Super Mario Party Jamboree review – Christmas family board game-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Super Mario Party Jamboree – another fun party (Nintendo)

The latest entry in Nintendo’s virtual board game series has more characters and more mini-games than ever, and even a few new ideas.

Mario Party is not something you expect to see on a list of the best multiplayer games of all time but as far as we’re concerned it deserves to be there. Clearly, it’s not a hyper competitive online game like Call Of Duty but that’s the point. Super Mario Party Jamboree focuses on online play more than any other previous entry but it’s still by far the most fun when played with four people in the same room, all arguing over who cheated and what’s not fair.

A recent survey revealed that local multiplayer games remain extremely popular with most people, and yet they’re extremely rare and it’s almost unknown for a major publisher to release one. It’s a shame, because not only is it far more sociable than playing online but it’s the best way to introduce non-gamers to the world of video games. And, in that respect, Mario Party has been serving as an ambassador for over 26 years.

The series has varied greatly in quality over that time, depending on how many pointless gimmicks each particular entry is burdened with, but ever since its Switch revival, with 2018’s Super Mario Party, Nintendo has kept things sensibly straightforward, culminating in Jamboree, which is undoubtedly the best Mario Party so far.

The last release in the series was 2021’s Mario Party Superstars, which was essentially a remake compilation of boards from earlier games. This is a direct sequel to the 2018 game though, in the sense that it’s a full-bloodied game with all-new boards and lots of new features.

If you’ve never played a Mario Party game before, the concept is purposefully uncomplicated. Each game features a number of virtual board games, not in the modern sense of complicated pseudo role-playing games but something closer in complexity to Snakes and Ladders. There is no single goal though and instead you’re trying to get to the space with a Super Star on it, which can be bought with earned coins – once acquired a new star then appears somewhere else on the board.

You set the number of turns before you start, as you and three others endlessly tour around the board and the winner becomes the player with the most stars at the end of the game. Each board has different elements, such as one in which you drive around in a racing car or another where the tide goes in and out and a volcano explodes, but they all work in the same basic way.

There are additional complications, such as shops where you can buy power-ups to increase your number of dice roles or nobble your opponents, but new for Jamboree is the idea of ‘buddies’. These work as AI companions, whose abilities vary slightly depending on who it is – out of the wide array of playable Mushroom Kingdom characters on offer – but it’s always things like increasing your dice role or letting you buy two stars at once.

If the game was just that it wouldn’t hold anyone’s attention for long, but the other main element is that after each round you play a mini-game with the other players, either a free-for-all, team game, or 1 vs. 3. These generally only last a minute or two but considering there’s 110 of them (a considerable increase from the 80 of the 2018 game) it’s amazing that there’s almost no duds.

At the same time, there’s nothing that’s likely to be evolved into a full game but it’s all good, silly fun. There’s one where you’re trying to race along a rickety platform as Shy Guys try to knock you off with timber logs, a 1 vs. 3 game where one player is using a plastic mallet to steal coins off the others, a free-for-all where you’re running around a Super Mario Galaxy style planetoid activating flags, and a team game where you’re trying to collect coins while jumping on a seesaw.

A minority of mini-games use motion controls, from a mini-triathlon to a competition to bang nails into a plank, and while they work fine you can choose to turn these off if you want. In fact, the whole game is highly customisable, with a whole Pro Rules set-up that removes some of the randomness for anyone that resents the reliance on luck.

Super Mario Party Jamboree – some of the mini-games use motion controls (Nintendo)

The mini-games might be simplistic but there’s so many of them, and the presentation is so varied and amusingly bizarre, they never fail to entertain. Or at least that’s true when you’re playing against other people in the same room. There is an online option but it’s really not the same, while playing on your own, or even with just less than four human players, is an exercise in misery.

That said, Jamboree does offer a lot more to do on your own than usual, with a quasi-story mode based around exploring the boards without a time limit. It’s not thrilling but a surprising amount of effort has gone into it and, like most of the additional modes, it’s an excuse to play the mini-games in a different context.

These other modes strip out the boardgame element to focus on just the mini-games but two major new online options extend things even further. Koopathlon has you competing with 20 people on specially selected mini-games, while Bowser Kaboom Squad is a lot more involved and has eight people running around a town trying to collect bombs to fire at a giant ‘imposter’ Bowser.

Paratroopa Flight School is an unexpected bonus (Nintendo)

On top of this are three other completely random local modes that just seem to be a result of Nintendo messing around with motion controls and seeing what they can come up with. Toad’s Item Factory is a fun little puzzle game for up to four players, while Rhythm Kitchen is a rhythm action game with some unexpectedly extravagant presentation.

Meanwhile, Paratroopa Flight School is a cross between Pilotwings and the wing cap levels from Super Mario 64. Here, you fly around by flapping and angling your arms, while competing in Crazy Taxi style matches or trying to collect Parabiddybuds in competition with another player.

With seven separate boards (including new remakes) and more characters and mini-games than any previous game, Jamboree is bursting with content. Some of it is locked at first but even though there’s what’s essentially a battle pass it’s usually quite unclear what you’ve got to do to unlock them. Getting the two extra characters (Pauline and Ninji) seems especially random but that’s barely a quibble.

No one would pretend Super Mario Party Jamboree is doing anything radically new, but this is certainly not a low effort sequel. There’s more content than ever before and some of the ancillary modes are genuinely a lot of fun. There’s a reason the series has lasted this long and as far as board game staples go this is vastly more entertaining than the traditional family game of Risk.

Mario Party has an important role to play as a gateway game, where everyone can enjoy it no matter their age or video game experience. There’re very few other titles you can say that about and that gives Jamboree real purpose, beyond just being a fun and silly mini-game collection.

Formats: Nintendo Switch
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo Cube
Release Date: 17th October 2024
Age Rating: 3

20-player Mario Party is new (Nintendo)

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