Mario Party: Island Tour 3DS review

After playing a game as bad as Mario Party 10 in a previous review, I really don't know where to go with this review. I am in a state of shock. So I've decided to play Mario Party: Island Tour. Also known as the Cashgrab Mario Party due to how lazily quick it took to produce with so little content.

Alright, this game is bad, but not as bad as Mario Party 10. Who am I kidding, this is worse.

So let's dive into this game and play that game. The first thing you will notice is that the Mario Party cast is invited to a special invitation in the skies. Why? I don't know. And the person is anonymous and doesn't reveal themselves. Yeah, didn't they teach you not to listen to strangers? Well who cares. So anyways, Mario Party cast go into the skies and turn into bubbles. Because that makes sense. Almost as much sense as me using an umbrella out of slight pleasure.

Anyways, here is Mario Party boards. All these boards have a Skill, Luck, and Minigames meter. The board to my right is all luck and no skill involved. So yeah, have fun trying to win without any actual strategy. Let's see how far that takes you. And now, the board to my bottom right of this same paragraph has a low luck level. Do not be deceived! This is a lie. I cannot tell you how many times I've played Kamek's Carpet Ride only to lose every time despite me always being in the lead. I have won on Banzai Bill's Mad Mountain more times out of shear luck than Kamek's Garbage Aladdin Carpet Productions. Oh yeah, the minigame meter exists because it's based on how often you play a minigame: you barely play them every turn on most of these boards.

In case you didn't notice, all of these boards, or most of these boards (this is to the stupid PC crowd), are race to the finish line. Of course, that comes with no strategy, as you have to roll dice blocks and along the way, there will be shit to hinder your process.

As this is the first board, it is the simplest one, and probably the easiest one to get around with. Although not the easiest board to win because none of them involve any actual strategy to win. Now if you land on the item space, you get an item. Can they get anymore uncreative with the items? Green Shells, Blue Shell, Bullet Bill, Star, Lightning, Mushroom. More like Asshroom. Am I playing Mario Kart, or fucking Mario Party? I mean, they make an absolute mess of a game with things you couldn't even imagine, and then the items are plainer than this fucking ice cream sundae. No cherry, no sprinkes, and most of all no nuts. Fuck that, I can't eat that shit.

As to the purpose of the Mushroom items, what's the point? See, I thought the point of video games is for us to enjoy ourselves, not to finish them almost immediately, even as how atrocious some games may be. So it's pretty clear the developers hate their own creations and want people to quickly stop playing them as soon as possible. Good job Nd Cube, I saw through your own flaws.

    Goddamn, there really isn't much to say about the gameplay. You roll a dice and you move. Also play minigames which determine if you get more rolls. If you get last, it means you suck at games and don't deserve a bonus dice block for participation, unlike Mario Party 9 & 10 where everyone is a winner as even last place still gets mini stars.

Your first challenge is to hit the right switch. I don't think this game knows what an actual challenge is. A challenge is something you make an effort to succeed in during a competition. Not a fucking guessing game. So anyways, your first challenge is to hit the right switch. Which one is it? Who knows, you better be lucky, otherwise you don't make progress with your dice rolls and you're stuck until next turn.

I forgot to mention, if you ever tie in a minigame, you are forced to roll a dice block to determine and let luck determine whether you deserve to be 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th. Once again, going against MP9's philosophy that if you tie a game, you don't roll a dice block as everyone is a winner. As if that wasn't enough reason to complain, these are the same people who developed MP9, so there is no reason why you get punished if you draw and are forced to roll a dice block which will determine whether you are lucky or unlucky.

Challenge #2. Hope you get lucky with the press of a button. Once again, not a challenge because it's an outcome you cannot control. Even Yellow Toad says it's luck. So, what happens is that if the Goombas agree that you will go left, you're closer to the finish line. If they decide that you go right, congratulations, you lost the game as you won't be able to catch up. Unless you get OP Kamek item where you can switch places with everyone.

Then Yellow Toad isn't helpful in the slightest. "Hey guys, first place is winning. Catch up!" Yes, real helpful. Catch up using something I have no control over. Yes, might as well tell me to jump in lava because first place did.

