This means that, unless you have 3DS-owning family or friends in the vicinity - and preferably three of them - you’re stuck playing solo against CPU-controlled Yoshi, Luigi, Boo, Princess Daisy and the rest. There’s no online action, and no way to play with more than one player on the same 3DS. ![]() Unfortunately, the mini-games don’t make up the bulk of the playing time - the board game bits do - and this is where Island Tour’s biggest flaw comes into play, Find three friends with their own 3DS handhelds and you can play the game four-player through 3DS download play. Sure, many are variations on well-worn themes, like racing, sliding-tile puzzles and running around while avoiding baddies challenges, but the best ones make special use of the 3DS hardware, so that you use motion controls to spot notorious Mario enemies through a pair of binoculars, slice your way through topiary with the stylus, or aim suction-cup arrows at spikey little monsters from a motion-controlled first-person view. What imagination there is has been focused in the mini-games. While the descriptions are quite upfront about how much luck a board involves, only a handful involve any strategy. In the longest, Perilous Palace, it’s actually a disadvantage to be first as you’ll just clear obstacles for other players, while the pint-sized Rocket Road board comes down to just a few rolls of the dice. Island Tour struggles to show you any of these things, and the boards are either so short that it’s all over in a handful of turns, or so long that they become a chore to play through. The best Mario Party games have triumphed through inspired board designs, clever hidden features and unexpected reversals of fortune. The sad thing is, however, that the board games don’t make you smirk, smile, snort or chortle nearly often enough. Time and you set him off, causing any players in the way to be blastedīack to the start of the current section. One board even takes place on a series of causeways under fire from the Switches scattered around the board let you switch the order, meaning you can ensure that smug-looking Toad that just breezed past you is in for a nasty surprise when he reaches the goal. Another is more about collecting tiny stars than finishing first, with each section of the board ending in a prize-grab where the first player normally gets the bigger prize. One sees you making your way through a the koopa wizard Kamek’s creepy mansion by drawing cards, each one giving you the chance to move a set number of spaces or take a gamble on a range like 1-6 or 4-6. To be fair, the different boards mix it up a little. The winner gets some kind of bonus, then it’s on to the next player. In some cases this might be a mini-game, where you’ll square off against each other to find out who can score the most when lassooing the mushroom-like Goombas, or who can get through a set of sliding-tile puzzles first, or who can last the longest in a shrinking arena full of deadly ghosts. ![]() ![]() Each of you takes turns to roll a virtual dice and move so many spaces, with the chance that you might land on a square that sends you backwards or forwards, or kicks off some other special event. The main game sees up to four players - human or virtual - tackling a range of boards, with the normal aim being to make it from start to finish before your rivals. It’s a fun game in specific circumstances, but a lot of the time you’re left wondering why it has been made this specific way, and for whom. At their worst, however, they’re a crushing bore, and Mario Party: Island Tour falls nearer the wrong end of the spectrum. The combination of Mario-style virtual board games and quickfire mini-games strikes a chord with Mario’s younger fans and their families, and at their best the games have been a decent laugh. With nine home console outings and two previous handheld efforts, it’s safe to say that someone out there likes a Mario Party.
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