NintendoFlow Review: Mario Party Star Rush
You've been invited to a party, but is the party fun or is it dead on arrival? This is how I felt about Mario Party Star Rush when I first played it.
The game starts you off with one board (Toad Scramble) and in order to unlock more you need to beat that board first and this goes on for other boards. Once you unlock 3 or 4 boards, you now need to level up in order to unlock characters and stages, which can be very tiresome.
The boards themselves are somewhat lifeless and while certain boards have cool themes (like a haunted house or a tropical beach) not much is going on. What I do love about the boards however are that every one gets to roll their dice at the same time and move around the board instead of being in a car and waiting for each player to have a turn to roll the dice in past Mario Party titles. Each board has "?" spaces, where if you land on them, they unlock cool items to effect your enemies or give yourself a boost to make sure you win.That being said there are some fun boards but most are repetitive and lacking in design.
However the boards are full of mini games and that's where Mario Party truly shines. There are so many cool mini games that I enjoyed but still didn't feel anything rewarding for winning. Why? Well I was playing solo at first against COMs and it was very easy to win at these games. Playing against the game itself makes the game feel very dull. You can win at the mini games and be the winner of the board but it feels very un-rewarding and slow paced throughout the whole duration of the boardgame.
If you're not really into playing boards and waiting turn after turn then there is good news. The game has a mini game collection where it allows you to play only the mini games and boss battles.The downside of this is that you have to play each board in order to unlock all the mini-games.
At this point the game was lacking in excitement- that was until I played the game with some friends, after all it is a Party game right? This is where the game finally became fun and alive! The mini games were a lot harder competing against real people behind these characters and you actually wanted to land on certain places on the board to fight back at your buddies and win! I was finally feeling the game while having a blast and to be announced the winner. Winning amongst your friends never felt so good!
All in all the game is fun...if you're paying with friends. Truth be told, if you're playing alone and simply competing against the game itself, it could be quite boring. Luckily Nintendo has a "Guest Version" of Mario Party Star Rush on the 3DS Eshop, where players can download it and connect to someone with the full game and still experience all the fun content without buying the full game!
Once again the game truly shines when sharing with friends and is very entertaining, however, it lacks the excitement if you decide to play alone.
That being said NintendoFlow gives Mario Party Star Rush a:
7/10
