Mario Party 8 Thread

[shams]

Smashchu said:

Slayer of God said:
This is one of the few games i can get my fiance to sit and play with me for more than 15 minutes. It because of the random crap that happens thoughout it. She beats me probably 75% of the time even though i can beat her in most mini-games. Its fun for both us because of this. I get to feel like im winning because i win at some mini-games and she usually has better luck at getting the stars (throughout the game and the bonus ones) so we both have a great time. I rarely get the urge to play it by myself but we both have a great time together whenever we play any Mario Party title.

You pretty much summed it up

Mario party isn't about winning. it's about fun. The chances of winning are based on luck, so just the ride downward is what it's about. Who ever wins or loses, everyone has fun.

Yup, that is exactly it.

Think about any competitive video game. The more skill based it is (i.e. Quake), the more you are going to have players running around creaming everyone - and the more newbies will get slaughtered, and more than likely - HATE IT.

The secret to Mario Party (and Mario Kart to some extent), is that anyone can play and have a reasonable chance of winning. The way Mario Party is also structured, is that its also inevitiable that during a single (multiplayer) game, each player will end up creaming every other player - at least once. This gives each player at least some mental highlight, which is purely translated into fun.

I really enjoy MP because I can't win easily. Playing the game a lot, learning the mini-games (etc) does help - but it doesn't help that much. As a result I find it really challenging to dominate newbies (much, much more so than say in Quake - where they struggle to even move around!), which in turn makes the game much more fun for myself.

So anyone can play, and everyone can have a good time.

In my opinion, its pure game design brilliance.