Super Mario Party

Nov

2019

Super Mario Party

What 1-2-Switch Would Look Like as a Video Game

The first Mario Party created its own genre. By the release of the second, everyone wanted an invitation. The Mario fraternity saw similar success with their third outing, but by the fourth, the brothers were losing touch with the world. For the next four games, Mario Party handed out gimmicks like cheap drugs, and partygoers began experiencing hangovers. With the ninth and tenth outings, Mario Party resorted to chaining fans to a single vehicle just to get them to stay. In a desperate attempt to rebrand itself, Nintendo even repackaged Mario Party as Wii Party and Wii U Party. The handheld soirées were little more than dull tea parties.

With Super Mario Party, the series has cleaned itself up and arranged the best celebration since the original N64 renditions. A while ago, I advocated for the series’ demise, arguing Nintendo was slowly destroying the IP with all of the bad sequels. Super Mario Party has convinced me that Nintendo can make a good Mario Party game, but the series is not in the clear yet. In going back to the basics, Super Mario Party shows that minigame mania can still be a good time, but it is far from the ambitious, innovative sequel we have all wanted since the beginning.

What is it?

Super Mario Party is a board game if board games were cool and didn’t require social interaction. Four of you take turns rolling dice, moving around the board to collect coins, lose them, or trigger an event. Like Monopoly. Then, after everyone takes their turns, you all play a minigame. Whoever wins gets more coins. Kind of like Monopoly, but not. Players then must use these coins to purchase stars randomly placed on the board, each of which cost ten coins. The whole game ends after an allotted number of turns (in this case, the default is ten), and whoever grabbed the most stars wins everything. Exactly like underground cockfighting.

Super Mario Party shakes up the formula a bit by introducing character-specific dice blocks. On your turn, you can either roll a traditional six-sided die or your character’s die. For instance, Mario’s die has 1-3-3-3–5-6 on it, increasingly the likelihood you roll a three. Koopa, in comparison, has a die with 1-1-2-3-3-10, making you more likely to roll trash. Throughout a game, you can also collect other characters as allies, who not only can add one or two spaces to your roll each turn but give you access to their die.

Apart from the main party mode, you have several smaller offerings. Partner Party pits two teams of two against each other, and boards change to a grid-based layout on which you and you partner move at the same time determined by your collective rolls. River Survival is a glorified Paddle Battle minigame in which your team of four must navigate down a river, playing team-based minigames to collect more time in order to reach the end. Sound Stage offers a collection of rhythm-based minigames, and Toad’s Rec Room features throwaway games for people who have two Switches and two copies of Super Mario Party. The single-player and minigame modes—staples of the series—return as well.

What’s good?

Super Mario Party boasts a consistently strong selection of minigames. As with any entry in the series, there are some turds, but compared to the crap salad of Mario Party 10, this Switch sequel has some gourmet shit. Luck still dictates who will win occasionally but takes a backseat to skill.
Partner Party provides the innovation the series has so desperately needed. It allows for more strategy while moving at a quicker pace. You can divide and conquer across the board, having one player focus on stars while the other collects items and hits special spaces. Alternatively, you both can move together aggressively, collecting multiple stars per turn or stomping on your opponents to steal coins. Bad rolls and luck have less of an impact because one of you is bound to do better than the other. Even the minigames feel more varied because 2v2 and team minigames appear as frequently as the free-for-all batch.

What’s a double-edged sword?

The core game has been streamlined. Game boards are smaller; stars are cheaper; the maximum amount of turns is capped out at 20; and most fanfare is excised. Minigames have taken even more of the spotlight with these changes, and turns rarely drag out like they did in the older games. On the flip side, the smaller boards mean less strategy and politics among players. Although each board has its own unique gimmick, moving around them feels less dynamic. Players who enjoy the “board” more than the “game” will find Super Mario Party’s changes to the formula more disappointing.

What’s bad?

