Mario Party: Island Tour Review

It won’t take you long to realise whilst playing Mario Party: Island Tour, that the game is an almost total contradiction of itself. Unless you count AI players as real people - in which case, you need not worry - then the word ‘party’ is going to be very misleading.

With the exception of local multiplayer features, Mario Party is devoid of any internet options; so unless you have friends itching to play Mario’s latest detour from platforming, you’re probably going to be spending the majority of your time playing against the computer.

If ever there was a case for Nintendo to remove its sometimes overzealous friend and security systems, this title would make an excellent poster boy for such a campaign. We won’t lie, the lack of such features does hurt the replayability of Mario Party, but its features and gameplay do somewhat make up for the above concern.

You know the drill by now. Mario and his buddies have been enjoying a break - presumably from plumbing - by holding a party to play some games. Bowser, being the ruffian that he is, has taken it upon himself to ruin said party by producing bubble clones of all the heroes to try and ruin all the fun.

Split into six main party boards, up to four players take it in turns to roll dice and reach the end of the stage first. The rules of each board differ quite radically from each other too, offering varied ways to play. The first of these, Perilous Palace, offers traditional Mario Party gameplay, with later stages like Bowser’s Volcano turning traditional rules upside down, awarding the first player to reach the end the title of loser.

Regardless of your choice, every board comes with wildcard spaces that trigger different events. Additional movement, Bowser spaces - which usually do bad things - and event spaces are just a few. The last of these, when landed on, will prompt the appearance of a roulette wheel that chooses a mini-game at random. Forming the bread and butter of Island Tour, the amount of mini-games on offer is commendable, and all of the 3DS’ features are utilised (microphone, camera and stylus) to provide bytes of fun, reminiscent of old WarioWare titles. Winning whilst in party mode will reward you with an extra die to roll, and in the unlikely event that you find any of them too hard, you can practice in mini-game mode whenever you want.

Practice is the wrong word though. If you could train your luck, then we would run with that. As it stands though, many of the mini-games on offer are so luck based that you’ll get tired of having to settle for last place because you chose the only plant pot that Piranha Pete resides in.

You’ll whizz through all the available party boards within a few hours at most, and without any easily accessible multiplayer, it's fortunate that Island Tour’s greatest feature is also single-player.

Bowser’s Tower, a 30 floor endurance-esque climb to the top, pits you against the bubble clones mentioned earlier, where your only choice is which of two mini-games to play per floor. Sounds awfully familiar to the rest of the game right? Well it would be if it weren’t for the exception of boss battles. For every five floors that you conquer, you’ll face one of Mario’s past foes. Banzai Bill, Big Bomb-Omb and Dry Bowser all make an appearance, and each clash forms the best fun Mario Party has to offer by a country mile.

Overall, Island Tour is pretty average. It’s enjoyable, sure, but the lack of online multiplayer and replayability - outside of buying character figures with points earned through play - ensures there’s generally little reason to play for long periods of time, outside of killing time on the train ride home.