Bottom 12 / Top 12 Minigames In Mario Party DS

Read Part 1 of this review here, and Part 2 here!

Hello everyone, and welcome to this (technically) last part of my review of Mario Party DS! I think I can only close a Mario Party review by listing my 12 favorite minigames... and my 12 least favorite minigames too! For this list, I'll take into account the playability, the concept, the idea and the overall fun. My favorite minigames are either very creative or very fun. My least favorites, well... You can kinda guess. (All the opinions in this post are mine and mine alone. What you may like I might not, what I may like you might not. Accept the divergence of opinion if there's one.) Two more notes: To me, you can practice a minigame and get better at it, which means that minigames which cannot be won with talent will be ranked negatively (in Layman's terms: Screw the goddamn luck minigames). Last, I refer to low-difficulty COM characters as computer-controlled characters on Easy or Normal difficulty, and high-difficulty COM characters as characters on Hard or Expert difficulty. There's a lot to discuss, so let's start now with the worst, so we can end on a positive note with the best!

Prepare yourself for a lot of tears, and a
lot of anger... and then a lot of joy!

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I want to thank everyone who helped this blog reach the 100,000 views. That includes all my readers who follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, but also everyone who only passed by to read one or two articles. This means a lot to me, and I sincerely thank each and every one of you.

Mario Party DS (Part 2)

Part 1 is over here!

In Part 1, we saw the plot, this time we look at the other options in the game! What else can I say, now that I'm done talking about the stuff that is most interesting to hear about, I've still got to discuss the rest. There are many options in Mario Party DS, enough to keep you busy for a long while. Just from the main menu, after Story Mode you've got Party Mode, Minigame Mode, Puzzle Mode, Multiplayer and Gallery. Let me guide you through these options. I'll show you around!

But before that, I need to explain something. This game works with some kind of “Experience points”, called MP Points (for “Mario Party”, in case it wasn't obvious). You earn them by playing on boards, completing minigames, etc. Usually, those aren't “very” important, but you'll see much later why they're there. Once you've reached 50,000, you can consider having beaten the game. Or being very close to.

Mario Party DS (Part 1)

You might remember me getting really pissed at the last Mario Party game I reviewed. It's because the plot played a mean trick on us, and as a result all of the player's efforts were for naught, making the game a complete waste of time. That problem does not show up here, so I'm already a little happier. There will be moments of anger. I seem to have a lot of triggers these days. But I don't think this review will be as negative. In fact, I will be a LOT more positive for this one.

Even princesses get in on the fun!

Mario Party DS is a party game on the Nintendo DS featuring famous characters from the Mario series, in case the title didn't make it obvious. This one was developed by Hudson Soft. Like all Mario Party games, the characters are playing on gigantic boards with blue spaces, red spaces, green spaces, etc. They roll a die, move a number of spaces, something may or may not happen to them, etc. They can also use an object before rolling the die, such as a double die, a bag to steal an item, or a Hex (a new mechanic that is only in this game). Once all four characters have completed their turn, a minigame is played. The characters are pit against each other (in a Battle Rotale, or sometimes in teams of 2-VS2 or 1-VS-3), and the mini-game's winner(s) earn 10 coins (each, if more than one winner). The goal of the game is to run around the board and collect Stars: One Star costs 20 coins (though, since all the boards have their own gimmicks, that price can change), and since all players start with only 10 coins, that means they'll usually need to win a mini-game before they can buy one. After the last turn, optional Bonus Stars can be earned according to random achievements (landing on the most green spaces, winning the most mini-games, using the most items, collecting the most coins, etc.), and then the winner is declared. It's the character with the most Stars. And if two or more characters have the same amount of stars, it's the one among those who has the most coins who wins. That's how it works.

There's only one difference this time: The boards are a LOT smaller than usual. No, not the way you think. What I mean by this is that the boards aren't bigger than, say, a room in a house... because the characters are tiny! Yeah, that might sound off, but there's a theme in this game. A theme that will be explained as I take a look at the plot.

VGFlicks: Super Mario Bros. The Movie (1993) (Part 2)

Part 1 here...

Hello again... And welcome back to this review... of the Super Mario Bros. Movie... It already sucked, but I have a feeling it's gonna get even worse. You know, now that I think of it, this movie centers around the dinosaurs evolving into human-like beings, right? As in, dinosaurs make up a big part of the plot, right? But... There were very few dinosaurs in the Mario series. This movie came out after Super Mario World, so it incorporates elements from most Mario platformers that had been released so far (they used Daisy instead of Peach, for instance; Daniella's second name is Pauline; Yoshi is a character; there are numerous references to the baddies of the Super Mario games, such as Koopa, Shy Guy, Wiggler, Ostro, Bullet Bill, Spike, Iggy...), and while I applaud them for the loads of references, I still feel the need to point out that the Mario series is mostly about plumbers in a fantasy world – not a big city – fighting to rescue a princess from a turtle-dragon creature known as King Bowser Koopa. They defeat a lot of turtles along the way. It's like they said “Bowser looks more like a dinosaur; let's put a ton of emphasis on that!”

Oh well. Let's keep watching. I hope this movie won't break my Insult to Continuity Counter...

Remember, Mario: She is not technically human!

So, Mario has to flirt with a sassy black woman named Big Bertha to retrieve a piece of meteorite that she stole, and which President Koopa wants, so that he can merge his dimension with the human world so that he can de-evolve mankind and claim planet Earth as his own – What the Hell am I writing. Read that out loud. Does that make sense to you? There's so little sense here. To me, it makes even less sense than gamers taking control of other humans through nanites and forcing them into degrading or dangerous activities, mystery hunters getting trapped in a video game and having to fight off a crazy virus, or a child spy trying to stop a madman from enslaving childkind through a video game. ...All three combined.