Reviews are in

It's.... good?

https://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/super-mario-party/critic-reviews

EVERYBODY WINS!

Does an average of 78 on Metacritic = good? That doesn’t seem that good...

It's a Mario Party game and 78% isn't a bad overall consensus score in my book.

Since when does mid 70s as a score not literally equal "good" though?

Anyway this will be my first mario party game. I'm excited to play it with my little sister and my girlfriend. Seems really fun

"Game Journalist" opinions on this doesn't matter. I'm waiting on the Mario Party experts to give their take on this one.

@frostyryan:

I guess. That’s why I asked the question. All I know about Metacritic is that Jeff has said in the past that some publishers don’t like Giant Bomb’s 5 star system because getting 4 stars instead of 5 means you only get an 80 towards your average Metacritic score. The implication being an 80 isn’t a good score. I guess it doesn’t matter.

It’s got mostly positive reviews and no negative reviews, so there’s that.

@shivermetimbers:

I guess you’re right. Someone had a chart where Mario Party 1 was the highest Mario Party on Metacritic with a 79.

As a kid I would play these games at a cousin's house, and thought they were dogshit. Just pure, undistilled, turds that someone pressed into an N64 cart. Really just irredeemable pieces of garbage that brought shame on the good Mario name.

But I had a lot of bad opinions as a 6 year old. I thought Broccoli was bad, I liked Taco Bell, I hated mayonnaise. Okay, I was dead on with that last one, but maybe I was wrong about this Mario Party thing. Maybe they deserve a second chance.

Reviews mean nothing, only one way to find out. We gotta run it through the scientific method.

78% is astronomical for Mario Party.

@htr10 said:

This is 100% not a sarcastic reply, and I love it. I don't believe review scores are irrelevant, but you can forgive games journalists for trying to convince their peers that they're an anachronism when you read things like this.

It's still Mario Party

Lol at the game snobs....78? Dear lord! Two points and it would be good....Shits trash yo!

Mario Party is above "scores" and "reviews".

The game series is only ever as good as the people you're playing it with.
Playing it with kids is a lot of fun.
Playing it with friends who may or may not be high, also fun.
Playing it in a serious competitive environment, bad, you're doing MP wrong.
Watching Giant Bomb play the series, even better.

Yeah, what does Dan think?

Also I want the opinion of Drew's brother.

Looks like a return to form for the series, I'll be picking it up tomorrow

A 7/10 literally means 'good' in my book. People have lost sight of how scores work and think anything below a 9 is bad.

I wonder how many off these "journalists" have a weird nostalgia for this game.(bunch a sick fucks)

A 78 on a test isn’t that good...

I just played a 10-turn 4 player game on the first map, and the very first thing to happen was our Waluigi player rolled a -3 coins on their first go. This game is perfect.

People been saying these are good games and they are all lies. People who enjoy these games are bad people and should be a crime. Then again nothing makes sense in this backward world these days.

People also say the other Mario Party games were good but they were all garbage, so I'm not sure if I can trust anyone on this...

I just traded in a barely used copy of Crash Trilogy to get 50% off. Can't wait!

Honestly all I'm looking for is a fun new Mario Party to play with pals and my girlfriend. This seems to do a good job of that and it got rid of the awful car idea, so I'm all for it!

Funny thing is, despite how well Mario Party sells, they’ve never rated that high critically. The highest rated one is stil MP2 at a 79 MC score. After that it’s Super Mario Party and then everything else is mostly in low 70 to mid 60’s territory.

We're not talking about tests. We're talking about the average score drawn from subjective opinions of dozens (or more) of individual people with their own biases who may vehemently disagree with each other's opinions.

Mario Party is like Sonic, it's fun(ny) for people to exaggerate how bad it is.

@dasakamov:

...you think my last post was a serious comment?

@htr10: That is a wider issue. If memory serves, Adam Sessler talked about it a fair amount.

Part of it is that a very coarse grain scale does tend to result in lower scores. But mostly it has to do with the thresholds provided by publishers and the like. I am not sure how popular it is these days, but a few years back it wasn't uncommon for a dev studio to get a bonus (or, more specifically, the amount of money they were promised...) for getting a metacritic average over a certain value. And, depending on the genre, that was generally in the 80s. So not having a "perfect" game tended to screw them as the 5-star sites would give them an 80%

Aside from that: Metacritic is generally an aggregation of mainstream sites (and then everyone else). So adjust accordingly. If a first person shooter isn't high 80s it is probably "trash". If a turn based strategy game is even at 80 then it might be one of the greatest ever made. And if something like Dwarf Fortress (had reviews and) managed to get over a 50 it is spectacular.

@gundato:

That makes sense. Very thoughtful reply.

Still not getting it because the online is a joke and I have no one to play with locally. But hope there is some content on the site related to it.

78? That's almost great

Given how the other MP games have been reviewed, 78 is very good. It’s barely bested by the first game (79), and better than other entries, who all posted scores between 62 and 74. It doesn’t necessarily make me more excited, but for those who like Mario Party it seems like a solid entry.

@htr10: Well, yeah. You didn't do anything to indicate that you were making an un-serious comment.

How is 78% not considered good for some people? If you translate that to a 5 point scale it would basically be a 4. It's way closer to a 4 than a 3. And in my opinion a 3 would be considered good. This seems to be a rotten leftover from publishers who would give bonuses to games that got 80%+.

It’s a garbage game for babies ~ Jeff Gerstmann

Fair enough.

It's like 40% of a game...

Maps aren't clever or challenging anymore... not as much skill needed in many of the mini games... and there are very limited number of games.

Compared to the best mario party games this game falls vert short...

So, glad I searched for this because I was going to start my own thread: the game is, in fact, good. VERY good in comparison to many other aspects of the series. The minigames are largely very solid, they give you a lot of stuff to do, and the feature of different characters having different dice is fun. The co-op mode as well is like some sort of weird, math-focused fun time that I never saw coming from their usual stuff that I've played.

My wife and I have played it A LOT and if you're even remotely interested I think it's worth $60. I do think that the boards themselves are a little lackluster and lacking, but there is a lot there if you want to dig for it. Just don't do Challenge Mode unless you want the characters it unlocks. It sucks, and surprisingly not because the minigames do. It's just kind of woefully uninspired.

We've dropped about 15 hours into the game according to the Switch, and that is an amount I NEVER would have thought possible. I just can't get over how surprisingly entertaining it is, and more importantly, how most of the minigames work very well.

Mario party is bad and this game is mediocre so fans of the series will say it is good. It's fine. You have to be drunk or high to really enjoy it, and I think that is a fucked up decision by Nintendo.