I'm on cloud 9

I picked up Mario Party 9 last weekend and wanted to share some quick thoughts about it. This latest installment features some big changes to the gameplay, some of which work, some of which don't. Here are the big changes:

-Players move around the board together in a vehicle. Each person takes a turn as 'Captain' of the car. The captain rolls the dice and can make other game-altering decisions like choosing which path to take or which minigame to play. - For each game board, there are two 'bosses' that the players must defeat. When battling bosses, you work collaboratively and individually as players receive stars based on their individual efforts. - There are no coins anymore. You just collect mini-stars throughout the game and whoever has the most mini-stars at the end is the winner. This means that there are no more shops to buy items at, which I always felt was a huge waste of time. - This version still is NOT online capable, which blows. However, they have developed the game so that you can choose to only play with human players, if you want. In other words, if you and two other friends are playing, you don't have to have a fourth character controlled by the computer, it can be just a three-man battle.

For the most part, I like the changes that this new version offers. Like the show Survivor it's important to introduce these new twists with each iteration so that it provides an even playing field each time so that the same people don't always win. In this version, I like that there's more strategy involved, however the minigames this time around seem to be more luck-based than skilled based, so that may be a turnoff to some. The graphics are infinitely better in this version than in 8, which was made into a Wii game at the last minute after it was originally made for the GameCube.

While this one certainly could have done a lot more, there has been enough of a break in the series to make this still feel fresh and fun. Given that hardly any new titles have come out for the Wii recently, this is likely the best choice out there for you to pick up. Go out and buy a copy, call over some friends (perhaps purchase a few beverages to up the stakes) and have another good time with Mario and co.