Mario Party DS- Review by KA

	The Nintendo DS. A portable gaming console that nearly everyone had at the time. You could walk up to an absolute stranger on the street and have a fun time playing a plethora of games with each other through what I think is man’s greatest achievement since sliced bread, DS Download Play. This allowed you to play games with friends whether you had the game or not. And this was absolutely amazing. It didn’t matter if it was New Super Mario Bros. or Mario Kart DS, you were in for an amazing ride. Of course one of these games was Mario Party DS. This was Nintendo’s second attempt at bringing the luck based gameplay on to a handheld. Rarely anyone talks about that game and have no idea why. Was it a good game that no one picked up or was it a inbetween game that no one talks about because of its quality? Well whatever the circumstances are, I’m here to figure this mystery out!
	Before I ramble on about Mario Party DS (which from now on I will refer to it as MPDS) I have to tell you about the first Mario Party handheld game. Mario Party Advance. While I have only played it once or twice just so I can experience it for myself, I will say that it is not a Mario Party game. I feel like it’s more of a spin off of the game, like the E-Reader card game. Enough of that though, let’s get on to the review!
	If you have played a game of the Mario Party series, then Mario Party DS will be no surprise to you. If you haven’t however, I’ll give you a brief explanation (For those who want to skip this, I’ll mark it with the following: [Start]. This also only applies to MP1-8 as of now). Mario Party is a game series that has various characters from the popular Mario franchise going around in a board game fashion. You roll a dice that can move you around the board up to 10. You have various spaces to land on as well. You have blue spaces which can earn you coins, red spaces which take away coins, and green spaces. Normally this green space is marked with a question mark which indicates something will happen if you land on it. There are also duel spaces (which have you duel another person for coins or sometimes stars, which I’ll explain later) and Bowser spaces (which are the ultra bad space and you don’t want to land on it). After all players have taken their turns, they all play a minigame. The minigame depends on what space you land on, so you can have 4-Player, 2v2, and 1v3 minigames. The winner of said minigame gets a various amount of coins, which is usually 10. All of these coins that you get can be traded for items to help you traverse the board faster, steal something from another player, or obtain a star. Your objective is to get more stars than the other people. At the end of the game, bonus stars are handed out for number of spaces, winning minigames, and so forth. The winner is the person with the most stars at the end. If there is an equal amount of stars, then it’s the person with the most coins.
	[Start] Now returning from Mario Party 6-8 is the orb system, this time aliased to hexes. Along with items, you can play only one of these per turn. These range from coin stealing spaces to spaces which can give you random stars. Let’s be honest here, unless you are being extremely generous you are never in a million years going to use this star hex. Which brings me to my first negative point, some of the items are just simply not needed. Now to be fair, this only applies to 3 items: Coin Block, Star Block, and the Block Sensor. While the first 2 you can find semi-regularly, you will hardly find the Block Sensor unless you are playing on a 15+ turn game, so if you want to avoid it just play on 15 or 10.
	Next are the shops. These shops almost feel... too lenient on the coins. For example, take the Double Dice item. In previous games, this was around 5 coins. In this game though it’s 3. If you are doing just a slight bit decent with the minigames, you will be able to hit up a shop and come out with at least 2-3 Double Dice blocks because of the prices. Most of the time, I just ace the minigames and save up for the big ticket item, the Star Pipe. These are worth 15 coins... which I find surprisingly balanced. Plus if you really want to you can just use the Double Dice. I think if you upped the prices on the items just a little bit, the shop would be just fine.
	Finally we have the last main board addition, the Friend space. Landing on this will give 5 coins to you, but also to another player. While yes these do seem like someone’s bane of their existence, I will say that it shakes up the game quite a bit. When you are incorporating a brand new space into the game, as long as it changes up what will happen I am fine with it. But this? I think this takes it to a whole new level. Now you have to choose whether you want to increase a possible team up with friends, or just help the CPU.
	Now that all of the new additions are explained, let’s get onto the boards themselves. Normally, Mario Parties have 6 or more boards to mess around on, but MPDS has 5. Because it is a handheld game, I can excuse this because of the lack of space. As long as the boards are good, I’m fine. If I would give this part a specific grade, I would give it a B-, or an 80%. I’ll explain why in each of the board descriptions below.

Wiggler’s Garden: A great starting board, has a bit of strategy for going out of your way for the shop. Only one complaint: Too many coin happening spaces.

Toadette’s Music Room: Great gimmick, have to collect stars that increase in price every time you collect one. Although, one of the Final 5 events can really screw with this idea.

DK’s Stone Statue: I love this stage, mainly because of the gimmick paired with it. Collect enough coins to trade in for multiple stars. All great stuff.

Kamek’s Library: Goodness gracious. This one just stinks. While the gimmick is something I can live with (3 jars, find the correct one), I can’t live with how you get to one place to another. You HAVE to land on specific happening spaces just to get over to a specific area of the board, which is very tedious. I have to take a turn just to get to a place that may or may not have the star, and it gets annoying fast.

Bowser’s Pinball Machine: Compared to Wiggler’s Garden, this one is the better one. I loved the aesthetic and the various happenings in this game. Not to mention the coin roulette which everyone passes at least once.

