Mario Party Star Rush Review

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Players: 1-4
 
Mario Party Star Rush is the latest entry in the popular Mario Party franchise. Regardless of quality, it’s been a long running series that has helped to create frenetic and fun multiplayer sessions with friends. Star Rush is no different in that regard, for better and worse.

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

The overall concept of the game remains the same: you control your character on a game board via the roll of dice, trying to move to hot spots that will allow you to collect coins and stars. The player with the most stars at the end of the game wins. The twist is that after certain conditions each turn, you could be thrown into a mini-game where you’ll have to fight against the other players to collect coins. These minigames are the true heart of the game.

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

While I am truly pleased that Nintendo was brave enough to try and change up the formula in a rather stale and unchanging franchise, the recent concept of shared board movement via the infamous car was not well-received amongst fans (myself included). Thankfully, Star Rush does not use this style of gameplay while still changing things up, for the better.

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

The primary game mode is called Toad Scramble. Rather than have players move on set paths on a game board with highlighted event areas, the game boards allows for complete freedom of movement.  At semi-random spots around the board a semi-random set of events will occur, depending on the board’s theme. This helps to create a whole new level of strategy and control that the board game portion of the franchise has always lacked. Don’t get me wrong, the game is still extremely random and there is still a chance of a losing player rising to the top out of the blue, but the chances of this happening are far less, allowing for a bit more of a skill based game. For me, this is one of the best things to happen to the franchise, and it makes this one of my favorites. The game boards are relatively small, catering to reasonably short games that make sense for a portable setting. To counter the smaller game boards, there are a total of 15 to play around with, each with its own gimmick. The gimmicks may not be as far reaching or obnoxious as the console games, but they are there to help mix things up. Rather than choose your character, you start off playing as Toad. At semi-random locations on the board the standard Mario Party characters will appear. If you land on their spaces then you recruit them to your team. Each character has its own unique ability as well as a special type of die. This also leads to strategically choosing who your party leader is when rolling. This is yet another feature that helps to counter the characteristically random (to a fault) nature of the franchise. If you own amiibo, you can use these to unlock a character from the start, which is definitely nice when playing single player. Thankfully, I didn’t see a way of using them in multiplayer, which is yet another way to assure a reasonably well balanced game. 

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Coin Rush is the next game mode, which only has a single board. The idea is to gather as many coins as you can via minigames in a single path to try and reach the goal the fastest. It’s a neat distraction to Toad Scramble, but doesn’t have any real lasting value due to the lack of variety. Balloon Bash has semi-set paths in 3 different boards. In this, your primary goal is to pop balloons. Rhythm Recital is a simple rhythm game you can play with a total of 10 songs.

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Mario Shuffle is a bit different and is only for 2 players. Each player chooses a team of 3 characters, each with their own linear path to follow. You roll 2 dice, which you can apply to 2 of the 3 characters per turn. The board consists mostly of minus or plus spaces (meaning if you land on it you have to move forward or backwards a set amount), with a goal of trying to get to the opposite side first. It’s a rather simple but reasonably fun game. Boo’s Block Party is a 2 player puzzle game. There are stacks of blocks with numbers on them. You select a block then rotate it to move the selected number’s value up or down in order to try and make matching sets of 3 or more. The final game mode is called Challenge Tower, which is a single player scramble to try and move to the top of a tower while avoiding obstacles.

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

As you can see, there is a good amount of variety within Star Rush, allowing for a little bit of everything in order to fit the mood. The biggest issue I see with this is that Toad Scramble feels like the only mode that was given full attention. The amount of content in each of the other modes feels lacking, and is especially disappointing considering how fun they can be. Still, the variety is welcome nonetheless. What makes things even more exciting in a day and age where games often come with a full set of items is the concept of unlockables. Most characters, modes and other stuff are unlockable through gameplay. Most of the stuff is easy to unlock, really only requiring naturally playing the game. The more you play the more you get. As a person that mostly plays single player, this is very welcome because it gave me a sense of accomplishment as well as having a goal to work towards. For those who are primarily getting it for multiplayer this could be a bit frustrating since you will not be able to enjoy everything the game has to offer with your friends right off the bat. Luckily, as mentioned, it’s not too hard to unlock the core content. I unlocked all the game modes in an hour or so. To help fuel the completionist in you, there are also ranks you can get in some of the game modes in order to encourage winning in the best ways possible or getting the best scores. This doesn’t unlock anything besides a special icon over the section in question, but it’s a nice touch. 

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Everything in the game is extremely vibrant and colorful, making for something pleasing to look at. Unfortunately, I often felt like the game lacked a bit of detail, though that isn’t necessarily a fault of the game, since it clearly is going for a minimalistic and simple style in order to give a bigger focus on the gameplay. This isn’t exactly bad, but it does get a bit boring to look at. The music and sound effects, on the other hand, are mostly dull and forgettable. Unless you are doing something that requires hearing what’s going on, you’ll likely find yourself playing the game on mute (hey, it saves battery life a little!). On the one hand, this franchise’s goal isn’t to be an aesthetically pleasing bombshell, but a little more care could have been given to it nonetheless.

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Let’s be real though, the main reason you’re probably interested in Mario Party is the mini-games. There are a total of 53, being a bit shy of how many the console versions. If you’ve played any Mario Party, you already know what to expect. The games range in style from the standard fare of random guessing, fighting to collect items, matching pictures, knocking players off of platforms, etc. There’s more than enough variety to keep things exciting. The best part is that there are a good amount of games that make good use of the 3DS hardware features. In the end, there aren’t any new games that feel unique or fresh. This may turn away long-time players, since it doesn’t really offer anything new in the minigame department. The games are still fun and chaotic though, which will likely create lots of shenanigans between friends (or if you’re playing alone, a lot of yelling at your 3DS). It wouldn’t be Mario Party otherwise.

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

The portable Mario Party games have always been a really mixed bag for fans of the franchise. They are mostly fun in their own way, but oftentimes take away the most endearing part of the series: multiplayer. Mario Party Star Rush looks to fix this gaping issue. For the first time in the series, each player can download a special ‘Guest Edition’ from the eShop. This allows for seamless multiplayer without each player needing to own the game, as well as allowing for your data to transfer to the full game if you choose to purchase it. In case you don’t have the time to download the Guest Edition, you can still play via standard Download Play, though some features are disabled and you will have to wait for it to download on the spot. I never had the opportunity to test Download Play myself. The final way to play is with each player owning the game. It’s a really welcome thing considering the difficulty of accessing multiplayer (or the lack thereof) in previous portable entries. The biggest disappointment here is that there is absolutely no online play, which is rather silly in this day and age.

©Nd Cube Co., Ltd. ©Nintendo Co., Ltd.

In the grand scheme of things, Mario Party Star Rush is still the same old Mario Party we’ve been playing for years. That’s either great, if you enjoy the games, or really lame if you feel like the series has gotten really stale. The slightly modified formula involving free-form board movement does help to give things a bit more life, and being portable is definitely a bonus as well, but at its heart it is and always will be Mario Party. If you have never played one in the past you may find plenty to enjoy, with a good variety of modes and minigames to play. If you’re a long time player, the slightly different board approach and the attractiveness of being portable will be worth it as long as you still get enjoyment out of the series. There’s enough content to give both singe players and multiplayers something to enjoy. Mario Party Star Rush is definitely one of my favorite games in the franchise, and you should check it out.
 
- Teepu

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Gameplay: GREAT
Graphics: GOOD
Sound: QUESTIONABLE
Value: AMAZING
 
OVERALL: GREAT

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