Mario Party 6 [with Microphone] [GC]

Last year's capsule system has also undergone some significant changes -- likewise designed to keep the game running at a more brisk pace. You no longer receive capsules from gumball machines. Instead, capsules can either be bought in stores or picked up automatically when passing certain spaces. Each player can hold up to three different capsules and has the chance to use one before every turn. Some capsules contain power-ups that play into board movement, such as the ability to swap places with opponents, roll the dice three times, or slow down the dice block to easily get a high or low number. Others are designed for the sole purpose of annoying the competition. Spiky shells, Goombas or Piranha Plants can be placed on fields and will cause opponents to lose coins when they land on them -- and there's even the ultra-mean Snowman that costs an unfortunate soul all his capsules. To make sure that players harbor feelings of hate and revenge toward each other, spots occupied by such traps are clearly marked with player icons. With more than 20 different capsules, there's quite a lot of variety as well.

Once again, the mini-games are the real stars of the game. It's pretty amazing that Hudson created more than 80 little challenges in all to squeeze into this latest edition. That high turnout comes at a price, however. Though still fun, the quality of the actual games takes a backseat to sheer variety. Mario Party 6's mini-games can't stand up to the great cooperative challenges from Mario Party 4 or the fun quick-draw and puzzle games found in Mario Party 5, not to mention the more original stuff in Mario Party 2 on the N64. Still, there's plenty of fun to be had here when playing with four players. Once you've unlocked a good selection of mini-games by playing the Party mode, head directly to the mini-games section to set up board-less tournaments.

As far as presentation goes, Mario Party 6 is beginning to look a bit outdated. Many of the backgrounds and textures in the mini-games simply don't look as vibrant and lovingly drawn as in previous games -- and compared to other more recent Mario games like Mario Power Tennis, the character models are low-poly and jaggy to boot. This becomes even more apparent during the board game segments, when the camera zooms in to follow a character around the board. Given the fixed camera perspective, things just look too basic and bland. Hudson also didn't spend any time on creating a rendered intro, some of the unlockables are incredibly lame, there are no voices beyond the standard samples we've heard a hundred times over in Smash Bros. or other Mario games, and the instrument samples and looping tunes are more at home on the N64 game than on the GameCube. It's a bit strange to be playing a quiz game that relies on voice recognition, but fails to create any sort of quiz game atmosphere because you're the only one talking. And given the young target audience, it's doubly odd that there's no narrator for in-game events and announcements (and imagine these announcements would occur in voice form while you're playing, without you having to wake up player #1 to push the button and make the text window go away).

What's here works, but it would be nice to be surprised once in awhile when switching on a Mario Party game.

©2004, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved