The most surprising thing about playing Super Mario Party at Gamescom was realising that, eleven games in, Nintendo are still able to come up with crazy, original ideas for mini-games. Playing on a single Joy-Con in a quick four-player round of 5 games, the Gamescom demo was stripped back to bare essentials with no board game world map, in order to get players into the action quicker. And, while some of the concepts in the games were familiar, some were of the same bizarre flavour I’d usually expect from Wario Ware.
Take the steak flipping mini-game. It has nothing, nothing to do with Mario, yet its a hilarious and pretty well-executed concept for a competitive mini-game. Holding the Joy-Con lengthways, like the handle of a pan, you have to sizzle a cube of steak in an on-screen frying pan, making sure to cook each of its sides by using motion controls, judging how the steak is sliding around with the aid of the HD Rumble. It’s not quite as impressive as Ball Count back in 1-2-Switch, but it’s so weird it feels like it could only have been done on Switch. Unfortunately, I don’t have any screenshots of the weirdly realistic graphics of the steak flip to share with you, so here’s one of another mini-game, the Tricycle Race.
This mini-game also uses motion controls, although it is a bit more awkward, as you have to ‘peddle’ the Joy-Con with both hands as you slowly make your way to the finish line. Other mini-games in the Gamescom demo were a simple race with each character balancing on barrels (again using motion controls to steer) and a survival mission where everyone is placed in a grid with Chargin’ Chucks rushing through the field, tackling anyone who gets in the way. The most exciting mini-game of the lot was a simple side-scrolling race between the players, with a horde of enemies chasing after everyone getting closer and closer, devouring anyone who falls behind too far. It was only a small sampling of the larger game, but the Gamescom demo was enough to sell me on Super Mario Party potentially displacing 1-2-Switch as my go-to ‘show off my Switch’ game.
Super Mario Party definitely seems to be playing to the Nintendo Switch’s strengths, from its use of single Joy-Con controls and even the way players can line up multiple Switches for certain games. Super Mario Party is due out 5 October 2o18.