Despite its many modes, Super Mario Party lacks sufficient content. It only has four unique boards, the fewest of any console entry. River Survival has five different paths but the same ten minigames each time, so the mode grows stale after two or three attempts. Sound Stage is a nice diversion but can be finished in less than an hour. Fans thought that Nintendo would offer additional content in the future similar to Mario Tennis Aces or Arms, but now that we’re a year out without any DLC, we’re must accept what feels like “Mario Party Lite.”
Coming from the folks who made Super Kirby Slowdown and Disconsplatoon, it’s no surprise that Super Mario Party’s online mode sucks. Your options are reduced to competing against strangers or friends to see who wins the most minigames. You can’t play a full game. Multiple players can’t play on one console when playing with friends online. You can’t even choose from all of the minigames, just ten of them. Nintendo had an opportunity to truly reinvigorate the series, and they shrugged their shoulders.

What’s just Mario Party?

The single-player mode is a complete throwaway. Character-specific dice blocks are unbalanced. The computer players have four levels of stupidity rather than difficulty. Tutorials can’t be turned off. Certain animations drag on. Nintendo continues to withhold any true ability to customize your experience. Daisy still sounds like a deranged psychopath. The Mario Party series has always had weird/lazy/poor design choices, so it is as comforting as it is frustrating that Super Mario Party is no different.

What’s the verdict?

Years from now, I will remember the Switch as an age of lackluster sequels, but Super Mario Party will stand as one of the few worthy sequels. In returning to its roots, the game has cut off its unnecessary gimmicks in order to deliver a refined party experience, one of the best on the Switch. It may not be the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate of the series, but it doesn’t need to be for now. Seeing as this is Nintendo’s relaunch of the series, let’s hope the eventual Super Mario Party 2 does for Super Mario Party what Mario Party 2 did for Mario Party. Mario Party Party Mario Party Mario Mario Party.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 7.5
Time Played: Over 25 hours
Number of Players: 1-4
Games Like It on Switch: GO VACATION, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games 2020

Scoring Policy

Nov

2018

Evaluating Your Skill as a Gamer

Or: How I Judge Myself Based on Someone Else’s Opinions

Not all entertainment or hobbies can be enjoyed by everybody. If you don’t have a basic understanding of film history, you’ll probably not like most arthouse movies. Poetry might be a poison if you believe symbolism and rhythm are conspiracies made by English majors. Things like cooking or sports can be torturous if you don’t have the ability to do either. Even Russian avant-garde classical music is inaccessible if you don’t have a stick up your ass.

Similarly, with video games, your skill level may limit which games you enjoy. Dark Souls Remastered has received considerable praise, but it’s geared more toward seasoned gamers. For any new players, Dark Souls’ immense difficulty will skewer and roast them. No one wants to be punished for trying to have fun. Even masochists can agree with this. I think.

So how do you figure out your skill level? You could use online leaderboards or track your win-loss ratios, but that amount of objectivity is exhausting. Fortunately, I devised a completely arbitrary collection of attributes to judge your gaming abilities. For each attribute, I will give a brief explanation, and you must rate your mastery of that attribute on a scale of 1-5.

A “1” means a sentient garbage fire is better at this skill than you are. A “5” means you kick ass so hard that the donkey population is on the verge of extinction. A “3” shows your ability is somewhere between a living, flaming pile of garbage and unnecessary levels of animal abuse. Your overall score across all categories is irrelevant. Instead, this system reveals your best skills, and this may help you determine which games are for you. It’s like you’re completing one of those Facebook quizzes except you won’t feel shame after this one.

Dexterity

Perhaps the skill most associated with gaming, dexterity determines how well you handle a controller. In a game like Rocket League, you must juggle boosts, the angle of your car, drifting, and successive jumps to pull off spectacular goals. For Fornite, victory favors those who rapidly flit between building components and weapons. In fighting games, stringing together combos will more likely guarantee a win.

If your magic fingers can dance across complex button combinations without errors, you have dexterity. If they can’t, then we don’t want to know why you call them “magic fingers.” Accuracy and precision platforming also fall under this category.

