Mario Party 9's single-player mode places you in a dreary slog through all of the boards - on the heels of suspiciously high-rolling computer-controlled characters. Just like real life, it takes at least two to party, properly. Mario Party veterans will no doubt recall the monotony of waiting for a computer-controlled player to take a turn, and the pathetic artificial intelligence on display in mini-games. You can now turn off the computer-controlled opponents entirely, and the mini-games all adjust to your group size in clever ways. Finally, one subtle, but important improvement that has been made in Mario Party 9 is its brilliant considerations for two- and three-player games. Roll the zero and it's the next player's butt on the line. For example, if one player rolls the dice and moves the car to, say, the teetering precipice of an evil star-zapping chasm, you may happen to have a die that only rolls a one or a zero.
You can amass a collection of specialized dice blocks that allow you to move various distances. The new "party bus" system adds a new type of strategy too, in the form of specialized dice. But after eight Mario Parties on Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii, a major change is welcome. This removes an aspect of strategy (no surprise there) present in all previous iterations, which featured looping, complex game boards filled with risks and rewards. The graphics add some much-needed charm to the game boards, which have been, ahem, "streamlined." As you may have seen in our preview of Mario Party 9, four players now travel together in a vehicle along an essentially linear path. No longer sporting the farmed-out, slightly "off" look of its predecessors, Mario Party 9 draws aesthetically from Nintendo's recent blockbusters a Donkey Kong-themed level shows off a Donkey Kong Country Returns-inspired set of temples, and a few ancillary characters and cool space backdrops appear courtesy of Mario Galaxy 2. Mario Party 9 has also received polygonal overhaul. This is partially alleviated by the addition of boss levels, which pit all the players against a large enemy in a cooperative minigame, with everyone vying to do deal the most damage. Strangely, Mario Party 9 randomizes the appearance of mini-games on the actual game board instead of making them fixed occurrences. They are mostly great, and a welcome diversion from dice-rolling. The restraint developer ND Cube demonstrates in using the Wii Remote in this old-school manner pays off in the quality and creativity of mini-games. Mario Party 9's mini-games mostly use pointer-based controls along with my personal favorite Wii remote orientation: Held on its side, like an NES controller. In 2007, Mario Party 8 was part of the first wave of gesture-obsessed Wii games, with each mini-game serving as a tech demo for what the Wii Remote turned out not to be very good at.
So I'm going to take a few deep breaths and tell you about Mario Party 9's improvements. See, there I go again - I'm really upset about those stars.
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