Wii Party

Wii Party is a pretty good game for your familiar and friendly evenings (but also mornings, afternoons and even nights) at home. Unfortunately it's on Wii, a console with a pretty wide variety of similar games... and this is not the best of the bunch!

Despite a few hidden gems, Wii Party doesn't do anything special to stand-out in the mini-game compilation realm, although it is better than most of "the rest" out there.

So while Wii Party manages to remain entertaining by the sheer numbers of minigames and occasional clever Wiimote usage, the bland presentation and lackluster board games bring it down.

It's a shame that Wii Party seems to rely so heavily on arbitrary equalisers, resulting in several underwhelming minis, but the range of diversity and charm is more than enough to pull you in for a while.

Without any real theme beyond the generic Miis running the show, it's hard to get jazzed about such a generic production.

In a perfect word, the meta-games would be as good as the mini-games themselves. But with four people, Lambrini and deely-boppers (just me?), Wii Party's still a reliable, if fairly thin, source of entertainment all the same.

Wii Party is just another typical multiplayer game for the Wii. Unfortunately there isn't an online mode, so if you don't have friends coming over you won't be playing this game. Nevertheless this game is great for parties.

Plenty of content and modes but not as consistently innovative as we hoped. [Issue#231, p.96]

Wii Party has a lot of minigames and game modes, but it lacks originality, creativity and fun.

Nowhere near the shallow quality those infernal Miis would suggest. [Issue#102, p.114]

Wii Party threatens to become the life and soul of the party if played in the right circumstances. But without four players, and a stern awareness that the Game Board, House Party and Balance Boat modes are where the fun lies, Wii Party

It lacks the surreal genius of Gamecube's WarioWare, but it has more than enough charm to divert you from Trivial Pursuit until it's time for Doctor Who.

Quotation forthcoming.

With your Mii characters you try to conquer 80 mini games, some of which are really fun. The better you succeed with them the better chance you have of winning the various game modes. What disturbs the overall impression is that everything is a bit too simple. The game is ugly, sounds bad and the game modes are not as funny as the genre colleague Mario Party.

Miis are replacing the regular Mario Party cast in Wii Party. Even though it's good fun for a couple of hours, it lacks the Mario Party depth of gameplay and feels a little bit to sterile.

I honestly can't say Wii Party is a bad game. I just also can't say it's a great game. It's ... fine. But, then, is that really the reaction you want to have to your party entertainment?

Plenty of mini-games which only some are good enough to impress and Mii characters – those are the only cons of this average party game. [Dec 2010]