Problem-Solving

Being smart doesn’t mean you know how to problem-solve. Just look at the US federal government. Gamers skilled at problem-solving can look at all the components in a situation and recognize how to use them to win. In Death Squared, all the puzzle pieces are contained on one screen, and good problem-solvers don’t need the internet to find the answer. Strategic skill is one’s ability to address future problems, so those without good problem-solving skills will struggle with the tactical challenges posed by Mario + Rabbids or Disgaea 5. Even resource management in games like Pixeljunk Monsters 2 requires some level of problem-solving.

Note: understanding “video game logic” doesn’t necessarily mean you are an Answer Master. You may know that a crowbar combined with duct tape and a butterfly will get you to the next stage in a point-and-click adventure. This doesn’t mean you know how to solve problems. It means you make sense out of nonsense and could be a good philosopher one day.

Reactivity

Your “twitch” ability relates to how quickly you notice new threats and act against them. Celeste is among the genre of “twitch platformers” which challenge your ability to react to new threats. Of course, you can practice a stage an infinite number of times until you nail the move sequence, but those with good reactivity are more likely to pass a series of obstacles on their first try. With enough desperation, anyone can plod through Thumper, but the real pleasure comes from clearing the entire hellscape with few or any deaths.

Some of you may argue that reactivity is just one aspect of dexterity, and you’d be partly right. Both skills are heavily dependent on each other. You could plow through opponents in DOOM multiplayer purely because of your accuracy, but without good reaction times, you’ll be taken out by the next person to shoot you from behind. It also doesn’t matter how quickly you react if you do nothing. Good dexterity and reactivity are what separates the hunters from those unfortunately killed by wild animals.

Endurance

Sometimes it’s not about how big you come in but how long you can keep it up. Your endurance skill measures your ability to play well over an extended period of time. Take Puyo Puyo Tetris for example. Against a similarly-skilled opponent, the winner isn’t based on who makes the flashiest moves but who screws up fewer times. The longer the round, the more exhausted you feel, and the more likely you’ll put that I-shaped tetromino in the wrong column. Other puzzle games like Lumines and Tumblestone require similar levels of stamina to win the long game.

Endurance also captures your level of patience. In Payday 2, a successful heist depends on waiting for the most opportune moment. For Arena of Valor, your team’s victory may hinge on whether you can defend your lane, regardless of how many opponents bully you. Because many of us are fed on a diet of instant gratification, fast gameplay, and cocaine, patience is not our forte but still massively helpful. As the saying goes, good comes to those who wait and spawn camp.

Flexibility

Some games require you to use every type of skill listed so far. Look at Crawl. You need dexterity to fight well, problem-solving skills to exploit your environment, reactivity to prepare for stage hazards and monsters, and endurance to survive and clinch the victory. Your flexibility skill determines how easily you transition between these skill sets and adapt to your situation. Those without flexibility are easy to read and struggle to win outside of ideal conditions.

You can also measure your emotional stability here. If you panic or get angry when things don’t go your way, you’re inflexible. Apart from ruining the game for others, intense emotions can lose you the game. As such, maximize your flexibility by striving for soulless apathy.

Luck

Ancient tomes speak of three witches who decide how lucky each person is. When a child is born, each witch rolls a six-sided die. If each die lands as a six, that child will forever be gifted with good fortune. If each die falls on a one, the child is named Solomon Rambling. Nothing can change one’s luck. We can only learn to live with what we’ve been given.

Because your luck stat can’t improve, many don’t consider it a skill, but these people don’t play Mario Party. Luck can win games, and those who risk their success on chance may walk away with bigger rewards. Alternatively, if you’re the type who never won Bingo as a kid, you learn to never trust that sociopath called “Lady Luck.” You instead expect bad items in Mario Kart 8, awful RNG in your roguelites, and constant disconnects in Splatoon 2.

You’ve Now Reached the End of the Survey

You now have six numbers. Good job. If you have any ones or twos, this doesn’t mean you’re a bad player, but you may not enjoy games requiring your lacking skills. On the opposite end, a handful of 5 scores means your ego deserves some stomps to the kneecaps so that you can reevaluate your true ability. Whether you use your digits for bragging rights, game recommendations, or to compensate for something, you now have a gauge on your gaming skill set. You can also now buy Spacecats with Lasers without worrying you’ll suck at it.

