The Mario Party series got another installment in late 2003 with Mario Party 5 for the Nintendo GameCube. I
was disappointed with Mario Party 4, so I was hoping Mario Party 5 would put the Mario Party series back on
the right track. New factors like capsules in Party Mode as well as a couple of tempting sports mini-games
were huge for this game's potential success or failure, as well as what makes this one different from the others in this series.

This Review is based on the normal 0-4 star scale. 0 is very poor, while 4 is excellent, as you probably
already know or could have guessed.

Graphics: ***

The graphics are good, with not much to complain about. They aren't incredibly realistic-looking like in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but the game is supposed to have a cartoonish style, and that's exactly what you get. I'm sure not that many of you actually care about whether this game's graphics are great or not, so I won't waste that much time here.

Sound: **½

The music isn't very catchy, and it can't rank up there with musical masterpieces like Diddy Kong Racing
and Donkey Kong 64, yet it still fits in with the different boards and modes that you are playing in. As for the voices, I still hate Daisy's voice. In fact, it has to rank with the worst voices in the history of video games. Come on, what happened to the person who played her voice in Mario Tennis (N64)? This isn't enough for me to lower the score here, but it's still a problem that I want fixed.

Difficulty: *

If you're a Mario Party veteran like me, this game's mini-games should seem pretty easy. I've seen basically every type of mini-game they can throw at me, so it gets easier and easier for me to secure that Mini-Game Star with every Mario Party that goes by. Except for luck-oriented mini-games, I can easily breeze through most mini-games, and I expect other veterans should do the same.

Characters: ½

The good news: Toad is now a playable character. The Star Spirits are back, so if you liked them, that's
good news as well. That's the end of the good news. Donkey Kong, my second-favorite to Daisy, is now on a
space on the board, no longer playable. Bowser Jr., one of my least favorite characters ever, is now a playable character. Even worse, there are Koopa Kids in the game, but they aren't the Koopa Kids we know
and love. They are Blue K. Kid, Green K. Kid, and Red K. Kid. Generic Koopa Kids, not the real ones. It gets
more and more annoying with each passing console game that the Koopalings are replaced by Baby Bowsers, Bowser Jr., or now these generic Koopa Kids.

Controls: ***

There is not much to complain about, as usual. With the exception of Super Mario Sunshine and perhaps
Mario & Luigi, this Mario game's controls are good, for the most part, at least. They're very easy to understand and use. I wish there was a reverse control in Super Duel Mode (to be covered later), and I also
wish for some improvement in the sports games (to be covered later).

Party Mode:
I'll split up Party Mode into parts. No, I'm not giving a score to Party Mode here, or it will give away what the final score is (and then you'll just skip the meat of the Review).

Boards: **½

It all starts with the boards, and let me say that I am pretty pleased with the boards. No, they aren't as great as the classics in Mario Party 1 and 2, but they are still pretty fun to play on. I especially like the space-themed board, as well as the pirate-themed board. However, how come these ideas seem to be
"borrowed" from past Mario Parties? We've already seen a cake-themed board, as well as a pirate-themed board, and two space-themed boards. You'd think there would be more originality. My  hopes are that Mario Party 6 contains boards that have direct correlation with past Mario games (SMB3 and SMW lands, maybe?). They still offer some excitement, though, so on their own, they aren't bad for boards.

Mini-Games: ***

The mini-games can't really match up to classics in previous Mario Parties, but despite that, they still offer some fun experiences. Take, for example, Hotel Goomba, a mini-game which forces you to punch Goombas
around in order to make it through a room, a puzzle mini-game. This was more of a challenge than most other games. There are other games which are fun, and at the same time new experiences, not remakes of
old mini-games. Overall, I'm impressed with the selection of mini-games, although they aren't quite as
memorable as some mini-games from the past.

Capsules: ***

Mario Party 5 replaces the old item system with capsules, which are similar to items in function, but quite different in some other ways. You stop by a capsule machine and pick up a capsule for free.  It is randomly chosen, which is not good in the sense that you can't choose what you get. I liked being able to pay for what I wanted, but that was randomly chosen as well, and the computers would get the good items more often than I would. You can use a capsule on yourself, which costs coins, but that way you are ensured of it working on you and not on someone else, as what could happen if you use it on a space on the board (up to 10 spaces ahead of you). In that case, anyone who lands on that space gets whatever was inside that capsule, whether it was a Coin Block or a Cursed Mushroom. That space remains like that for the remainder of the game, so multiple people can land on it and get that capsule's effect. Of course, if you want that
capsule's effect yourself, you have to use it on yourself. It is nice that capsules are free, so you can save it for whenever you have enough coins to use it on yourself. It is also nice to be able to create your own spaces, in a way. Overall, I think the capsules are a good idea, though it's a real toss-up on whether being able to choose what item you want to buy is better.

