce. Likewise the mini-game in which you have to butt-stomp a circle of buttons, all but one of which are linked to some sort of "hilarious" pratfall. Guess the right one first and you win. This sort of thing might work on cheap Saturday evening game shows with a fridge/freezer at stake, but haven't party/mini games evolved beyond that by now? Has nobody at Hudson even seen some of the stuff in Wario Ware? Or Super Monkey Ball?

Mini-games for mini-gamers

'Mario Party 5' Screenshot 3

Granted it's not all bad. Button-mashers aside (since they just about get away with it through a mixture of clever packaging and varying concepts), most of the games on offer have their moments. Piece Out, for example, is a puzzle game where two players have to use a claw to drag blocks off a central conveyor belt and position them in a grid. When the grid's full, it empties and you bank loads of points, getting extra credit for working with corresponding colours. Although the pseudo-3D game board sometimes renders block placement that little bit less than intuitive, it's actually a darn sight better than most puzzle game ideas I've seen these past 12 months. Mini-games like the quick-draw also appeal, as two party poopers face off in the old west, aiming to be the first to poke a button when it's flashed up. Hit the right one first and you win, hit the wrong one at the wrong time and it all backfires. In fact, even games with slight perspective issues - like the cloudy jump-and-bump block-finding effort and the air bazooka game (which feels a bit like Monkey Punch) - manage to be relatively entertaining when played with others, while some games (like the pop-up-Whomp maze or the electric "amp" dodging effort) are borderline genius when played with the right people. Naturally though they all take far too long to start.

It's just the way it's all been put together that fails to capture my heart. The whole game is just too frilly for what it is, rendering the board game too tedious to play and the outcome too random for it to rank alongside rival party games - particularly on the console that Monkey Ball calls home. In fact, MP5's saving grace is that you can actually delve into all 60-plus mini-games in a variety of different ways once you've "unlocked" them on game board. Through the Mini-Game mode you can tackle them in any order you like (Free Play), in another odd little board game (Circuit), randomly thanks to a roulette wheel (Battle), to capture tiles on a hexagonal battlefield (Wars), in groups of ten (Decathlon), or in a knock-out Tournament that focuses on the two-player duels. Although it would be nice to have them available from the start, Mini-Game mode will probably stand up to the most play.

And then there's Bonus mode, which includes a trio of slightly more involved mini-games that warrant their own paragraph. Firstly there's the weakest of the three, Card Party, in which players roll the dice and try to reach stars in a card-based maze that is gradually revealed as cards turn over. It's relatively good fun, but weak due to the waiting times, again. Ice Hockey, meanwhile, is pretty basic and exactly what it sounds like - four outfield players with AI-controlled goalies at either end, weak, medium and hard strokes and a decent enough feel to it. The strongest of the three though is Beach Volleyball, which amusingly offers about the same level of control as Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball with pass/spike and jump buttons, and is played from above and to the side. It's basic, naturally, but well worth dabbling in, and the addition of an exploding or dice based ball to nobble the outcome of rallies makes a bit of a difference too.

After Party

All in all, Mario Party is exactly the sort of game that warrants use of that tired old "mixed bag" cliché. In my mind, said mixed bag, when emptied onto the table, would yield all manner of mostly shiny looking baubles, most of which have some redeeming features but very few of which are worth pursuing for longer than a couple of minutes. That it's all framed by the tirelessly gaudy Nintendo palette, with squeakily familiar tunes and moves at a snail's pace is just not good enough for game number five. By now it should be bright, fresh, accessible and consistently entertaining without ever stumbling drunkenly toward "totally random". As it is, for all its changes Mario Party 5 is no better or worse than last year's instalment - an average party game that needs more than just another sequel to rescue its fortunes. Played with the right group it can be a laugh - there's no denying it - but there are far better things to do with your time, your GameCube, and such marvellously entertaining friends. For once, Western gamers are quite right to ignore this.

5 / 10

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Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (29) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Sid-Nice #1 8 years ago

    I was expecting a lot more from this game, what would be a better idea than a board game, fill a disk full of all the best mini games and call it Mario's Mini Game Madness.

  • Blerk #2 8 years ago

    Boring. Boring. Boring boring boring. Boring.

    But thank God they released this over here instead of that God-awful Animal Crossing. I'm sure NOBODY ON EARTH wants to play that.

    /kills self

  • ssuellid #3 8 years ago

    Was there ever a good Mario Party game?

  • Tyronne #4 8 years ago

    So its crap then....goodie another game to avoid like the plague.

  • Sko #5 8 years ago

    Funnily enough, one of the first games my brother and his missus bought after getting a Gamecube this christmas. They invite their mates over, get smashed and have a blast, apparently.

  • Dirtbox #6 8 years ago

    The first crap game from Ninty in living memory as far as I know. Momentus occasion.

  • BartonFink #7 8 years ago

    Oh dear!!
    And what Blerk said.

    C'mon Nintendo give us Aminal Cursings!!

  • Rankin #8 8 years ago

    This is actually lots of fun with a few friends, and there's the bonus that my wife (a devoted videogame hater) actually enjoys playing too.

    It's the first Mario Party I've owned/played, though, so I'm not tired of the series like some may be.

  • Dizzy #9 8 years ago

    Nintendo in recycled game shocker!