***

I haven’t done this italics thing in a while. Supposedly I ask your opinion about this article now. Go and complain about your scores if you want.

Aug

2018

Quitting Before It’s Bad: Video Game IPs in Need of an Indefinite Hiatus

Who needs Mother 4 when we can have Mario Party 19?

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has stirred quite a bit of commotion over the last few months. With 103 stages, over 70 playable characters, and a whole swarm of entitled fans, Ultimate has become a Cthulhu of the gaming world. While the aforementioned fans demand more features and options, others have wondered how Nintendo will ever create another Smash Bros. after this one. Some have suggested that the series could end with Ultimate, making way for “expansions” rather than full-blown sequels, similar to how Capcom has bled dry each Street Fighter. Otherwise, Nintendo (specifically Masahiro Sakurai) would be tasked with making a new Smash game even more ultimate than Ultimate or face suffocation by the fanbase’s discontent.

The Smash series will continue until Nintendo dies, but the above conundrum presents an interesting question: Should a successful series conclude with a spectacular entry or die in an implosion of critical and commercial failure? Several video game franchises have fallen to a singular bad game whereas others have decomposed like the living dead, shambling on with subpar but commercially successful games. Command & Conquer and Turok serve as examples of the former while Five Nights at Freddy’s and Dynasty Warriors (to a lesser extent) represent the zombies.

With this article, I intend to take a stab at video game IPs which may need to retire. For many of these series, the retirement can be temporary, and the developers can use the time off to figure out what made their franchises truly great. Alternatively, the developers could focus on new content. By no means is it an easy task to determine which IPs should take a break. In selecting my four suggestions, I focused on some basic questions:

Has the IP had a string of poor games?
Does the IP repeatedly recycle the same formula for each new entry?
Is the IP’s design space limited? In other words, can the IP’s core gameplay be expanded, or have the developers exhausted all relevant changes and improvements?
Have recent changes to the IP hurt the core gameplay?

I’ve considered several franchises, and not everyone will agree with my inclusions/omissions. That’s called sentience. I have a comment section for people to rage when they find I haven’t included Call of Duty or Mario Tennis. I also have a Contact page for death threats, so your options are limitless.

Let’s get to it.

The Binding of Isaac:

Metaphysically, there has only been one the Binding of Isaac. However, in the seven years since its release, it has spawned a remake, three expansions, four “booster packs,” an upcoming prequel, and a Kickstarter-backed card game. Apart from releasing its own brand of craft beer, Isaac has done it all and then some. That’s the problem.

As covered in my review and probably a video or two, Isaac has become diluted with its content. With so many bad items, annoying enemies, and questionable gameplay mechanics, the IP has committed the sin of gluttony and strayed from the holy light of Rebirth. A sequel won’t necessarily fix this issue. If a sequel releases less content than the current Afterbirth+, it may feel like a step back. If Nicalis goes the Smash Bros. route and produces an even larger game, the result may just be a messier, bloated version of Afterbirth+. Judging from the recent booster packs, Nicalis may not even have enough ideas to support either type of sequel.

Isaac could potentially reinvent itself by transitioning from a 2D- to a 3D-perspective, but I doubt it could retain its identity with such drastic changes. As much as I adore the game, I could accept the IP ending as it is now and never returning, barring a remaster or similar product. Edmund McMillan and Nicalis produced a deeply intricate and satisfying cult classic. Not all IPs need to grow into monster franchises. Some can die young and pure in a chest.

3D Sonic:

Although Sonic may have experienced a comeback with Sonic Mania, his three-dimensional escapades continue to search for success in a dung heap. Sega won fans with the initial two Sonic Adventure games, but almost every other 3D Sonic outing since then has sucked. The Sonic Team seems to no longer understand how to handle the hedgehog. Instead, they appear hellbent on subjecting their mascot to increasingly strange situations. They’ve dabbled with hedgehogs with guns, hedgehog-human romances, werehogs, hedgehogs with swords, and playable DeviantArt fan fictions. They have yet to experiment with critical acclaim.

