Mario Party 8 is a weird one. It has the shiny new graphics of the Wii and some decently cool visuals undercut by this weird semi-realistic artstyle and the game being forced into 4:3 as a result of being rushed onto the Wii last-minute (even though Mario Strikers ran at 16:9 on GameCube). The orb system is replaced with candies that are basically worse versions of the items from 2 through 4 but the transformations are charming. There are some really good minigames with the most obnoxious forced motion controls a Wii game released in 2007 can have. Koopa's Tycoon Town is a top 5 board in the series and the rest of the boards are either straight lines or bad.

I kinda like it. It certainly has its charm, but it clearly had a lot of troubles in development and is a major step down from 6 and 7.