	Speaking of boards, let’s move onto the main modes. You have story mode first, which tasks you traversing the world in a pint-sized form. Yes, this game being on a handheld went with going for the being smaller approach. In this form however, you have to find certain pieces of a crystal (I don’t remember its name, it’s forgettable honestly) for some reason. It sets up our goal and why we need to play this other than to unlock the other modes.
	Now story mode would just exist for no other reason than to exist if it wasn’t for the boss minigames. If you thought Mario Party 9 started the trend, then you need to look here first. These boss minigames range from semi-difficult to incredibly easy. I guess I’ll explain them all.

Piranha Plant- MASH THE HELL OUT OF THE A BUTTON. If you don’t know how to mash, good luck. (Medium)

Hammer Bro- It’s Simon Says 3 times. If you don’t mess up this one is fairly easy. (Easy)

Dry Bones- Laughably easy. Just head straight to the panels, hit them in the right order, and win. (Very Easy)

Kamek- Surprisingly fun from the board that kills fun. It’s pretty great, dodge and hit. The only hard part is Kamek. (Mediumish-Hard)

Bowser- Goodness, this one can be tough. Well, tough if you sprint in there that is. Taking your time is key and you’ll win easily. (Medium)

	The bosses are great, and can be fun sometimes. And with that out of the way, let’s continue onward. After Story Mode comes Party Mode, which is just the boards with various ways to play. These all return from Mario Party 8, if they come from somewhere else I have no clue. You have your typical Battle Royale, Tag Team, and Duel. Nothing more, and nothing less.
	With Party Mode comes the Minigame Modes... and oh boy is there a lot of content in that package. You have your series staple modes coming back like Free Play and Step it Up. Coming in from Mario Party 5-7 (not sure on 8) you have the Score Scuffle, which is a minigame Decathlon. Newer modes are Battle Cup, Rocket Rascals, and Boss Rush. I’ll explain these three in a little more detail.

Battle Cup: Best out of 5 on minigames you choose. Not too bad of a mode, only 4p minigames though.

Rocket Rascals: Get pieces of a path to be the first one to a rocket ship. This one either goes on nicely or goes too fast because of Bowser Jr.

Boss Rush: Beat all of the bosses in one run, nothing too game changing.

	These were all surprisingly fun by myself, despite being so basic. Especially Rocket Rascals. That was absolutely mayhem and having 4 players playing it was great. That’s a common theme in this game, the single player is just as fun as the multi player. Maybe it’s how it was designed. Enough of the random talking though. We have to cover the most paramount part of Mario Party, the minigames.

	To say that Mario Party DS has some good minigames would be giving it less credit than it actually deserves. I think that these minigames are some of the best I have ever played. I think that has to do with the fact that Mario Party DS doesn't suffer from DS Fever, slapping on touch controls that really don’t need to be there at all. Now because this review is getting a little long, I’ll sum this up as best as I can. All of the minigames take full power of the DS’s potential, while making it fun at the same time. For example, in the minigame Cucumberjacks, the minigame takes full power of the touch screen, even to it detecting the sensitivity. There are also games that use the mic, which isn't as bad as the microphone minigames in 6 or 7, and regular controller minigames. Each minigame will give you something called Party Points, which I will try to explain later.
	Next is the puzzle mode. This is the combination of all previous puzzle games from Mario Party. You got Mario’s Puzzle Party, Bob-omb Breakers, Piece Out, Block Star, and Stick and Spin. MPDS also has its own puzzle game, but I won’t spoil it for you. It’s not too bad, you just got to get used to it. All of the previous games however are only one player... unless you are playing multiplayer with friends. You won’t have a CPU play the same puzzle game that you are, which I find kinda lame. It would have increased a little more replay value in this mode, but nevertheless it’s still fun to play these puzzle games.
	The next mode would be multiplayer, but I’ll get to that in just a few short moments. Instead, let’s jump to the gallery. Remember those Party Points? Well, earning enough party points will earn you some models to look at in the gallery. You can also change your specific badge that appears on the main menu by getting enough of these party points. Doing specific things in the boards will also award you with another model to look at. To me, this was the way to help extend game time. Doing the most random of things meant replaying boards enough times, which I didn't mind. While I have yet to finish my collection, this was a pretty fun thing to do when I was bored. You can also replay story cutscenes and listen to the game’s various tracks. Speaking of the game’s tracks... can I just say that some of these tracks are very great? What’s with the DS and having some great tunes?
	Finally, let’s get on to the multiplayer. Most of the things that you were able to do in singleplayer will also show up here. Party, Minigame, and Puzzle all return for you to play with a friend or two or 3. However, there are some extra modes. These modes are only for two players however. First you have Pen Pals. It is a 2v2 mode where you and a friend take on two opponents. The objective is to round up the computer players. The problem is that you have to do this with your friend as well. This game can be pretty fun, especially with the added minigames from time to time. The next mode is Desert Duel. This focuses on getting as many points as possible on a grid by rolling the dice and winning minigames. This one wasn’t as fun as Pen Pals, mainly because the concept is a little too primitive. It also doesn’t help that this game plays extensively with luck.
	The final question remains. Is Mario Party DS a good game? I say yes, and it should be talked about more. While being a mostly singleplayer experience, I still had fun with or without friends to join me. If you haven’t picked up this game and just so happen to have a Wii U, you can pick it up for $10, which in my opinion is a decent price for this game. So pick it up! Go! Now! Buy game!