The fan base doesn’t ask for much. They want a straightforward Sonic game. We can long for a day when the blue blur once again rivals Mario in quality, but after generations of consoles of bad games, we need to let this animal die. Considering the success of Sonic Mania, you’d hope that an outside development team could create a stellar 3D Sonic game. That was tried once, and it’s called Sonic Boom.

With his two-dimensional personality, Sonic fits perfectly with his side-scrolling roots. While PagodaWest Games and Headcannon produce Sonic Mania 2 and Sonic Mania 3 with Knuckles, the Sonic Team can hibernate and dream how to nail the 3D formula. The Sega front man deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest icons in gaming, but if he follows his current trajectory, he’ll continue crashing as one of the biggest has-beens.

Mario Party:

Once October hits, Super Mario Party may make me regret naming the Mario Party franchise in this list. This entry does away with the everyone-in-one-vehicle stupidity and returns to the original formula. Nintendo has revealed an interesting new cooperative mode, and the Switch-to-Switch interactivity looks promising. There’s a ton of potential. It’ll probably be mediocre.

Despite its enduring appeal, the series has declined in quality since its debut. Each entry has its shining moments, but the IP has never overcome its core issues: slow gameplay, inconsistent mini-game quality, and limited customization options. Each sequel introduces a few new gimmicks while programming a few more annoyances. As such, the Mario Party series has made a profit shuffling forward and back in the exact same spot.

Although the Wii U iteration makes alcohol poisoning at a frat party seem appealing, none of the Mario Party games have been bad, per se. They’ve just become gradually staler. Like with Call of Duty, gamers will complain about each new Mario Party while paying full price for next entry. If any franchise deserves an “Ultimate” version like Smash Bros., it’s this one. However, with the Top 100 being released last year, we likely won’t see this party to end all parties. After 20 years and 19 games (including the e-reader edition and Wii/Wii U Party), it’s time to lock the alcohol cabinet and endure the hangover before any more shindigs.

Runner:

The Runner series originated within another IP, Bit.Trip. This WiiWare darling produced six games rooted in simple yet inventive graphics, gameplay, and music. Apart from the Pong-based first and last games, each Bit.Trip played uniquely from the rest and demonstrated the creativity and genius in their developer, Gaijin Games (now Choice Provisions). Runner, the fourth Bit.Trip game, was THE auto-runner before the auto-running craze and stood out as the best entry in the series for many fans.

With Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, the developers realized the full potential of the original idea. The game offered a massive slew of levels, an impactful glide mechanic, a lush soundtrack, and a quirky atmosphere narrated by Charles Martinet. Runner3 tried to further flesh out the auto-runner and ended up making the core concept obese. New mechanics felt like needless gimmicks; what once was quirky was now grotesque and strange; and players were forced to replay stages again and again for extra content like some Groundhog Day hell.

Similar to the Binding of Isaac, not all IPs need to grow into expansive franchises, and Runner deserved one sequel, nothing more. The lackluster third entry demonstrated that Choice Provisions can churn out sequels by simply swapping out graphics and music, if they so wish. However, no matter how many bells and whistles they might program, the Runner concept can only stagnate or deteriorate from here. This IP need not last for marathons.

Rounding to the Retirement Home

Given competent developers, ample resources, and sufficient time, all of these IPs could thrive, but we’re dealing with cold, cruel reality. Zelda accumulates accolades like a black hole while Kirby skirts around mediocrity and greatness while Resident Evil claws its way back from obsolescence. While these franchises endure, some of the stragglers can be left behind, allowing developers to revive dead IPs. If Sega didn’t revolve around Sonic, imagine what they could do with another Jet Set Radio or Super Monkey Ball. What if the next Advance Wars or F-Zero came out in a few months rather than Super Mario Party? Wishful thinking or not, there are enough forgotten series and new ideas deserving of attention that current developers need not rehash existing concepts until all value is gone. Let Old Yeller go.