Super Mario Party Jamboree

(available for Nintendo Switch only)

Super Mario Party Jamboree is the latest in the Mario Party series, developed once again by the studio that has recently been renamed Nintendo Cube. It’s the same usual affair for its main mode, 4 players will compete on a board game and every four turns there is a mini game that will distribute coins, collect the coins to buy stars, and whoever has the most amount of stars by the end is declared the winner.

But for a game that is coming out in the twilight of the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Cube certainly wanted to go out on a bang, because not only is there a ton of mini games, there’s also a lot more boards. If there is one thing that the previous two Mario Party switch games had as an issue, it’s the lack of boards. Jamboree comes with a total of six boards, two of which have to be unlocked.

There’s also a bunch of other modes as well to keep you occupied, so a lack of effort definitely isn’t here- and this is all on top of the fact that we have 22 playable characters! Overall, I can say right now that it’s a very strong multiplayer experience.

It feels like Nintendo Cube (since taking over Mario Party 9) have been fixing issues, and this feels like the culmination of that, though I will say it’s not entirely perfect.

There are several options for the players- button mini games and motion controlled mini games, though the motion controlled games are designed for a single Joycon- if you’d rather play with a Pro Controller or if you’re on the move, you can choose to switch off these motion mini games.

PROS

• Board Designs

As I mentioned, there are six boards in total: five new ones exclusive to this game, and two remake boards borrowed from Mario Party Superstars, those being Mario’s Rainbow Castle from Mario Party 1 and Western Land from Mario Party 2.

The new boards are Rainbow Galleria, Roll ‘Em Raceway, Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party, and Goomba Lagoon.

The two remake boards are pretty good, but it’s obvious that they were from the Nintendo 64 era, and while I do like them (particularly Western Land), it’s very obvious that the constraints from the era means that they don’t fit in with the mechanics from this one.

The new boards, however, have a lot of creativity. There’s a lot of luck-based activity to the boards, particularly in Goomba Lagoon with the volcano, but that’s what Mario Party is like! I really liked Roll ‘Em Raceway. Rainbow Galleria is now one of my favourite boards to date for how clever it is, and I like the fact that they use the shopping centre aspect in creative ways to tie into the board game.

If there’s one board that didn’t really click with me, it was probably Mega Wiggler’s Tree Party, since it felt too basic in several regards and I didn’t really have as much fun with it, but overall it’s the weakest one of a good bunch and I would still put it above any of the boards in the first Mario Party that appeared on the Switch.

• Mini Games Selection

The mini games are actually really good for this one. For one thing, Nintendo Cube had to design these games from scratch- it’s not like Superstars where they were remaking games from the series.

The mini games can be a bit basic at times, but there are some really interesting ones in the mix. One of my personal favourites would have to be the Block mini game, where you create a bridge by trying to pick the best possible path, while trying to anticipate what your opponents are thinking, because if you both choose the same path, you’ll cancel each other out.

If I had to complain, I would say that there aren’t a huge number of mini games, since I did start running into repeats quicker than I would in other Mario Party games, but there was never one that came up that I was disappointed to play.

I haven’t mentioned the motion control mini games, since they’ll be getting their own section in the review, so this only applies to the traditional mini games.

• 20 Player Mini Games

This is a new mode that has been added to Mario Party Jamboree, it’s called the Koopalathon, and it has you playing against 19 other players worldwide. It’s kind of their answer to Fall Guys. You’ll be playing one of three mini games on repeat, at the same time you’ll be earning coins, and your player will be moving across a board- the more coins you get, the quicker you’ll advance. After you get a certain number of coins, you’ll get an item that can impede the character in front of you. After each round of the three mini games selected, you’ll play an Imposter Bowser mini game, where the people who are eliminated will go back by a certain number of spaces depending on their position, and winners will get to stay in place with an extra item for their troubles.

This is one of my favourite aspects of the game for several reasons. One, while there aren’t a large variety of mini games (I think there was about 9 in total), there is a really fun factor of having to concentrate on mini games as well as your positioning, and the Bowser mini games were definitely challenging enough, that there were few challengers that ended up succeeded- I think the most I ever saw in a game was 5!

