Published by: Nintendo
Developed by: Hudson Soft
Genre: Party
Number of Players: 1-8
Release Date: November 7, 2005
Well its summer, and summer is the perfect time for parties. That being said it time for a Mario Party 7 review. Yes, I know this is the 7th one, so I just going to say it now. There are F***ing 7 of them. So will Mario Party 7 bring everyone flocking to your house for a summer party?

Basicly Mario Party 7 is no Different them 6, or 5, or 4 or... you get the picture. You hit hit the dice, go that number of spaces and after all the turn theres a mini-game along the way trying to collect Stars. Now there are a few changes to the system from last year. Insted of three bonus stars there are many, yet only three will be giving at a time. They are the Red, Happening(land on ? spaces), Running(how much you move) Orb, Shopping, and Minigame. This allows for more diveuse playing in order to get these. Also the teams now act as a group rather then lone players. This means team board games suck. Also there are character specific orbs. There not much but they finally add character diversity. The Mic is also put to more use, yet most of the mic games seem like they could have just been regular minigames.

The story is that Mario and his friends go on a vacation across the world so naturally the boards are based on real world places. The best part of this game is the boards. As stated earlier, all of them are based off of real world places so you'll party in Eygept, Las Vegas, Holland and more. The boards also have a theme to get stars, such as fixing Windmills and stealing them with Chain Chomps. Not only that but this helps inprove the Solo cruise(the single player mode). In it you can verse a CPU (or a friend go figure) in a duel on a board. What makes it work is that the boards keep there theme from the party mode. In Windmillvill party mode you must put money into the windmills for stars. In Solo mode you try to buy three winbdmills before your opponent does.

Pagoda Peak. Climb the mountain to buy a star

In most games Bowser acted as the antagonist, messing up the players and reaching havoc. Normally it was preety fair, messing up player to the point of recovery or the worst was dodgeable by Minigames. In Mario Party 7 theres something called Bowser Time in which Bowser completely screws everyone. A guage fills every turn and when its filled, Bowser comes. He can take stars from 1st or destroy bridges preventing you to go any further. The problom is this is totally unavoidable and can make any good game a drag. At the very least he steal 10 coins from everyone, but this seems to be the rarest of them all.

The gimmick for MP7 is the 8-player mode where 8 people can play. In it, you have 4 teams and each team uses one controller. One player uses the controller stick and L, the other uses the C-stick and R. These minigames are surprisingly good, forcing players to work together on the same controller. Plus theres actually a good number of them.

An 8 player minigame. Shocking

As I've repeated time and time again, thgis is the 7th one, so you'd think the graphics would be improving. Wrong. MP7 has the same graphics as six. There really is no difference. In fact it maybe a downgrade as some character models looked blocky at times. In its defence the modles are more fluent, having alot more motion. Regaurdless its still the same as six.

Dont beleive me? See for yourself

At least the music changed. Like every Mario Party theres a brand new soundtrack. This one is no different (see the pattern). The quallity is fine yet its really not much.

While were talking about sub-par and the same lets focus on the AI. In short, its ••••••ed. In the board they'll do the dumbest things such as spending all there coins so they cant buy a star and throwing orb behind everyone where there useless.

Closing Statement
Now, for the record, Mario Party 7 isn't a bad game, just ore of the same. You get what you pay for here. Minigames, the character, the fun multiplayer action, yet in the end it just feels like last year. If this hasn't been done six times already Mario Party 7 would have gotten a higher score, but this it number seven so.....
Overall 3/5(Not an adverage)
Overveiw
Gameplay Solid, smooth fun. 4/5
Grapich/Presentation-With the exception of better character animation its the same as last year. sub-par 2.5/5
Sound/Music-Preety good. Fluent and not a bad soundtrack 4/5
Difficulty-AI is dumb as dirt 1.5/5
Multiplayer-Fun and lots of veriety. They dont call it Mario Party for nothing 5/5

Pros
+Fun Multiplayer
+8 player works well
+More Mic
+Lot of veriety in the board
Cons
-Sub-par graphics
-Bowser time is annoying and unfair
-AI is dumb as dirt
-Some Mic game were usless and could have been normal minigames
-DK is not a playable character

Should I buy this?
Not really. If you havn't played Mario Party before or you love Mario Party then it might be a buy, but keep in mind Mario Party 6 is better. Friends are required for a purches.

EDIT:Srry I posted this in the wrong section. If a mod could move it, it would be much appriciated.