Wii Party Review
Wii Party follows in the same vein of Nintendo Wii favourites, Wii Play, Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort in offering up a multitude of quick fix, fun selection of party and mini-games built for multiplayer fun. It’s packed with more than 80, each making full use of the motion sensing Wii Remote. Stephen Ebert gets his game on.
The good
Just like the Wii Sports series and Wii Play, Wii Party delivers an ace social gaming experience. If you’re looking for a casual party game to liven up the mood that anyone can play, Wii Party is right up your street. Its controls are easy and intuitive to get to grips with. Even those who don’t play games will find the controls easy to pick up.
Wii Party is just the tonic for the Nintendo console, which in the recent past has been somewhat bereft of great games. Wii Party isn’t up there with Super Mario Galaxy or its sequel, but it’s a step in the right direction to appeasing Nintendo fans wondering why there aren’t more fun flagship titles.
Where the Wii Sports and Wii Play games had little more than a handful of games to play with, Wii Play has over 80. Again, each with easy to understand control schemes, many using the Wii Remote’s motion sensing skills in a different way to add a sense of variety across games involving puzzles, mazes, races and balancing acts.
The different modes include a Party Games mode for four different contestants, House Party: where players are asked to do things such as hide the Wii Remote somewhere for another player to locate it by sound in a game called ‘Hide ‘n’ Hunt’, and others including one where players must pass a precariously unstable bomb to each other with military precision. One unsteady move and it’s all over. Another key mode is pair games – where you must work in teams to achieve a goal.
The bad
Like most games of its ilk, Wii Party is best played with others. If you’ve got nobody to play with, it’s just not as fun. You can play with the CPU, but not even the smartest AI opponent or teammate is a match for your real-life gamer buddies. You need people to play Wii Play with to get the most from it.
Once you become familiar with each game, they become too simple. Before long it all becomes too easy and that sense of deja-vu kicks you up the rear. It doesn’t tale long for its light-hearted appeal to wane.
The bottom line
Wii Party is a collection of fun games perfect for playing with others. If you’ve got friends and family to play it with, and you enjoyed Nintendo’s similarly titled past exploits, go for it. If you haven’t, don’t.
