Mario Party: Island Tour Review by: Azul Fria - 9.5/10
It's a Party Time.OVERVIEW
Mario and his friends and even a few of his adversaries have been invited to a wonderful island called Party Island and get carried away by bubbles to play games and have fun. As usual, Bowser never gets invited to these games and decides to make life hell for the island and our gang. Worry not as you will not have to deal with Bowser unless you land on his square. If you are up to a real challenge, take on Bowser's Tower Challenge and make your way up 30 floors of non-stop mini games and boss fights. Come on everybody and let's a get this party a started.
CAST OF CHARACTERS - B
Being that this is a 3DS game, the cast of characters is relatively small compared to most of the other Mario Party games within the series. You get Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Peach, Daisy, Yoshi, Boo, Toad, and Bowser Jr. to play with. Nothing special really comes out of whoever you choose. Not even Bowser Jr. gets any special perks or mercy from Bowser for being his son.
GRAPHICS - A+
The graphics are totally perfect. The environments really come out at you especially when you decided to view them with the 3DS screen. They also help or hinder you when you are playing the mini games as they are also part of the gameplay such as Claiming the Cube where the cube will rotate along to where your character runs too and change color from black to white and wait for you to Ground Pound the white section first before the others do. Another graphical related game is Tragic Carpet Ride. A version of the Dry Bones called the Mattermouths will much away at the carpet and produce a purple void that will defeat whomever is unlucky to fall through it. The carpet will restore itself but more Mattermouths will appear as the game goes on longer. The Sprites are also modeled using 3D software and move fluently.
SOUND/MUSIC - A-
This game has all kinds of music to listen to and each level has their own individual miniature soundtrack which you can buy in the shop called Memories. When you listen to a certain memory, you can skip onto the next track. Music is great although not all of it is perfect and the sounds you hear are the same ones you've heard in several of these Mario Party games you have played in the past assuming you have. It is a shame that they still have not given Bowser a real voice rather those grunts, growls, and groans he makes. In all honestly, it is a shame that Sherman Helmsly (aka George Jefferson of The Jeffersons) is dead, he would have made a good voice actor for Bowser after I found out he was the voice of B.P. Richfield from Dinosaurs. Even the gut who played him in the cartoons would have been great too.
CONTROLS - B+
The controls I consider to be a little so-so depending on which game you are playing especially the ones which are gyroscope and tilt controlled (you use the 3DS to move the scenery). Sometimes the Gyroscope will fail to function and in a mini game that can hurt you severely. To remedy this problem, press the control pad when the 3DS to steady then it should be working again. Even then it is hard to play some of the games using the tilt feature like Spin the Bubble where you tilt the 3DS to match the pose of the character in the bubble first. Sometimes the game will take a mind of its own and that proves costly in some ways. Others require the use of the microphone which sometimes can be unresponsive but the other controls still work as planned. My advice to use a stylus instead of your finger for stylus games as sometimes you might hit something extra by accident using your finger.
GAMEPLAY - A
Now here is where things get juicy. There are several mini games to keep you on your toes. In total I counted as many as 81 unique mini games including Boss Battles and not including games that show up twice but one of them is for multiplayer. I took off a few points for the gameplay because at times the game can be cheap and you will end up being cheated out of a victory that was well within reach but some unforseen events prevented that from happening. The biggest culprit of all time is the Bowser spots that can make you swap places with another character and how fitting is that you are the one who gets swapped out when you are in the lead and the other guy was in last place before a major crossroad. Another cheap related tactic is that the places get swapped around so that whoever is first is last, last is first, second is third and third is second place. One of the boards that has a unique twist is the Bowser board. This is the only board where you want to be in last place to win. For the first few rounds, Bowser will randomly choose a mini game and whoever wins, will get an empty bonus. For this case, bonus is kind of a bad word to use. Extra hazard will be more convenient. When you get second to last place, you are given an extra die to add to your turn and add to your troubles. Second place adds a die from 1-2, third place adds a die from 1-3 and last place gives a die from 1-6. Baring the +4 event, the worse roll one can get is 11 and not 12. This is because if you manage to roll doubles, you get to stay put. And yet, I even got robbed of victory from that game a few times because one of the other CPU controlled characters kept rolling doubles.
Other boards have their own share of cheapness besides the swap. Landing on a item block will give you a random item. It is good if you are in possession of the item but for the CPU, it can spell doom for you as they will use every dirty tactic they have to keep you (or whoever is in the lead) from winning. Some will send a turtle shell to knock you back a couple spaces. Some will use an items to chop your movement by half and some minus 3 spots on the roll. The best items to get are the ones that advance you. The star is the best one because it can double your roll leading to a max of 24 spaces not including the extra spaces spot. But do not be so hasty to use the advancement items as there are some spots that will stop you regardless of the number of spaces you were given. If you pass the test then you get to take the remaining spots. If you fail, you get sent back a few spaces.
In Bowser's Tower, you fight your way through thirty floors to reach the top and take on Bowser himself. You get four floors of mini games followed by a battle with the boss of every fifth floor. On each floor, you choose which mini game you want to play then proceed to the next floor by winning or tying for first place as there are no tie breakers like in the party games. If you lose then it is game over but you can retry from that floor. The climb to the top is not that easy, Bowser will occasionally appear and penalize you randomly including sending you back to the first floor if you are unlucky.
REPLAY VALUE - A+
This is a game you can play for hours at a time. It is good to play this game with some of your friends as with all Mario Party games, the more players involved the more competitive it gets as in my opinion the CPU characters do not provide too much of a challenge unless they are in the Hard Mode and even then they are not too tough for you to handle. You can also try out the Free Mode to get coins for the shop to buy character voice packs and music memories. There are times where you feel like you got cheated somehow in some games and you just want to get back there and get your revenge by playing it until you are satisfied with victory. The Bowser Tower is the best feature in the game itself.
OVERALL - A
Mario Party: Island Tour for the 3DS gets an A. This game has a lot to offer and makes you use all kinds of different ways to play games and control. It really gives you a chance to work on concentration, luck, and accuracy because that is what is needed to succeed at some of the mini games. Now come on everyone, the party goes on forever. MOMMA MIA!!
Graphics
10 Sound
10 Addictive
10 Depth
9 Story
2 Difficulty
2
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