Story Mode: ***

Story Mode is more fun than it was in the past. In the past, it was beating your opponents in board games,
which took almost forever. Now it's on miniature boards, with all three Koopa Kids moving at the same time
(for the most part). There is more focus on beating your opponent in mini-games rather than hitting the
Dice Block and hoping for high numbers in order to get to the Star first. Your goal is to wipe out your
opponent in coins rather than to gain the most Stars. Overall, it's fun to play, except for the Bowser
mini-game at the end, which I find to be really hard and not very fun, even in Easy mode.

Super Duel Mode: **½

Here, you buy parts for a machine by winning lots of mini-games, and then you build your machine and battle
your opponents' machine. You can play a battle, trying to take your opponent out; a capture-the-flag mode, in  which you try to capture three flags before your opponent; and a mode in which you try to shoot three
rabbits before your opponent does. There are seven different arenas to battle in. The problem with the
arenas is that I find them to be too small, and I also think that the time limit should be eliminated, with an option to quit in case someone can't shoot down the rabbits (to prevent people from having to reset their
systems in this case). The machines themselves are very interesting the way they work, as well as the way
they look (a three-Goomba engine? That's really cool). The Lakitu cloud "wheels" allow you to float on all
surfaces, which is different from most other wheels, which make you shoot into the air if you touch lava in
Bowser's arena. These different machine parts make the battles much more varied than if you could only choose from a few parts. I wish there was a reverse control for driving backwards; that could really help me in a lot of situations. On the whole, it's not a bad mode, and this would be even more interesting if it were
expanded in another game (perhaps Mario Party 6?).

Card Party: *

This is a game in which you go around uncovering cards, which usually give you Stars. It's more of a
luck-based game than anything, however, so it's not a really fun game.

And now, the moment we've all been waiting for (or at least I have been waiting for), the part where I
review the two sports games included in Mario Party 5. These were a great idea, as they give you another
thing to do in the game besides your basic board games, mini-games, and story mode. However, how was
the execution?

Beach Volleyball: *½

Beach Volleyball is made to have simple controls so anyone can play it, yet it lacks the ease in gameplay
that made Mario Tennis so playable and likable. This game forces you to be at an exact position in order to
hit the ball, so if you misjudge the ball even slightly, you will miss it. Jumping in order to hit the ball contains the same frustration. Fortunately, the game can still be pretty fun to play even with the poor controls, but it does not become a hit as I had hoped, due to these poor controls, and due to a not-that-great camera.

Ice Hockey: no stars

What a heartbreaker. This game looked initially like it would be the NES Ice Hockey with Mario characters. If you don't know by now, I'm a huge fan of the NES Ice Hockey, as it was an extremely fun yet simple sports game to play, one of the few sports games a non-sports fan could truly enjoy. However, this Ice Hockey is a big failure. The controls are clumsy. Shooting is extremely difficult. Successful passing is difficult. Playing good defense is difficult, with the checking being strange and the stealing not working too well either. Basically, the game is extremely poor on the whole, not being very fun. There's not even any overtime if there's a tie game! As the National Hockey League's brand of hockey hasn't been too great lately, neither is Mario Party 5's brand of hockey. The sad thing is that I know it could have been done right. It had great possibilities, but instead this Ice Hockey fell flat on its face.

Replayability: *½

One problem with Mario Party 5 is that with the sports games not being too great, the game does not keep me coming back that often to play it because I've already experienced the game in the past, and it's not a
drastically brand-new game. It doesn't really bring enough new to the table to make me really want to keep
on playing it, yet it at least has enough new stuff to keep me playing more than I played Mario Party 4.

Fun Factor!: ***

It's a Mario Party game. That's all you need to know. Of course it's a lot of fun, though not totally fun due to some disappointment with Beach Volleyball and Ice Hockey.

OVERALL: **½

It is sad to say that Mario Party 5 is my favorite Mario game on the Nintendo GameCube. Well, it's not totally sad, as at least I have a Mario Cube game that I rate over two stars. This one is worth at least a rent, as you'll have some fun for a little while, though it's not as great as the first three. It's at least an improvement off Mario Party 4, sort of like how Star Wars: Episode 2 improved off Episode 1 but really can't touch the original trilogy (at least in my mind).

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