Mario Party 8 is not a game that I purchase to play by myself. It's a party game. As always, it's best if you have three friends playing with you to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be. Aside from Jessica and Kevin playing Super Smash Bros. Melee with me every night of the week last summer, we also played a lot of Mario Party, and always look forward to when the latest title in the series will come out. So when the reviews for number eight started coming in with scores in the 50's and 60's, I was getting a little worried. After having played this title pretty thoroughly, I'm not quite sure what everyone's problem with it is. It's just more of the same - and that's not a bad thing.

I've played all four Mario Parties on Gamecube and have watched the way its grown. The graphics, while not out of this world, are definitely an improvement since its days on Gamecube. Simply seeing the Star Carnival behind the main menu had Jessica and I both impressed with the pretty visuals. Each mini-game has a lot of attention put into the detail of the visuals, and there were a couple mini-games that had me incredibly impressed with the graphics (specifically a volcanic explosion and an oasis being revealed in the desert). Unfortunately, only the graphics on the gameboards themselves have been reduced to 30 frames per second, with disgusting checker-board style transitions between players turns.

The gameplay styles for the gameboards are ones that were introduced with number seven, so there aren't exactly any new ways to "play" the boards. You have your generic Mario Party "get to the star first" board, one where you have to get to the end as fast as you can, a board revolving around stealing each others' stars, a board where you must place bids on hotels to earn their stars, and even a mystery board where you don't know where the star is or what's even around the corner. That last one is a new style actually, and it's more enjoyable to do it with teams.

The mini-games aren't as fun as the ones in Mario Party 5, but they're a lot better than the last couple of games. It's especially thanks to the use of the Wii Remote. There were only a couple mini-games that had me second-guessing the accuracy of the remote, but most all the games' controls are done very well and are a real joy to play. The Wii controls also prove effective on the gameboard, as you just point and select your choices instead of moving through menus. We've noticed that this also helps the game move quicker, as there's always one of us holding a drink in our hand, and we would have to set it down to use both hands on our controller, where now you only need one for the remote.

The speed of the game is at the fastest its probably ever been. They've replaced the orbs that were introduced in Mario Party 5 with candy. Instead of taking extra time to decide what space to throw the orbs onto, now you simply click a candy and eat it. Candy not only allows you to steal other's coins, or spring to another location, but it also changes the look of your character depending on what candy you eat. For example, eating the Thwomp Candy changes you into a giant concrete head of your character, and you smash your way across each space. This isn't the only thing that has sped up the game though, as characters feel like they race across the spaces, and cinematics for certain events are lightning quick. I've read a lot of reviews complaining about the game being slow, and not being any faster than previous games. They seriously need to go back and actually play those games again, because those are a lot slower than their memory thinks they are.

Hudson has also taken out some things, since the last few. Some I agree with, some I do not. One of the first things I noticed they removed is the Random Roulette space. This is where it would take two characters and randomly switch their coin totals or star totals. It was the most irritating space anyone could land on because it would take everything you've worked for the entire game, and give it to someone else for no reason other than to be 'random'. I applaud them for taking this ridiculous space out, and so does everyone else in the world. In its place they have inserted the Music Note space - which is simply awesome. There's only one of them per board, and if you land on it, you're taken to a special strip of blue spaces full of coins with a free star at the end. It's like a space from the heavens, and is very exciting to land on.

One other thing I've noticed they have removed is the ability to see a graph of everyone's progress at the end of the game. I'm not sure why they removed this feature - Jessica, Kevin, and I always looked forward to seeing the hilarious ways in which our coin collecting went - with someone's graph dive-bombing after losing all their coins. It's really a shame they took that out, and no reason either. That menu never hurt anyone...

I really only have a few minor gripes about this game. The first is that there is still no name entry. Both Smash Bros. and WarioWare allow for you to save profiles to use during the game and have it save all your stats for comparison. There's no excuse for why Mario Party can't. Whenever it says "New Record" I think - who's going to remember who set that record?

The second is the exclusion of the Mii's. In the extras mode you can actually play as your Mii instead of a Mario Party character, which is awesome. But they didn't allow this for the main party mode. Why not? You obviously wrote the code to get that to work. To make matters worse, when they do allow the Miis to play, they put them in retarted overalls that give you a big belly and little round stubs for hands. I like being a Mii in the game, but I hate how it makes us look like we don't exercise.

The third is that while the graphics look prettier, the character models have not changed since number four. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is updating the characters to look even more detailed and awesome to play as, and it would have been nice to see something similar happen here. Worse yet, many of the same animation sequences of players being happy or sad are still unchanged. This isn't to say that there haven't been any changes, it's just that I've seen those animations for four games now, and they're getting pretty old. Time to make things brand new again.

The fourth is no online support. At all. Take those first two complaints and mix them with this one. How cool would it have been to have online multiplayer using your Miis and having world-wide high-scores? Really missed the ball on that one, Hudson.