4/5 ★ – DanteSnowcone's review of Mario Party Superstars.

Time Played: 8 hours Mario Party Superstars is an excellent collection of the franchise’s finest games that is only held back by its lack of further content. I am one of the two target audiences for this game (the other being children). I was about 6 or 7 when the first Mario Party came out, and I owned and played all the installments from the N64 and GameCube era. They’re feeding you nostalgia from the moment you start up the game. It’s definitely a faithful remake. The main hub is nearly identical to that of the original MP, the five boards only have minor changes from their originals (plus the use of fun reactions), and playing games like Crazy Cutters and Mecha-Marathon makes me feel like I’m back in my parents’ basement. Even some of the most frustrating games stay true to the source material—I’m looking at you, Cast Aways. Mario Party obviously thrives when played with other people. The game is great for couch playing, and online connection is also pretty seamless. But if you don’t have 1+ hours to do a full set of turns, forgoing the boards and jumping right into minigames is easy: just pick your characters and pick your games, or set it to random. Oddly enough, my favorite part of the game so far is the Survival mode, a solo mode in which you try to win as many minigames in a row against random online players as you can. I would have liked to see some sort of single-player story mode as most MP games have done, but I guess I get why they wouldn’t prioritize that. I’m also disappointed by the items in the shop; I have no interest in collecting encyclopedia pages for games and characters. Let me unlock cool stuff! For the regular party mode and minigames, Mario Party Superstars is great. But $60 is a lot to pay as an adult who will only get to experience the best of this game on the rare occasions I can get three friends together at my apartment. I’m hoping that more interesting content is added in the future, but for now this is a good choice for any group that isn’t afraid to test their friendship.