Criticism of postmodernism is intellectually diverse, reflecting various critical attitudes toward postmodernity as it takes form in philosophy, art, literature and games. Postmodernism itself is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism, especially those associated with Enlightenment rationality - though postmodernists in the arts may have their own specific criteria and definitions of postmodernism that depend upon the medium.

Common targets of postmodern criticism include universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, science, language, economics and social progress; critics of postmodernism are often reactionary, defending such concepts against the counter-cultural critique of postmodern artwork.

It is frequently alleged that postmodern scholars are hostile to objective truth; they promote obscurantism, and encourage relativism in culture, morality and knowledge to an extent that is epistemically and ethically crippling: criticism of more artistic post-modern movements such as post-modern art, literature or video games may include objections to a departure from beauty, lack of coherence or comprehensibility, deviation from clear structure and the consistent use of dark and negative themes.

Post-postmodernism, cosmodernism, digimodernism, automodernism, altermodernism, and metamodernism rank among the more popular prospective terms for the movement against against postmodernism, though the lack of a unifying term demonstrates the difficult, uncertain nature of post-postmodern critical analysis.

In my review of Mario Party the other day, I suggested that the game was one of Nintendo's most postmodern works - what does that really mean? First, let's consider some possible features of postmodern gaming, both in terms of video games and board games:

• The game's designer and design become less relevant than the players' interpretation of the signified or signifier. We might see this more or less explicitly within a game like the award-winning card game Dixit: using a deck illustrated with dreamlike images, players select cards that match a title suggested by the "storyteller", and attempt to guess which card the "storyteller" selected. While the game has a scoring system, it's intentionally ambiguous, and open to the interpretation of the players and gamemaster; it's a game that can be played with a diverse group of players with little to no difficulty presented by challenge of skill - like Mario Party, Dixit frequently wrests interpretive authority from the games' designers and publishers and places it in the hands of arbitrary metrics that don't necessarily exist in a rulebook.

• A postmodern game's structure loses its center and gives way to free play. Generally speaking, this has never been a strong-suit of the video game medium - at least on the surface. This application is seen most clearly in the rise of pen-and-paper RPGs, almost all of which make a distinction directly in the beginning of their rule books: "This isn't a game like those other games with winners and losers; it's a game just for playing." In fact, RPGs thrive precisely on the différance present within the interpretive play among the players — and break down when munchkins or rules lawyers try to reinforce the structure. In short - the when the rules are made up and scores don't matter, players are forced to find other ways to enjoy themselves. The same is true of Mario Party.

• The game's structure is deconstructed by examining and reinforcing that which runs counter to the game's purported structure on the back of the box. This can be seen in games like Fluxx and Killer Bunnies. Here, the idea that planning and strategy will pay off, rewarding a player with victory is shown to be false because the idea hinges on the victor's proper management of chance, but chance is by definition that which is beyond management. So let's plan and strategize for an hour and then let chance tell us the winner she picks blindly in the end. Sound familiar?

• The game makes room for subaltern voices and questions the privileged nature of traditional binaries. Once Deep Blue won, there was no longer any substantive difference between a grandmaster and a geek with a GameFAQ. But can you ever truly defeat a machine that's controlling the dice and your opponents? Can you ever truly defeat someone who can win by doing nothing?

• The game breaks down barriers between itself and the things beyond it - for nothing is truly outside the game. This adage brings to mind old-school LARPing of the kind depicted in the movie Gotcha!, but could also include metaludic games like Quelf, where the game becomes about how a person plays the game or even does things away from the game while the game is ongoing.

Though the benchmarks and criteria for postmodernism are (perhaps intentionally) vague, I think it’s fair to say the original Mario Party exceeds in all the categories I’ve chosen to define above. It’s a game that interrogates the concept of the game - both board and video - by removing the mask of objective order, revealing that all accomplishments happen by divine will of the Nintendo 64.

Mario Party 2, however, fails to improve on the ideas of its predecessor in any meaningful way (apart from putting Donkey Kong in a wizard outfit). It’s a reactionary work of digimodernistic post-post modernism that seeks to correct the “mistakes” of Mario Party’s avant-garde by reintroducing the illusion of rules, structure, and “objective truth”: an essential RETVRN to the logic and empiricism that Gamers love so much. A tale as old as the medium itself, where art is the first thing to leave the party when your product needs to fit neatly on the subjective scales at IGN.

Horror Land, Mario Party 2’s “hardest” board, is a perfect case study of how the sequel’s introduction of mathematical “fairness” robs the game of an identity it was previously proud of. The first lap of the board is a 30-square circle with Toad, the star-giver, standing at the precise midsection. Players are given the option of diverging onto a different path, but there is no statistical incentive for doing so - players start with half the coins needed to buy a star, and it’s possible to accrue the remaining funds in a single turn. Apart from a Bank square (oh no! I lost FIVE coins!!) and Single-Player Minigame square, there are no other “inputs” to the system outside of the once-a-turn minigame: the game is all but ordering you to conform to a closed loop in order to take your first step towards an antipyrrhic victory that will be decided solely by the one who can inflate a Bowser Blimp the fastest. There are no alternatives; Wario’s subaltern voice is silenced; Yoshi’s questions about the privileged nature of traditional binaries are unanswered; Luigi’s interrogation of the apparent power structures falls on deaf ears. It’s time for Bumper Balloon Cars, and everyone’s getting some coins.

Contrast this with Mario’s Rainbow Castle, purportedly Mario Party 1’s easiest board - players can steal each others stars and coins at-will; there’s a button that foists Bowser’s roulette wheel upon foes; you can be sent back to the start for having the mere audacity to roll a 3 at the wrong time; Koopa Troopa is running a wealth-redistribution system at each corner of the board. And that’s all before we even get into the minigames, where stepping on a goomba in a party hat can instantly reduce your balance to absolute zero. It’s a revelry in capitalist chaos wearing the flesh of the Mario Brothers and it’s absolutely beautiful. Even Luigi’s “ohhHHHh nnOooOoo!” sounds more chunky and brittle, the bauds compressed under the sheer weight of environmental disorder. He’s saying something. Mario Party 2 isn’t.