VideoGame Mario Party is a good series, great with friends
If ever there were a blockbuster franchise consisting entirely of spin-offs, Mario Party takes the cake. Nintendo worked with Hudson Soft, the masterminds behind Bomberman, for a four-party board-game and minigame compilation that has spawned over eight games on three systems, as well as two handheld spin-offs. Yes, spin-offs of spin-offs.
The gameplay is simple: You have the option to play as Mario, Luigi, Peach, and many others, you go around a themed board, rolling a die with numbers one to ten, and where you land can be a blue (get three coins), red (lose three coins), or any other event space (depending on which game you're playing). After all four players on the board have rolled, you go to a mini-game which can be two teams of two, one player against three, or a total free-for-all. The winner gains an amount of coins which can be used to buy stars, which, at the end of the game, will be tallied up to see who the winner is.
The gameplay is not boring, nor tedious, nor insanely difficult. It's simply multiplayer fun for the whole family. I can't really say everything, as I haven't played EVERY game in the series, but pick one up if you want some simple fun with your friends.
VideoGame Leave your greed at home, folks.
So, I recently got Island Tour a few days ago. And I must say that I'm rather disappointed. Sure, it looks and sounds great and the minigames are far from shit. But changing the main game from Monopoly Mode into an race to the finish and turning it into an game of chance is just isn't fun. In fact, by sucking out whatever remained of the rather low amount of skill required to play the series, they have effectively ruined it since relying on the RNG to win instead relying on an financial plan equals an uninteresting game to me.