This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

Even with the GameCube treading on its last legs and ‘Cube owners starved for new games worth buying, Nintendo’s uber-mascot, Mario, continues to show up everywhere, including in some EA games, most notably SSX On Tour and NBA Street Vol. 3. There’s also the upcoming Mario Strikers, but probably the most popular multiplayer Mario game is the seemingly never-ending Mario Party series and now we’re given another serving of it in Mario Party 7.

The Mario Party franchise has been around since the golden days of the N64, so if you haven’t heard about the games or have no clue what they’re about, you’ve done a fairly good job of avoiding Nintendo like the plague. The basic premise of the game is a bunch of minigames slapped together in the form of a board game. The objective of the game is to finish the game, which is ended after a set number of turns of your choosing, with the most stars. Stars can be earned in different ways, but the most obvious one is to land on a spot where a star is sitting. Getting to where the star is, however, is where all the adventure lies.

Those of you familiar with the series will feel very comfortable with MP7 since it’s relatively unchanged from the previous entry as the microphone is also bundled here. The biggest difference is that there are new minigames to tackle including new 8-player ones. The other difference is that the game takes place upon a cruise ship, which sets up the story. Mario has invited all of his friends to go on a cruise with him, including Wario and Waluigi. Bowser is angered at being left out and decides to crash the party. This, of course, explains why Bowser is on the board to give players such a hard time. As players rotate through their turns, a meter will slowly fill and when it does, prepare for something nasty from the big boy. He’ll steal some coins (and in some cases force you to buy something, which is 95% of the time totally useless) or take away a turn or move you back a few spots; the worst thing he can do is steal a star from you. Trust me when I say that hurts sometimes, especially when it knocks you into a tie with someone or creates a situation in which it’s impossible to recover. What he’ll do is random, so some luck is required when that meter fills.

Earlier I mentioned that there were new minigames, 86 in total, with the addition of 8-player minigames. How is that possible when there are only four GC controllers? Simple, teams of two share the controller, each taking one side of it. These minigames will take quite a bit of coordination and communication amongst teammates. If you’ve played the co-op mode in We Love Katamari, then you know exactly what to expect – bouts of fighting with each other because you can’t work together followed by copious amounts of yelling. That isn’t the case all the time and when you have a full 8-person party going on, it’s definitely fun to watch each other struggle. The addition of the 8-player games is great and up the party value of Mario Party 7 exponentially. The biggest problem is even if you don’t have 8-players and decide to keep those games included during gameplay, you could always control both sides of the controller yourself. But come on, where’s the fun in that?

The minigames themselves aren’t overly challenging, usually only requiring the use of three buttons at most – the analog, A/B, and the occasional shoulder button. Their simplicity, however, is their greatest strength as it makes it an easy pick-up-and-play, which would most likely be the case for some people when gathering four or more players together. And that’s also not to say that the simple nature of the minigames is boring. Considering the frequency at which the minigames pop-up, you’ll quickly grow to appreciate it. And if you want, you can totally bypass the whole board game part and just binge on minigames if you want in the arcade mode. But without the board holding it all together, just playing the minigames gets monotonous after going through a couple of them.

The problem with all of this is the fact that it really is more of the same. Even with the novelty of the microphone introduced in MP6 and new minigames to play, it’s still the same thing we’ve seen for the last five years or so. And the variety in the minigames gets old after a little while because some of them are the same game, just with altered instructions. For example, a 1-vs.-3 minigame where the one is on the offensive and the three are on the defensive is switched around and is considered as another minigame counting towards that total of 86.

Another thing is the graphics. Now they aren’t horrendous, per se, but they haven’t progressed through each entry. It suffers from the same problem as the gameplay – it’s stale. It seems like they’re just churning out Mario Party games like a machine with no regard to actually trying to do something new with the series. The addition of the mic was good, but they did that with MP6 already. At this rate maybe we’ll see a camera for Mario Party 12 on the Revolution.

Finally, as with the other games in the series, it just isn’t fun as a single-player game. Yes you can play the board game and the minigames against AI controlled opponents, but it isn’t any fun. Even with two people it isn’t all that great. This is really meant to be played with a handful of people. But, if/when you do get the max eight players, it definitely becomes the ultimate party game.

If you’ve skipped out on the last few entries in the Mario Party franchise and always have a group of friends to play this game with, then by all means go on and get it as you and your buddies will have a blast. However, if you’ve played Mario Party 6, or even 5, or would be playing this single-player most of the time, then you may not want to consider shelling out the dough for it. Mario Party 7 looks, feels, and plays exactly like every other Mario Party ever made. The new 8-player games, new boards, and new minigames aren’t enough to differentiate it from anything else you’ve seen served up by the pudgy plumber and friends.

Easy to pick-up-and-play which makes it the ultimate party game for a group of people.

A little cleaner than the previous ones, but in general, still looks like them.

Same deal as with the graphics – the same bloops and bleeps you all know.

When there are 3 or more players, it’s off the charts. As a one-player game, it’s pretty boring

You’ll come back to play the 86 minigames and other boards as long as it’s not just you playing