The other boards are no better. Going back to Banzai Bill's Whatever Magic Mountains, this board is all luck. And you don't play a minigame every turn, it's every THREE turns in this board. This is the smallest board, so you can win it without even playing a single minigame. Which is kinda sad. The only difference between this and the first board is that instead of the normal 1-6 nice block, this one only has a 1-5 and the 6 is removed with a Banzai Bill face, which if you get, sends everyone to the beginning for those who are in it's path, which are the red spaces.

And then there's Shy Guy's Shuffle City. You cannot play that board because you need three players who have to have a COPY of this pile of sewage. As there is no online for this game, you can only play this board locally. So good luck finding someone who owns a 3DS and owns a copy of this game. So anyways, let's go ahead and move on to the next board. This board is Mini Star Paradise. The gimmick this time isn't a race to the finish. It's a whoever collect the most mini stars wins. You might think there might finally be skill involved. You are dead wrong. There are four stages to this board, reaching the end of each Star Stage means that you get rewarded with mini stars by whatever enemy is holding them. That takes about as much skill as scratching a lottery ticket, as the only way to reach them in time is to roll a dice block. So if you roll bad, you will always get the crappy rewards, which are mostly 2 mini stars while everyone else gets like 84329 mini stars because they don't roll crappy.

Oh, and minigames happen whenever you land on their spaces. And hypocritically, everyone is a winner here as even last place gets something. So if you're like poor Wario is in these pictures, you will be the last person to reach a star stage, which means that Lakitu picks you up out of pity and takes you there because everyone else made it in before you. Also because you cannot get left behind lol. As if that wasn't bad enough, the third star stage is mini ztar paradise. First person to reach there gets punished for rolling high. The funny part is that the game will almost always purposely make the player (you) roll a big number in this section, mostly because it has a hate boner for you and is stacked against you to lose.

Because I hate the other stages, one of them for including a Blusalina cameo, we will move right on with Bowser's Firey Inferno. This one, you get punished for rolling high numbers for the whole game. So try to roll those crappy numbers like you were always capable of in the other boards when you never wanted them. If you reach Bowser first, you lost the game, simple as that. And there are Bowser space, which actually benefit the person closer to Bowser. If you had the misfortune of being me whenever it comes to playing Nd Cube Parties, you know how bad my luck is. So let's say the closest player to Bowser lands on a Bowser space and gets a "Switches places with someone!", while I have been the farthest away from Bowser. Guess what happens? I lose because we switch places and the damage was already done in which the switched player was closer to Bowser. So yeah.

The only other mode in this barebones of a game is Bowser's Tower Power Whatever -ower. This mode has you going 30 floors to beat Bowser up for no reason other than for being masochistic. Actually, after what happened in the last board, I kinda want to tortue Bowser. So let's do it! So Green Toad comes along to help me. No, I don't want your help. Go away. You're about as useless as the local Liquor clerk. So whether you want to or not, Green Toad joins your party.

In this mode, you play minigames for every floor. Your opponents will be bubble versions of a preexisting playable character.

Since I never got a chance to say this, I will go out and say that the minigames in the game aren't bad, but the problem is that the boards are, and that's what we like from a Mario Party. All the minigames take skill to beat.

I also found an error that not many people know about. If you play Bowser's Tower as Bowser Jr, Bowser doesn't even know who is son is. Jesus. The game designers should be ashamed of themselves for a huge fuck up like this.

And out of random occasions, Bowser decides to spin the roulette, because I guess that's the only thing he's good at in recent Mario games. Most of the choices are also horrible, and I'm pretty sure it's possible for you to be in floor 29 and for him to decide to send you back to the first floor. I think it's also possible for him to make his underlings tougher, which means that instead of easy difficulty, they can suddenly become hard difficulty, or take away your Mario Party Points, which are points you can purchase useless collectables on.

Once you complete Bowser's Tower, you'd expect a celebration from your character. But then Bowser comes back from the dead, probably KILLS his own son with a punching glove because he falls 30 floors, and then advertises for you to come back and play his crappy mode.

So yeah, after playing this game, I think Nd Cube should never make a Mario Party game ever again. Oh no, SpaghettiNOs...

1/10 for being Nintendo's poor attempt of wanting to make a quick buck.