Mario Party DS hands-on

Mario Party is Mario Party is Mario Party…and that’s how it shall be until the end of time. You will have minigames, you will have a cast of Nintendo characters, and you will not have online. You guys know that I am not a huge fan of online, but when it comes to Mario Party I make an exception. The Mario Party series needs to move forward, and online is the next logical step. That could make the game that much more fun. I am all for local multiplayer…but come on Nintendo, this game screams online!

There really isn’t too much to say about Mario Party DS. You get exactly what you expect from the series. There is a collection of minigames that closely related to other minigames that have graced the console versions. The settings may be different, and the elements slightly changed, but there isn’t too much in the way of anything fresh. I mean, it is nice to have a portable version with wireless play, but I need something new in my Mario Party.

I thought that the controls might turn the tide for me with this one. There definitely are some unique games that you can only get on the DS. I do have a big problem though. Some of the games didn’t really seem to control well. There were games that played just fine, but others seemed sluggish, or just plain strange. This wasn’t just with touch screen controls either. Certain games just didn’t feel right…d-pad movement wasn’t precise, or touch screen elements weren’t translated correctly. I am chalking this one up to development for now, and I really hope it can be fixed by launch. If I had to summarize the controls in one word, I would have to go with sloppy.

To make things better, we grabbed you guys screens of all the game names that popped up in the demo. I didn’t get a chance to sample anywhere near all of them, but I am sure that some of the names will give you an idea of the gameplay.