Introduction
Today we are going to the Gamecube era once again, we have another Mario Party review waiting for you, This time we will look at Mario Party 4! In the last Mario Party review, Mario Party Superstars, we went into why team mode is important. Mario Party 4 is the first Mario Party that implemented the team mode! I already mentioned in the review of Mario Party Superstars about the mini mushrooms and how annoying they are! There will be no story section in this review. Although there is a small story mode, it is just a single player mode against three non-playable character!
What did I think before playing Mario Party 4?
My wife and I wanted to play another Mario Party, we decided to play Mario Party 4! It has been a long time since we played this game, and we wanted to review the game that invented the Mario Party team mode! There are some issues in this game though, like the mini mushrooms, we will go into detail of why they are an issue in the gameplay section! For more information, we are going to the Mariowiki!
The Mariowiki page!
https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Party_4
As you can see, this page as all the information that you need! It shows you all the playable characters and the boards available! You can even see all the items that are in the game, you are going to be using that chomp call a lot! To get the star moving around the board, you are going to need many of these items, but the magic lamp will shoot you to the star instantly!
Rating
I rate Mario Party 4 with a 7.3 before playing.
The idea of seeing where team mode comes from is awesome but also, there are those annoying mini mushrooms!
Gameplay
The gameplay is what you would expect from a Mario Party game. Once again they cannot decide who is the superstar, in this case it is a party star though, and they need to battle it out with mini-games! This time, however, you can team up for the first time in the series. There are also more playable characters compared to the first three games! Although, Mario Party 3 had two bonus characters that you could select!
There is technically a story mode, but it does not contain a story at all, you will be facing three other non-playable characters to become the party star, upon winning you get a present! If you complete all the boards, you will unlock a new board! The boards in this game are huge, this means that you need to walk around a lot to get to the star, but it gets even more complicated when you introduce the mini gates!
You will need to use mini mushrooms if the star is behind a gate! This means it can take up to ten turns before anyone reaches the star! That is why in this game you are going to need a lot of chomp calls, when you use this item the star will relocate, hopefully close to you. Another useful item is the magic lamp, this item teleports you to the star!
There are a lot of new mini-games, including special ones in the extra room! However, some mini-games are almost impossible to win against computers whom have turbo controllers! You have fingers, do the math! It is impossible how high the luck stat of some non-playable characters are, if that was a thing. We started a new game and the computer got three stars on blue spots in the first three turns. We managed to get a star in the fourth turn, that star was stolen in the next turn by the computer! I hope you have better luck!
Rating
I rate the gameplay of Mario Party 4 with a 6.0
While the gameplay is fun, the mini mushrooms are not. Also, the boards are too big, but there are a lot of extra things to do! Even an unlockable board!
Sound and Graphics
Graphics
You can see that the graphics are quite old, this is off course from the game cube era! Have the graphics aged well this time around? Yes, as a matter of fact, the graphics still looks great! The mini-games are fun and look fun, you are going to get your butt handed to you though by easy computers! The user interface still needs an upgrade for team mode, this was added in later Mario Party games!
Sound
The soundtrack is reminiscent of other Mario Party games, nothing new or unique on this one. I still miss the talking parrot, though.
Rating
I rate the sound and graphics of Mario Party 4 with a 7.5
It is just another fun Mario Party game in which you get angry at your friends when they steal your star!
What did I think after playing Mario Party 4?
Even though this game has quite some issues like the weird lucky A.I., you are also bound to get unlucky. The mini mushrooms are also a thing! The boards are fun though, except for the Goomba roulette, if you get stuck, you might end up with zero stars!
This game did have flaws, like I mentioned before, but they were necessary flaws to enhance Mario Party 5! That means that in the future, we will be looking at Mario Party 5 to see how much that game has improved with the jump to next the game!
Rating
I rate Mario Party 4 with a 6.0 after playing!
The best thing in Mario Party 4 are the mini-games, However, there are a lot of *mash* this button type of mini-games! One of the most fun mini-games ever is Book Squirm!
What are my personal thoughts about Mario Party 4
While this is a very fun Mario Party due to the new addition of team mode, you can see that it still in early development. Whereas Super Mario Party has a completely fine-tuned team mode with boards made for that mode! My wife and I still enjoyed this game, despite us having the most bad luck ever in each match.
Rating
My personal Rating of Mario Party 4 is a 6.3
My wife and I did have fun when playing, but we are excited to try out other Mario Party games!
Last Words
Pros
- Experience new mini-games and boards!
- Play new boards and marvel at the first attempt of Mario Party gamecube graphics!
- Two new characters to choose from!
- Play story mode and unlock a new board!
- A new team mode is available, team up and play together!
Cons
- The boards are to big for Mario Party!
- The mini mushrooms are annoying and keep the star out of your reach!
If you like Mario Party, this is the perfect time to team up in the new team mode of Mario Party 4!
Final Rating
6.7
Let me know what you think of Mario Party 4 in the comments!
I hope you enjoyed reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review!
If you liked reading this review, maybe you would like to share this review with your friends!
Even being old it can still be enjoyed with fun mini games
The mini-games are amazing!
Every Mario game is cool.
… but not every game – Mario
the boards should be ported to the new game
Would be fun!
It seems that the AI needs to be adjusted.
Yeah, that happened in Mario Party 5, I hope, lets review that game!
Nothing like a trip back to the past.. I miss the good old days..
The days when games were actually tested and completed when you purchased a game!
There is something like to much Mario.
There is never enough Nintendo content lol, the idea is to review all Mario Parties eventually, we are working on other reviews as well!
Mario Party is not a game of skill.
The mini-games are, however the rest is pure luck, I usually have bad luck lol
Mario games really looks fun
Until your friend steals all your stars!
real fun! thanks for the review!
You are welcome!
Do they still make Gamecubes lol?
I don’t think they make official Gamecubes anymore, but there are still an insane amount in circulation!