Roll Back: Mario Party 8

Mario Party 8 was released for the Wii in 2007 and received mixed reviews. Does it deserve the ratings it got?

For starters, how does the game play? Mario Party 8 is a party game of numerous compiled mini-games. How do these mini-games play? Numerous mini-games are fun to play and quality depends on how the games control. Some will be easy to control while others will require much effort. The main thing for this game is the Party Tent mode which puts you in a board game rivaling other players both AI and real. As with other party games, with each turn on this board game each player will play a randomly selected mini-game which is either brawl, 2 vs. 2, or 3 against 1. Even duel against another player in a special event.

Though Mario Party 8 can be fun at times with collecting stars and coins to compete for victory and numerous candy power ups, it can be repetitive and lose lasting appeal easily. This game does have a scaled back look for it as graphics look like this game could be made for Nintendo GameCube. The game doesn't look bad but the graphics haven't improved for this game from it's then previous generation. Mario Party 8 had some disappointments for Wii players.

Though I did enjoy playing it with the board game I do feel Mario Party 8 isn't the best party game. It does however give the feeling of a wacky adventure with numerous themed boards. Select different options such as how many turns, plus you can even select the characters themselves instead of having them randomly selected for you. I like games where you can select your rival AI characters.

What do I think of Mario Party 8 after playing it? Looking back I really feel that Mario Party 9 would be better as the latter actually has graphics that are appropriate for it's time instead of looking like a GameCube game ported onto a Wii console. Mario Party 8 certainly isn't the best Mario Party game available but at least it sold amazingly and was fun to play for awhile.