fun game - lots of great levels, great design in place around them and tons of movement options

controls did NOT age well
you WILL bonk and you WILL slide way more than what is fun
you WILL want to ragequit a babygame for babies
you WILL fantasize about killing mario
you WILL call stage obstacles slurs
mario WILL spread his asscheeks with his entire two fists and point his depths directly at the camera (if you can manage to control the camera for more than 3 seconds)

Nothing is more frightening than a 50-turn game of Mario Party on Eternal Star with three so-called "hard" AI opponents. I hope you enjoy them constantly stealing your stars then throwing them away by intentionally visiting Bowser, because whoever built their AI was a god damn psychopath.

Mario Party is one of the few CIB Nintendo 64 games I own, and I got it at a pretty reasonable price. Still, I paid real money for it, more than any reasonable person should for Mario Party, and as always, if I bought it I gotta... I gotta finish it... I picked up a cheap bottle of whiskey (because there's no way I'm playing this game sober) and spent the last week getting hammered and tearing the flesh off my palm.

Right off the bat, Mario Party's greatest sin is its difficulty balancing, or lack thereof. It's similar in some ways to Mario Kart's rubber-banding, and I think borne from a similar design philosophy that if the player is winning for too long they'll get bored and turn the game off. I think most developers would look at that problem and probably think of some way to make winning just as engaging as clambering your way back to the top, but not Nintendo. Why craft a carefully balanced experience when you can just have the AI crack the player in the kneecaps with a pipe and rob them blind? In a way, Mario Party is reflective of Nintendo as a company. Oh, you're having fun? You're enjoying your video game? Not so fast, buddy!

The infuriating part is I can see how you could tweak the game as-is to make it feel less unfair. Just get rid of Chance Time spaces or have only one of them to reduce the frequency they're landed on and make it so you can't interact with Boo unless you land on the space directly in front of him. I don't even mind the bonus stars for minigame performance since those still seem to reward you for playing well, it's the ease of stealing stars and the computer's blatant cheating that make the game agonizing.

Well, that and the minigames. There's 50 total in the first Mario Party, which seems like a lot, 50 is a big number, but good luck not rerolling the same ones over and over again. Even at the bare minimum of 20 turns I have to play Shy Guys Says like, three times. Also, 50 minigames and not a single one of them is good. Incredible odds. Even setting aside how many require you to roll the analog stick around, none of them are particularly interesting or fun to play. Oh, it's the ice slide from Mario 64, but it feels worse. Oh, one player gets coins showered on them and occasionally one might roll off for you to catch, like a dog begging for scraps at the table. I'm ashamed to say the minigames were the main draw for me as a kid, but I think that was true of everyone else I knew. Nobody showed up to a Mario Party for the board game aspect, and if they did then I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that kid like, tortures animals or something.

I'm surprised how many people are rating this game so highly, a lot of them saying things like "man, the first Mario Party is so brutal, it just goes in on you with nothing but contempt!" Hey, fair enough, but I've never been viciously kicked in the balls and said "I value and respect your savagery. More please!" Instead, I just puke and lay down for a while. Just like when I play Mario Party.

It's like Splatoon 2, but better. The same idea of splatoon 2 being splatoon 1, but better (and on switch). Though to be fair, that's a pretty flandering take on the uptake of each game so let's say it like this, only a few days after launch.

The story mode was really neat, starting with what seemed like typical hero mode stuff but then swapping into Octo Expansion type levels with better structure around it that makes use of multiple hub maps. Also the finale was awesome.

The multiplayer stuff is pretty cool thanks to a lot of smaller or major things that help make it feel more fluent than in 2, with the quick turns, wall surge, and the ability to move where you spawn a bit.

I like the 2 new weapons in the stringers (which are bow and arrows) and the splatanas (swords that shoot ink). I do kind of wish there were a few more choices to them since mechanically i like the reflux but i visually like the tri-stringer (the only 2 bows out rn), but that'll come in time.

I also like the new lobby stuff. Firstly you can play the newscast in the background rather than always have to watch it, there's a whole area now to test weapons and hang out, and even a cool locker customization thing, along with tags banners, etc. A lot of neat stuff to give your character a slight look different from others.

There's also some other stuff like a card game that's actually pretty neat, Salmon run is fun as ever, especially with the addition of throwing eggs now making for more kinetic minute to minute game play (though the big boss raid always is terrifying to go up against)

Really the changes might come off as small, but there is a lot done just at launch to make 3 feel quite a bit different from 2. It's a really good game.