  • gamesb*tch #10 8 years ago

    they should port it to GBA and try to convince us it's an original game... oh, wrong way round...

  • Killerbee #11 8 years ago

    I played the first N64 Mario party with three mates and large quantities of alcohol and it was hilarious.

    But trying again on my own the next day I realised how boring it can be when you've got to wait for the computer to take its turn and the cheating bastard always wins the mini-games.

    Possibly one I'd rent if I had a load of friends coming over for the evening - actually no, scratch that. I'd much rather play Mario Kart and Super Monkey Ball 2.

    I think it's probably time to kill this series off and do a Wario Ware style mini-game compendium instead.

  • #12 8 years ago

    The first crap game from Ninty in living memory as far as I know. Momentus occasion.

    Not really.. all the others are just as boring... and it's Hudson Soft, not Nintendo.

  • Sid-Nice #13 8 years ago

    Vermin,
    Did you mean all the other Mario Party games, or all the other Nintendo games, or even all the other Hudson Soft games.

  • Aretak #14 8 years ago

    Whee... the Mario Party series has been shite from day one, so it's good to see they're not trying to change it.

  • #15 8 years ago

    All the other Mario Party games..............

    /slaps SidNice with used condom

  • Juniper #16 8 years ago

    I agree that the Mario Party series needs a bit of a revamp... but you can't argue with the sales figures. And it's not that fair to say "Western gamers are quite right to ignore this" - the Party games sell like mad in America.

  • Tricky #17 8 years ago

    Feck all that - just give us Wario Ware on the GC without all that boring "board game" rubbish!

  • Sko #18 8 years ago

    "...just give us Wario Ware on the GC..."

    They are, aren't they? There's a preview in GameTM, iirc.

  • Kami #19 8 years ago

    Either this'll be bought for the kids, or for post-pub entertainment. Rather like every other Mario Party, then.

  • Cubfan #20 8 years ago

    Strange. The fat guy usually loves Nintendo.

  • Sko #21 8 years ago

    "I got Animal Crossing/ Freeloader on EBAY for 70 quid altogether..."

    70 quid? You were ripped, mate. Animal Crossing 30 quid, CDWow. Freeloader 11 quid, Play.com

    In fact, CDWow have got the PAL version, prob. that Aussy version Potato mentioned for 35.

    Free delivery. Plus, being '1st hand', they won't smell like some smoker has been using them to scrape the lung butter off the carpet...

  • Khab #22 8 years ago

    i imported PAL Animal Crossing from Australia, and it's an excellent game, very relaxing (from a 16 year old - 17 in a few months)

    in fact, a lot of these so called baby-ish games appeal to me, i have Animal Crossing, Super Smah Bros. Super Monkey Ball, Mario Kart: DD, Pikmin and Super Mario Sunshine in my collection of 14 games (all the rest being adult-orientated) there's nothing wrong with these kinda games, the fact of the matter is, they're extremely fun to play, and that's all that matters IMO.

    Unregistered user in sensible comment SHOCKER!



    Welcome mate, feel free to join in anytime - you might want to register, since quite a few people have 'automatically ignore unregistered users' on.

  • #23 8 years ago

    I'm not so certain Khab said he liked MP5 ... ?

  • Randy Eastman #24 8 years ago

    We played this game at a friends on New Year we all were drunk and it rocked, we only played the mini games though, the guy whose place it was had bought the game played continuously until he attained most of the mini games stating the board elements of the game are boring.

  • ghearoid #25 8 years ago

    um, i suppose enjoyment for this game really depends on who you play with and how. i play mario party with my little niece and nephew and it's just perfect for them as there isn't lots of text to read of complicated button pressing to memorise. and they like the bright colours and perky music

    also, playing when drunk with adults is a hoot! it's hard to review this kind of game with the same criteria you would use for others..

  • Dizzy #26 8 years ago

    >We played this game at a friends on New Year we all were drunk and it rocked

    You can have fun with pebbles when you are drunk. Maybe in the future EG should include a "drunk" score for games. 5/10 (Drunk 9/10). That makes sense....

  • Sko #27 8 years ago

    "i feel sorry for Sko, not only did he pay a whopping £70, but he also paid for a NTSC game causing extra inconvenience (chuckle)"

    I think you've got me confused with the other guy. I got mine from CDWow for 30 quid. It was NTSC but that's fine for me as I have a JAP/US GC. :)

  • renzo #28 8 years ago

    Being drunk shouldn't be a requirement for any game, so anybody that is trying to justify a higher score for this game is most likely a) an alcoholic, b) a fanboi, or c) both.
    Edited by 1 at 12/01/04 @ 09:55

  • Dizzy #29 8 years ago

    Who said that the GC was a kiddy console? To enjoy MP5 you need some hard liquor. See? Nintendo is quite adult.

  • commander dixon #30 8 years ago

    /smash potatoe

  • rainbows #31 8 years ago

    Made In Wario. Bring it to Europe. Now.
    Looks like such a cool drunk game...

  • ChrisOTR #32 7 years ago

    For what it's worth, my ladeeee bought this a few days ago on a whim. I couldn't remember how the reviews went - but I actually quite like it :D The minigames are fun (great use of the rumble feature on the joypads for a few of them) and it's presented really well...