The fact of the matter is that unlike traditional Mario Party, this is a lot quicker. You can be done in about 10 minutes if you’re playing the five lap mini games, and it’s possible to play this with multiple players. I did test this out when I got into a game with 7 other players against the rest of the team being computer players, and we had a very good time doing it!

While I don’t think it has some of the exact same variety that Fall Guys has, I do think that as a short burst massive multiplayer online game, it succeeds.

MIXED

• Motion Control Mini Games

Okay, the motion control mini games weren’t particularly bad, they just felt tacked on.

They work fine, I didn’t hate any of them, but I found it fascinating that even when I turned on the option they barely showed up! Granted, at that point it was only a 10 turn or a 15-turn game and maybe if it had gone on longer we would have encountered more, but on the games I played it hardly showed up- and trying to play the traditional games with a Joycon is a nightmare.

As a result, after a certain point, I turned off the option. They barely show up, and when they do it’s hardly worth it. I didn’t want to put this in the Cons section because they’re not awful.

• A Few Too Many Modes

Again, this is a similar point. On top of the modes I’ve already mentioned, there’s also the Mini Game Bay, for people who just want to play the minigames- never understood that one personally, but it’s there for people who want it. But there’s also a mode called Bowser’s Kaboom Squad, Paratrooper Flight School, Toad’s Item Factory, Rhythm Kitchen, and then there’s even more modes to unlock on top of that!

I was made aware during the 8-player game that I did, that there was another mode to unlock, and at that point I realised that there were just way too many of these. None of them are bad, but they’re nowhere near as fun as traditional Mario Party of the Koopalathon. I played them about twice but then never went back to them. They’re good for a novelty, but you’ll end up putting them down.

Again, nothing inherently wrong, but I just didn’t really like it.

• No Wireless Communication Multiplayer

Now there is online multiplayer with all of the modes, and it works great- I barely ever experienced any framerate drops. However, one of my favourite ways for my friends to play the previous Mario Party games on the Switch was wireless communication, where all of your Switches in an area can communicate with each other. There’s lots of Switch games that can do this like Mario Kart 8, Pokémon, and even the previous Mario Party. The fact it was in the previous Mario Party games made me believe it would be here, but it’s not available! The only way you can play with multiple Switches is if you all connect to the same Wi-Fi and have a Wi-Fi match, but at that point, you might as well just get all of your controllers together and play on the TV.

However, if you’re trying to play it like that on the go, it’s damn near impossible given the size of the Switch screen. I don’t understand why this feature has been taken off.

• Pro Rules Mode

When you start a game of Mario Party, the game gives you the option to choose between Party Rules and Pro Rules. Word of advice: never pick Pro Rules. I’m sure there are people that like playing it this way, but I’m not one of them. This mode felt like Mario Party with none of the mad fun that comes with it. It removes most of the randomised elements where you land on spaces that do something random, the shops now have a limited quantity of items, and it tells you ahead of time what the Bonus Star is going to be.

I played this mode and while I was enjoying the minigames and the boards, most of the other aspects of the game that had luck aspects in place just drained the fun out of the game. I mentioned this to my friends, and my colleague Elliot made a good point that this feels like the team trying to turn Mario Party into an E-sport. And yeah, you probably could do that, but I don’t see why you would want to!

I immediately just went back into Party Mode and haven’t looked back since.

FINAL THOUGHTS

While I do have some gripes with it, I do want to say that I think that Mario Party Jamboree is one of the best Switch Mario Party games. It has the most creative boards, interesting game modes, as well as good online communication, and even when you don’t have that, the computer players aren’t incredibly dumb.

The minigames are really there, and this was a great multiplayer experience. I do think that the game has too many modes, and the motion-controlled games don’t really add much, but they’re not mandatory so I’ll give them a break. I don’t like that they got rid of Wireless communication and the Pro Rules did nothing for me.

If you like Mario Party, I would recommend getting this one. Even if you don’t have friends over a lot, playing online is a good solution for you because this game has really good online multiplayer and you can play the Koopalathon which is much quicker too.

FINAL SCORE: 8.5/10