Bowser can roll a 10 with his special block, but he can also lose coins and not move at all.

The dice offer their own advantage and disadvantages.

Characters each have their own custom dice blocks, which they can choose to roll instead of the traditional 1-6 block. And, like always, each round is punctuated by a minigame, culled from a new collection.Ī handful of changes add just enough depth to improve the formula. You can foil your fellow players, but the map has plenty of its own obstacles: an angry Blooper smashing a bridge, or a Thwomp that will only move for coins. Mario Party 9 and 10 were particularly boring, as all the characters were locked in one cart together, traversing around the map as a unit.) Star collection is the ultimate goal they’re purchased from Toadette, who travels around the map to random spots each time a player buys a star from her. (The game’s return to the original formula is welcome.

In Super Mario Party, up to four human players can traverse a game board, rolling dice to progress from space to space. This giant Blooper will send you back to start if you activate it. While the Switch has already had some fantastic single-player experiences, this is easily one of its biggest party game highlights, which the system felt like it was really lacking until this fall. The base formula is one you definitely know, but small touches to the main game and standout side experiences offered me plenty of surprises in a series that can sometimes feel one-note. Despite - or maybe because of - the predictable formula, Mario Party hasn’t been an essential purchase for Nintendo console owners for many iterations.īut Super Mario Party adds enough to the formula to feel like a must-buy for the Nintendo Switch, which is fitting for the social gaming powerhouse that the console has become. The game’s contents feel inevitable, too: You play on a digital board game with your friends as Mario universe avatars, and you all end up possibly disliking each other at the end. Along with series like Mario Kart and Mario’s various sports outings, a Mario Party for Nintendo Switch felt inevitable. Mario Party is, at this point, a 20-year-old Nintendo franchise that feels like a constant staple of every system.

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