If Mario Party 9 were an actual party, it'd be a high school reunion.
You turn up, look around, see all your old friends, and think "Hey, you
guys have changed!" But within five minutes, you realize that beneath
the flashy clothes or new facial hair, they're much the same people.
That is what playing Mario Party 9 feels like. There are changes, sure,
and frequently, they're for the better. But the improvements are largely
superficial. There's no getting around the fact this is the ninth
console iteration of a bunch of minigames in a board-game wrapping, and
after this many entries in the series, the formula feels tired.
The goal is to collect the ministars that can be picked up while moving
around the board or won during minigames. Up to four players travel
around the boards together on a vehicle. The player whose turn it is
(the captain) controls the vehicle by way of dice rolls and can reap the
rewards (or punishments) for being in charge. Each of the boards has a
theme that comes complete with unique benefits (such as dolphins that
lead you to bonus areas) and hazards (such as a hot potato bomb that
drains the unlucky captain's stars).
Boards are littered with ministars that award either positive or
negative points, depending on their color. Because the captain reaps all
the rewards (or suffers the punishment) there is strategy involved in
setting yourself up for a windfall. However, as is customary in the
series, chance is the ultimate decider of who wins and loses. The luck
factor is even more apparent when you land on a square with Bowser's
picture emblazoned on it. These squares shuffle up the standings,
potentially destroying any progress you've made. Random chance having
such a huge impact on who wins is a serious detriment, and your
tolerance for this unpredictability goes a long way toward determining
how much fun Mario Party 9 is.
The minigames are where Mario Party 9 shines, and in the heat of
competition you'll bump your opponents out the way to catch thrown hula
hoops, chase each other down in a variety of vehicles, or leap across
moving platforms. There are some more thoughtful, slower-paced
challenges, too: memory games, jigsaw puzzles, and pattern-recognition
tests. The majority of the minigames are a free-for-all, with every
player for himself or herself, but sometimes the current captain has to
face off against the other players working together as a team. These can
be particularly rewarding, especially if you're the captain and manage
to evade three friends all gunning for you.
For the most part, the minigames rely on traditional directional pad and
button controls, with the remote held sideways, though there are some
exceptions. Those minigames that feature gesture or pointer controls are
usually easy to get the hang of, so there's little to prevent
inexperienced players from joining the fold. The single problematic
minigame is one where you have to turn the dial of a safe--here, fussy
controls needlessly complicate things.
Such problems thankfully don't exist in boss confrontations. Frequently,
they have you competing against each other as much as the boss
character, such as bouncing each other out of the way as you try to
stomp Wiggler or rigging a rotating platform so a rival is in the path
of an angry whomp. Each board features two boss fights and, much like
the majority of the minigames, they are genuinely good fun.
The minigames make Mario Party 9 entertaining for a few hours, and
there's enough content to make it worth coming back for more. But be
warned: because luck is such an important factor, it's highly preferable
to play with friends. It's easier to overlook the problems when you
have a real-life companion to moan, shout, or throw picked onions at
when you lose half of your stars in a way you couldn't avoid. In
contrast, playing against the AI is a tedious and tiresome affair.
Unfortunately, if you want to access all the content, you don't have
much choice.
Mario Party 9 contains a single-player story mode, in which the
nefarious Bowser and the equally nefarious Bowser Jr. have stolen the
world's ministars. This serves as an hour-long introduction and isn't
very engaging. Ringing up a victory is easy because you only have to
stop one AI character from winning (rather than winning yourself), and
each game lasts too long. Unfortunately, to unlock the sixth board and
two of the 12 characters, you have to complete this mode, which is a
frustrating requirement.
Beyond the Party mode and the tedious Story mode, there are a host of
unlockables that can be purchased with party points (earned simply by
playing the game). These include a Donkey Kong-themed board, new
vehicles to traverse the boards in, and constellations to marvel at
through a telescope (read: a waste of points until you've unlocked
everything meaningful). The minigames are also playable by themselves,
should you fancy diving right in with friends, and there are four
extended remix games, including a rather good Hexic HD-like shape-swapping puzzle game.
Overall, Mario Party 9 is a decent package with a lot of content, even
if the Story mode is something you'll wish you could avoid. It's
colorful, good looking, and fun with others, but after so many games,
the appeal just isn't going to last for many people. There's no denying
that what Mario Party 9 does, it largely does well; it's just that it's
largely been doing it well for nine console games and two handheld
games. Once you've spent a few hours with mates, seen all the different
boards, and played all the minigames, there's very little incentive to
return. Much like that high school reunion, it is fun for a night, but
you won't have any hesitation about moving on.
