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Review: Mario Party: Island Tour

Mario’s back on the 3DS family of handheld consoles in the newest iteration of the Mario Party franchise, titled Island Tour. Nintendo’s famed mascot joins his buddies to have a bash on a number of game boards, rolling dice to advance to the finish line first, all-the-while duking it out in a series of mini-games.

It’s the Mario Party formula, largely unchanged from past titles.

Single-player mode will place you up against three AI opponents. From there, it’s classic Mario Party… which means I fail miserably. I came fourth in three separate games in a row, and that’s because I kept landing on warp spaces that took me back to an opponent’s position. Which just happened to be at the very start of the course. I know it’s all random, but after continually landing on warp spaces and getting thrown back to the last place position, I couldn’t help but feel targeted.

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It’s obviously a better experience with friends, but you’re going to have to play in person; online play doesn’t exist in Island Tour. Instead, four people can play using just one cartridge, thanks to the DS’ “Download play” functionality. It works quite well, provided your friends stay pretty damn close to one another while the game is taking place. The resulting Mario Party gameplay is a much better, almost cut-throat experience with your buddies, but sadly the requirements for play mean those sessions will be few and far between.

Games are short… ish. The handheld nature of the 3DS has been embraced, and maps only offer about 25 spaces from start to finish. That’ll average to about five or six mini-games per full round. As you’re out and about with Island Tour, that’s pretty efficient (and welcome).

This could have been vastly improved; the horrible part about the game is that you can’t skip opponent’s turns… even when they’re in the hands of AI players. It’s a no-brainer move, and one that kind of sums up Mario Party: it should work well on DS, but simply ends up being a carbon copy of the console game. Opportunity lost, Nintendo.

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Mini-games are the best bit of Island Tour, and thankfully you can play them on their own. Sadly, as you play your favourites more and more, you can beat the AI with little problem. That means you’ll soon get bored playing unless you go up against unpredictable friends. Nintendo, you do understand this is where online play would have been perfect, right?

In the game proper, those mini-games give you the chance to win all-too-important boosts, which basically act as multipliers on your dice rolls. Management of the boosters is quite important; I managed to somehow save enough for a 5X roll… only to end up getting a lovely goose egg. Zero times five is still zero; remember how I said I felt targeted in single-player?

Nintendo is hard to beat when it comes to cutesy design and sound, and Island Tour is no different. Cutesy, however, can only take the game so far. In the end, Mario Party: Island Tour is a much better experience back on consoles. Sure, you’ll probably still need to grab three friends and fire up the Wii or Wii U, but at least you’ll be more sociable that way and not just together, hunched over individual tiny screens.

This one’s only for the die-hards. And by that, we mean the ultra die-hards.


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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.