Super Mario Party Jamboree review: Sorry Mario, but your super ambitious jamboree is just too much for me, writes PETER HOSKIN
View
comments
Super Mario Party Jamboree (Nintendo Switch, £49.99)
Verdict: This party’s too crowded
Mario is a fun guy. We know that. And he wants you to be a fun guy too, which is why he’s put his name to a series of sporadically enjoyable party games designed to be played on your sofa with your mates, starting with 1998’s Mario Party and continuing on to 2021’s Mario Party Superstars.
They’re something of an odd construct, these games. They’re part board game, in that you roll digital dice and race your friends around a digital board. But they’re also part minigame collection, in that landing on particular squares triggers brief little competitions of skill, luck or daring.
Super Mario Party Jamboree is an upcoming party video game developed by Nintendo Cube and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch
The game is the 13th home console instalment in the Mario Party series
The game features the main characters from the Mario franchise
Some of the boards are classics, some are duds.
Some of the minigames are classics, some are duds.
Which means that the quality of the Mario Party games varies wildly — both between individual titles and within them.
Which brings us to the new title in the series, Super Mario Party Jamboree. It makes a strong case for being the most ambitious Mario Party game so far — with a record total of seven boards, five of which are new, two of which are prettified versions of old favourites — and is certainly the best looking.
There’s so much colour and joy in the best of its numerous minigames, like one that has you precisely carving steaks in half, or another — can you spot a theme? — that has you slicing veg in time with the beat.
But might Jamboree be too ambitious? The odd construct that is a Mario Party game sometimes feels even odder here, as it tries to add on more options (including ones for solo play) than ever before. Fun and unwieldy are qualities that don’t really go well together.
So thanks for the invite, Mario. But maybe next time keep it a bit simpler, yeah? A few friends, a few beers, a minigame or seven. Then we’ll really have ourselves a party.
Unknown 9: Awakening (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £44.99)
Verdict: Known quantity
Unknown is the last thing that Unknown 9: Awakening wants to be. This game is launching with the promise of a whole ‘universe’ alongside it; there are plans for comics, novels, narrative podcasts and, presumably, tea cosies. Its makers clearly have hopes of becoming the next Marvel.
Does Awakening, the biggest pillar in this content superstructure, hold up all the rest? Hm, not really. It’s fine, but not much more than that. Some good stuff, some bad. Universes need more of a divine spark to bang bigly.
Unknown 9: Awakening is a video game developed by Reflector Entertainment
Let’s start with the good stuff — which includes the protagonist, Haroona, a digitised version of a real-life performance by the actress Anya Chalotra.
Haroona is a likeable character with an impressive set of powers that originate from some spirit realm or other. She deploys them to take down the baddies of an alternate Earth that’s a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Assassin’s Creed, a little bit Dan Brown.
Chief among those powers — and the game’s strongest offering — is Haroona’s ability to ‘step’ into enemies, effectively taking control of their actions for a few frantic seconds. Setting up one baddie to pummel another, before leaping to yet another and making him shoot a nearby explosive barrel, is consistently a joy.
As for the bad stuff, well, that’s really just the various (mostly graphical) glitches that I encountered during my playthrough. This universe could use a good polish.
Everything else is just so... standard. Climb things, hide in bushes, improve your skills. Enough to make you progress through the dozen or so hours of Awakening’s story, but not to make you give your cultural life over to this would-be behemoth. So: now you know.
