A friend once told me that in the porn industry, the higher the number is on the cover of the movie, the lower the quality of the content involved. Truth be told, it seems the same can be said in the game industry or any industry for that matter. The opening was purely shock value. Here we are with this year’s seemingly annual installment of the Mario Party series – Mario Party 6. While the Nintendo’s pioneering “Party” series has always been renowned for its multiplayer fun factor, could all of this overexposure be a good thing for the franchise, especially in a genre wrought with knockoffs?

Mario Party 6 sticks to the traditional gameplay mechanics. Four players are thrown onto a game board with varying themes and rules where the goal is to collect coins, set traps for other players, and ultimately, come out of the game with the most stars. You can choose to do an all out four player battle against human and/or AI opponents or team up in a tag team match. Mario Party 6 is best played with a group of friends, if you’re lacking a couple of friends to compete against, you’ll find yourself competing against the game’s laughable and almost completely incompetent AI; which if you’re teamed up with, will almost make the game unplayable. This is mostly apparent in the dusting and shoot-and-jump mini games where the AI will run around in circles or just make plain stupid decisions.

The mini games themselves don’t offer much in terms of gameplay variety, as they range from simple button mashers, games that involve timing, or platforming skills. There are some good ideas behind some of the mini games, but a lot of the execution falls flat and the games turn tedious after registering some gameplay time.

You’ll find you characters duking it out in one of a handful of boards with their own sets of rules. These range from just making your way around the board to purchasing stars from a wandering Donkey Kong and avoiding a star stealing Bowser. In addition to the rules of the boards, you’ll also have a variety of spheres to throw onto spaces that will steal coins form your opponents, make you move further across the board, stop them in their tracks, etc. These can give a sense of strategy to the gameplay as well as spice the game up.

One new perk to the gameplay are day and night cycles. Games will differ depending whether they’re played during the day or night. They can become harder, easier, reverse directions, etc. You’ll also notice that prices of spheres or the games modes of transportation across the board will differ depending on the time of day or night.

In addition to the multiplayer mode, Mario Party 6 offers a solo mode where your character and an AI partner of your choosing play against Bowser’s Koopa Kids. The solo mode is a great way put piles of stars in your star bank, which can be spent on some unlockable features. The only catch is that you’ll only receive the star bonus if you manage to hit a certain number of spaces on the solo boards, which doesn’t put a guarantee on the bonuses and could take a few tries to reap the benefits. The unlockable features aren’t too impressive and range from one new character, one level, twenty pages of a miracle book, and a bunch of game sounds as well as some useless gameplay hints that almost rival the old Nintendo trading cards in the late 80’s. How retro!

The visuals of Mario Party 6 are about on par with the rest of its Gamecube counterparts. Characters have a good variety of animation and are recognizable despite the 3/4 overhead view the game employs most of the time. You’ll get some nice particle effects here and there as well as some really nifty fire effects from Bowser. The levels also look good and stay true to their respective environments.

Sound is pretty disappointing as well. The game is full of some classic sounds that are typical of any Mario game, but that’s where the good news ends. Characters only sport a couple of sound bites (though Wario and Waluigi’s smarmy groans never get old) which will make the character voices annoying really fast. The music is also forgettable and doesn’t demand much attention.

It seems that Hudson Soft has gone into cruise control in terms of development and is just “going through the motions” of making another Mario Party game year after year. While the day/night feature and the new microphone mini games seem like great additions, the rest of the game has a “been there, done that” feel that really doesn’t warrant a purchase to an owner of Mario Party 4 or 5. Still, Mario Party 6 has potential to make a great rental to a group of friends wanting to get trashed and be competitive at home for a night. If you already own a Mario Party game for the ‘Cube, you’d be better off avoiding this installment and investing your money in the far more interesting WarioWare Mega Party Game$.

*The additional mic wasn't available at the time of the review. Don't blame SwankWorld, blame Gamefly :).

- Brad Hicks (aka Dr. Swank), SwankWorld Media